ABSTRACT
I imagine all the contributors to this volume share my quandary of knowing exactly the level of intimacy and revelation appropriate f or an intellectual autobiography. When I was studying O-level physics 30 something years ago we were told to write up our experiments to the formula “ADAM was a Roman Catholic” i.e., aims, diagram, apparatus, methods, results, conclusion. ESRC and other grant applications (and to a slightly lesser extent reports of the resulting research), presuppose the same sort of pure rationalistic progress from aims and objectives to results and implications. Yet we know that even in the supposedly harder realms of physical science researchers’ efforts are fuelled more by passionate lusts, rivalries and prejudices than by disinterested observation, measurement and deduction (Watson 1968)—with stronger reason presumably in the social sciences, perhaps especially criminology, where the venal side of human practices falls directly under the microscope.
