Learning (Multiple) Lessons from Europe: Criminological Scholarship on White-Collar Crime

This essay is an antipodean reflection on the unique contribution provided by this collection on European perspectives on white collar crime. The structure is framed around identifying units of analysis; the challenges of comparative work; orientation towards the study of white-collar crime and the multiple facets to collaboration. Within this framing the essay highlights the need to attend to boundaries of concern relevant to a specific piece of research and linkages within those boundaries (for example between an activity and a place) in order to tease out how broader context shapes, and is shaped by, the dynamics at the centre of the study. This attention can allow different research projects to learn from their similarities and differences in effective ways. The multiple benefits in collaboration also require careful attentions: shared aims may be important to collaboration, but are not essential. Further, a prioritisation of shared goals can gloss over the way they can be shaped to in particular ways and towards specific ends that may undermine the position and scholarship of some. There are other approaches, such as agonistic collaboration, can provide mutual benefit to collaborative scholarship without the need for tight agreement over aims.