 Truth-finding
Crown Courts can be seen as truth-finding engines. They allow and
discriminate certain methods of probing the truth-claims in front of
judge and jury. Crucial for the Crown Court procedure is the relation
of prior/translocal statements and local/current performances. Or, to
put it forward as a research question: in how far are former
contributions binding for the examinations of the trials ?
Generally truth-finding in jury trials is characterised in terms of embodied orality and performance. Witnesses are examined in question-answer plays vis-a-vis the listening jury. This view, however, does not include the manifold references towards the textual basis collected and selected during the pre-trial. Of highly relevant is, for instance, the recorded police-protocol.
This is one of my findings in regard to the jury trials in the Crown Court. Truth-finding takes place in between
local/embodied orality and the translocal/procedural "scriptual economy" (de Certeau). Orality and textuality are variously intertwined and practically assembled. The textual basis co-produces utterances in friendly examinations as well as their probing in cross-examination. The witness is, by way of scripts and contrasts, indirectly bound to what he/she said prior during the pre-trial. The witnesses - including defendant and alleged victim - are bound to its procedural history.
Useful
literature: Ethnography and fieldwork
• Appaduarai, Arjun (1986) The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
• Agar, Michael H. (1980) The Professional Stranger. An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. Orlando : Academic Press.
• Atkinson, Paul; Coffey, Amanda; Delamont, Sara; Lofland, John; Lofland, Lyn (Eds.) Handbook of Ethnography . Los Angeles , London , Delhi , Singapore : Sage.
• Becker, Howard (1998) Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research while You're Doing It. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Berg, Eberhard; Fuchs, Martin (Hg.) (1993) Kultur, Soziale Praxis, Text. Die Krise der ethnographischen Repräsentation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
• Cicourel, Aaron V. (1970) Methode und Messung in der Soziologie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
• Denzin, Norman (1997) Interpretive Ethnography . Thousand Oaks , CA : Sage.
• Garfinkel, Harold (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
• Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretation of Culture. New York : Basic Books.
• Geertz, Clifford (1983) Dichte Beschreibung. Beiträge zum verstehen kultureller Systeme. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
• Goffman, Erving (1964) The neglected situation. In: American Anthropologist 66, 133-136.
• Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Everyday Life. New York : Doubleday Anchor Books.
• Hirschauer, Stefan; Amann, Klaus (1998) Die Befremdung der eigenen Kultur. Zur ethnographischen Herausforderung soziologischer Empirie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
• Keane, Webb (1997) Signs of Recognition . Power and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. Berkeley , Los Angeles , London : University of California Press.
• Knorr, Karin (1984) Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
• Maanen , John van (1988) Tales of the Field. Chicago University Press.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922/1979) Argonauten der Westlichen Pazifik. Frankfurt: Syndikat.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1985) Ein Tagebuch im strikten Sinn des Wortes. Neuguinea 1914-18. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
• Sanjek, Roger (ed.) Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press.
• Soeffner, Hans-Georg (1989) Auslegung des Alltags – Alltag der Auslegung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
• Spradley, James P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Spradley, James P. (1980) Participant Observation. London : Holz, Rinehart and Winston.
• Smith, Dorothy, E. (2005) Institutional Ethnography. A Sociology for People. Lanham , New York , Toronto , Oxford : Altamira Press.
• Sudnow, David (1978) Ways of the Hand. Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press.
• Warren, Carol, A. (1988) Gender Issues in Field Research. Newbury Park : Sage.
• Whyte, William F. (1943/1981) Street Corner Society. Chicago : University Press.
|
THE CASE STUDIES
Truth-finding
New activities 
