Juvenile court has elicited the interest and criticism of lawyers, social workers, and criminologists, but less attention from sociologists. This book adds to growing sociological literature on the operations of legal institutions. It describes some critical aspects of the functioning of the juvenile court, an institution charged with judging and treating delinquents. To this end, it analyzes the nature of the court operation, the handling of delinquents, and the court's functions in relation to the wider social and legal system.

Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court

Politics & Social Sciences

Robert M. Emerson

Social Sciences

Aldine Publishing Company

Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Second Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Rachel I. Fretz

Linda L. Shaw

University of Chicago Press

<p>During the past several years, a more fully articulated and less defensive conception of the nature of fieldwork has emerged. Within this conception two specific themes stand out: first, fieldworkers increasingly understand and carry out their craft as an interpretive enterprise; second, fieldworkers have come to devote close attention to the actual practice of doing fieldwork. The materials in this book have been assembled with an eye toward furthering and consolidating these developments. To focus on processes of interpretation and practice is to move toward a more reflective, self-conscious stance toward the fieldwork enterprise. Self-consciousness emerges with the recognition that fieldwork itself is a social phenomenon, inescapably part of the very social worlds it seeks to discover, describe, and analyze. This recognition dispels any last vestiges of the belief that the fieldworker can somehow avoid or transcend the sorts of practical concerns and personal involvements that pervade everyday social life. Once the social character of the fieldworker is stressed, one is in a position to see more clearly the variety of personal, interactional, moral, and practical processes that lie at its core.</p>

Contemporary field research: A collection of readings

Little,Brown

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Robert M. Emerson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Robert M. Emerson