Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimization

This chapter explores a visual and sensory criminological approach in the study of social and environmental harm. First, it discusses photo elicitation, a technique for a green criminology ‘with’ images, where visual images are used as a heuristic tool in order to explore more thoroughly specific criminological contexts of environmental victimization. Second, the chapter discusses the importance of sensory techniques for a green criminology open to the complex and situational dimension of environmental harm, with some examples involving a special form of mobile methodology called itinerant soliloquy. The conclusion notes the potential of a green visual and sensory mode of research to social and environmental harms in sensitizing scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to the need to change some taken-for-granted views that inform our relationship with the environment and empowering communities, citizens and those who suffer socio-environmental harms.