ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 provides a reflection on the research process. By focusing on disruptive moments, abandoned perspectives and unsettling emotions, I explore the methodological and theoretical choices that I have made in this book. I see these as a result of an intersection of the institutional settings in which the knowledge that I produce is located and my struggles with the material that I analyse. I claim that my examination of, but also a certain interaction with, police records and court documents shaped my approach, influencing the choice of methodological tools and theoretical frameworks. In this sense, these were not merely preselected and applied to the material but they emerged in the process of my reading, reacting to and struggling with the documents that I was to analyse. I discuss here how the epistemological, ontological, terminological and political issues related to my project became evident and pressing as I explored the ways in which these issues are inherent in the workings and dynamics of the judiciary. In this way, the methodological reflections become an opportunity for me to present and analyse the court as a site of knowledge production, governed by specific epistemological and methodological logics.
