Critical Ethnographic Reflections from Baltimore and Ferguson: Contextualizing the Absence of Criminology By,

While using the criminological imagination and intersectionality as analytical frameworks, this paper will highlight preliminary ethnographic findings from fieldwork in Baltimore and Ferguson following the untimely deaths of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown. The paper will underscore some of the author’s intimate field notes and thoughts as well as themes found in data collected. In addition, the paper will concretize the need for a criminological imagination and new pathways within which to study and understand policing and race. The author argues that positionality is key toward advancing a more imaginative criminology that is academically, socially, culturally, and politically relevant.