Convenors
Anna Sergi, University of Bologna
anna.sergi@unibo.it
Petr Kupka, University of Ostrava & University of West Bohemia
petr.kupka@osu.cz
In an era marked by rapid technological evolution and shifting geopolitical landscapes, the nature of what we call complex deviance is fundamentally transforming. We use the term as an umbrella for collective forms of crime and harm that are networked, entangled with legitimate institutions, dispersed across borders and across the physical-digital continuum, morally contested, and productive of serious, often diffuse harms. It encompasses transnational organised crime, terrorism, extremism and political violence, cybercrime, and corporate and environmental crimes and harms – including conduct that is harmful without necessarily being criminalised and that has been recently discussed within the frame of “grey criminology”.
These phenomena were never localised to begin with, and today they operate across hybrid and ubiquitous networks. Traditionally, these research fields have been dominated by quantitative, state-centric, or intelligence-led analyses. While useful, these macro-level approaches often obscure the lived realities, subjective meanings, everyday social relations, individual and collective narratives, and ethical complexities that drive these activities.
This panel session invites ethnographic and qualitative contributions that venture into these “hard-to-reach”, secretive, and often high-risk fields of research. We aim to explore how qualitative researchers formulate research questions within these fields, how they gain access, build trust, and navigate the delicate boundaries of legality, safety, ethics, and truth, when studying complex deviance and crime. Particularly, the panel offers an innovative, fresh take on classic ethnographic dilemmas by examining the physical-digital continuum. As organised crime groups leverage encrypted communication, cyber-offenders build underground digital subcultures, and environmental harm inspires social movements built on social media, how must our ethnographic toolkit adapt? How do we conduct “digital ethnography” or “blended fieldwork” in spaces of extreme anonymity and potential danger?
By bringing together scholars from criminology, anthropology, sociology of deviance, socio-legal studies, and science and technology studies (STS), this session aims to foster a cross-disciplinary dialogue. We welcome papers that present rich empirical insights into the daily lives of actors within these networks, the communities affected by them, or the institutional actors tasked with policing them. Ultimately, this panel will demonstrate that qualitative inquiry is not only viable but indispensable for unpacking the nuances of contemporary complex deviance, offering a flourishing space for methodological innovation and critical social relevance.
Open questions
- How do participants in complex criminal or extremist networks construct, internalize, and perform “alternative moralities” or justifications to normalize their involvement in serious harms?
- In what ways do digital technologies reshape the “field” in ethnographies of crime, and how can researchers ethnographically capture the intersection of offline and online criminal practices?
- How do qualitative researchers learn to handle the ambiguity of “the truth” in collective narratives about complex crimes and deviance?
- How is the experience of victimhood and community resistance defined and lived in spaces dominated by overlapping corporate, state, and organized criminal violence?
- How can qualitative research shed light on the gendered, racialized, and class dynamics within contemporary organised crime and extremist groups but also corporate and environmental crimes?
- How do contemporary ethnographic accounts expose the blurring boundaries and structural collusion between legitimate state/corporate actors and illicit criminal networks?
Keywords
complex deviance, complex crime, fieldwork ethics, digital ethnography, deviant subcultures, shadow networks, risk and vulnerability
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
criminology and sociology of deviance, social and cultural anthropology, digital sociology and science and technology studies (STS), socio-legal studies, political sociology and security studies, critical terrorism studies
References
Atkinson, R. (2026). Dark Cities: Illicit finance, anomic urbanism, and social harm. The British Journal of Criminology, azag002.
Gibbs, N., & Hall, A. (2021). Digital ethnography in cybercrime research: Some notes from the virtual field. In Researching cybercrimes: Methodologies, ethics, and critical approaches (pp. 283-299). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Hobbs, D. (2017). Criminal practice: Fieldwork and improvisation in difficult circumstances. In Qualitative Research in Criminology (pp. 15-34). Routledge.
Hutton, S. K. (2026). Classifying the ‘Top tier’: ethnographic case studies from organised crime policing in London. Policing and Society, 1-19.
Ilan, J. (2026). The hustle society: Mainstream precarity, voracious entrepreneurialism, grift and exploitation in contemporary culture. The British Journal of Criminology, azag033.
Kuldova, T. (2019). How outlaws win friends and influence people. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
O’Neill, M., & Seal, L. (2012). Transgressive imaginations: Crime, deviance and culture. Palgrave Macmillan.Petintseva, O., Faria, R., & Eski, Y. (2020). Interviewing elites, experts and the powerful in criminology. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan..
Sergi, A. (2026). The ‘mafia cultural drift’: A digital ethnography of Calabrian parochialism and’ndrangheta values on TikTok. Crime, Media, Culture, 17416590261439639.
Vigh, H., & Sausdal, D. (2026). Para-crime: Notes Towards A ‘Grey Criminology’. The British Journal of Criminology, 66(2), 249-264.
Convenors’ bio
Anna Sergi is full professor of sociology of law and deviance in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna. Her research field is within critical and cultural criminology applied to organised crime studies. Before arriving in Bologna in October 2025, she was full professor of criminology at the University of Essex, UK. She has written books and scientific articles on the ‘ndrangheta in Italy and around the world, including Australia, Canada, and Europe, and on cocaine trafficking in port cities.
Petr Kupka is assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Ostrava and Department of Anthropology at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. His research is situated within critical, cultural, and narrative criminology, applied to urban marginality, informality, and organized crime. His current research focuses on housing exploitation, autobiographical narratives of both violent and non-violent offenders, and private entrepreneurship between late socialism and early capitalism.