[in T. Blomberg and S. Cohen, Punishment and Social Control: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Messigner, 1995 Aldyne de Gruyter]

She [jury member] was extremely liberal. She was a sociologist, and I don't like sociologists. They try to reason things out too much.
Florida Prosecutor (after losing case involving the undercover purchase of a 2 Live Crew album)

I have no sympathy for those who are crybabies about the fact that police officers are selling to those who want to buy drugs. We use every legal means that we can. We want everybody to know that the next drug buy may be from a police officer.
Mayor Marion Barry, news conference 1988

In recent decades social control has become more specialized and technical and, in many ways, more penetrating and intrusive....

In a previous work (Undercover, Marx 1988) I reported the results of an empirical inquiry into covert police practices....

F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation that there are no second acts in American life certainly applies to the fixity of a book in print. But persons of the pen have the luxury of reflecting on and updating the record elsewhere. In this chapter, I discuss some recent developments and research. I also consider some professional and personal questions that I was left with upon finishing this project....

SECOND THOUGHTS AND ENDURING TENSIONS

Scholars such as those represented in this volume, who choose to work on criminal justice issues from a broad, interdisciplinary, qualitative, skeptical, and often critical perspective, generally have a more difficult time than their colleagues whose feet are squarely planted in a single discipline and who quantitatively pursue microlevel questions defined by funding agencies and criminal justice establishments.

In this section I shift from a consideration of substantive issues to some more personal issues. My study of covert practices was published in 1988. It moved from being a boomerang (with its recirculation between author, sponsor, and publisher) to being a missile. But alas, even missiles leave remnants. I did not part with the book easily, although I did so gladly.

Doing an interdisciplinary book on a broad topic that mixes social science with social criticism and is aimed at academics, practitioners, and the educated public is a recipe for angst, self-doubt, and role conflict.

I address eleven issues here that are more professional than substantive. These go beyond the specifics of the study and touch more general concerns. There are empirical or practical answers to some of the questions and, where there are not, I know that the tension between polarities can be positive. But that insight does not eliminate the discomfort. Knowledge is one thing and feelings another. I offer these concerns (stated in the form of questions) in the preliterate and psychoanalytic tribal tradition of exorcising ghosts and demons by identifying them, and because I know many colleagues share them.

1. Is it appropriate for social scientists whose legitimacy and traditions involve ordering microempirical measurements with systematic theory to study broad amorphous topics, such as privacy, deception, authenticity, liberty, autonomy, and justice in an interpretive fashion? Wouldn't it be better to start with just one question, replicate prior research, or test a few propositions using rigorous methods and quantitative data? Perhaps, but when the topic has rarely been studied there is also a case for beginning by casting a broad net in the hope of stimulating more delineated studies. There is no correct answer to the recurring issues of forests, trees, and grasses. They are all there and are all important.

   For social scientists trained in the positivism-happy times of the 1950s and 1960s, one risks (or at least imagines risking) peer rejection, a negative self image, and guilt in not following the standard linear model of moving from questions to answers, and theories to systematic numerical tests. Yet the specificity and rigidity of this model did not feel right for the surveillance project. Instead I started with an interest in the phenomenon of deception by the state and a feeling that it was wrong, or at least risky as public policy. I began with an answer, or better a feeling and looked for the questions. Some of the most important questions (how to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community) cannot be answered by empirical research. I also struggled with finding the right balance between description, classification, measurement, explanation, and prescription/proscription.

2. Even if one opts to focus on a broad topic, should it be approached from a multi- and interdisciplinary perspective, or from a narrower disciplinary base? Given the exploratory nature of my inquiry I sought whatever tools were available. But then as a nonspecialist one must confront the issues of poaching. I have chapters in areas in which my formal training goes no further than the sophomore introductory class (e.g., in history and in ethics) and I rely on secondary sources. Can/should we trespass with impunity/immunity in other professional vineyards if we like the look of their grapes? In trying to be all things to all people does one risk being nothing to anyone? Does a book need a disciplinary identity? Does breadth have to come at a cost of depth?

