ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine the epistemological limitations of social theories of crime and drug use outlined in Chapter 2. I will be arguing that the limitations of these established perspectives emanate from the epistemological relation that social scientists have to the crime and drug use that they observe and seek to explain. I refer to this as the ‘scholarly view’ which I distinguish from a ‘practical view’ of crime and drugs. I show that the scholarly epistemology is based on a spatial and temporal distance from the social and economic worlds that the subjects of their attention inhabit, which means that social science tends to view the field of practice as a ‘landscape’ that can be read like a map. The important thing to note here is that social science implicitly assumes that the subjects of their attention (e.g. drug users) adopt a similar spatial and temporal distance from their own practices which they are therefore assumed to objectify. This results in the further assumption that they possess ‘reasoned reasons’ for what they do, that is, that they can answer questions about their practices in terms such as ‘I do it because ...’.
