ABSTRACT
To understand the criminological research agenda, one has to understand the main political and cultural players in the Western world. It also needs to understand the underlying ontological ideas, ethical values, and their influences exerted on the general social scientific agenda. Ultra-realism combines the ethnographic methods and sophisticated theory to dig the political positions, their associated ideological assumptions and social scientific paradigms to build parallax views. These are new perspective views, presented by existing dominant and subdominant ideological positions. The principles and practices of ultra-realism explain the existing political positions and social scientific paradigms that dominate criminology. The political philosophies, theoretical paradigms and specific criminological theories have interconnected developmental histories. Conservative control theories and classical-liberal 'rational choice' theories have been the mainstays of academic, governmental and criminal justice. Positivist social research, despite positivism's ontological clash with classical liberalism's assumption, serves the positions for hundred years.