3. What does it mean to understand undercover police practices? What were the goals of my sociological inquiry? What does it mean to be interested in reasons as well as causes, in subjective experiences understood empathetically, as well as in more easily quantifiable objective factors? How can surveys and experiments be supplemented in the search for broad understanding? How can we make use of the truths of novelists and philosophers?8 What role does wisdom play in the results of sociological research? How does prediction relate to understanding? How does understanding relate to judgment? What is the difference between a social scientist, a journalist, an essayist, and a novelist? What needs to be added to Robert Park's observation that sociology is slow journalism?

   The strictly scientific part of being a sociologist neither satisfies my soul nor can it do justice intellectually or politically to the topics that I am interested in. I want my writing to be scientifically accurate and to reflect wisdom. I want to advance knowledge and also contribute to the quality of life. The research I have done on social control issues in the last two decades is not the work of an activist who starts committed to an end and selects data to push it forward, nor is it the artist's work of unbridled imagination where anything is possible. But it shares something with each of them. Can we have it multiple ways?

   One way to combine these is through fictive social science scenarios (whether dystopian or utopian).9 I think these should be as common in the tool kit of the social scientist as the ability to think conceptually or to analyze data. They can be a powerful form of communication, particularly for broader audiences. Yet they must be grounded by one's understanding of fact and social process.

   In such writing the possible must be kept separate from the probable. But there is the interesting paradox that these are not necessarily independent. Given the power of scenarios, describing what is possible may effect the probability of its occurring by moving people to action. This lies behind George Orwell's observation that "I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe . . . that something resembling it could arrive" (cited in Crick 1980). Orwell was not making predictions, he was describing possibilities in the hope that this act could help avoid them.

4. Is it possible to balance social science and social criticism so that they are mutually supportive rather than corrosive? We need precision and passion. I don't want my concerns with civil liberties, inequality, and reform to distort my scientific observations --for both intellectual and practical reasons. Scientific understanding should not be sacrificed on the altar of commitment. Yet in this socially important area, I am more than the neutral scientist who just wants the facts (Marx 1972).

5. Can the same work make contributions to both social science and public policy? Must one choose between being an uncontaminated basic scientist seeking fundamental knowledge with little notion of how, when, where, or if it will be used; a hired gun seeking normatively based solutions to an applied problem someone else has defined; or a zealous, self-appointed social engineer-moral entrepreneur, peddling your own brand of expert truth and action?

   How does and should knowledge relate to action? Do you have to know why in order to know how? Can academics, with their cross-case knowledge and tenure, who act as Monday morning quarterbacks with no responsibility for the consequences of the actions that practitioners must take really have much to say that is useful?

6. Is it possible to write so that one's work is well received by both colleagues and the educated public? In trying to reach for (or at least not exclude) a general audience, one runs the risk of dilution and being labeled a popularizer or even a journalist. Books that are accessible are often suspect in the halls of academe. Yet the trappings of academic respectability --literature reviews, sophisticated techniques, jargon, the assumption of a learned audience, and detached and spiritless writing --are hardly endearing to the average reader.

7. Was I taken in? In studying persons who are professional liars how far should I go in discounting what they say? Was I conned by some of the agents I interviewed? Aren't they in the best position to deceive an interviewer (described by one DEA agent as "a choir boy from M.l.T.")?

8. Between starting and finishing the book, my beliefs about the desirability of undercover tactics changed. Rather than seeing them as an unnecessary evil, I came to view their use in the United States under limited and controlled circumstances as a necessary evil. I gained excellent access to the FBI (something I would not have predicted from my days of Berkeley student activism). Does the change in my attitude say something about my openness and intellectual honesty in the face of a very complex situation, or was I coopted? Had I come to that situation the madam warned the prostitute about: when one starts enjoying sex with the customers it's time to quit? At some level did I want to please and be liked by those sometimes heroic figures in almost white hats? Is the change partly a strategic ploy, since I want to affect the policy debate and know that a hostile polemic would likely preclude this? How can one balance and maintain a degree of respect/appreciation for our subjects and the sincerity of their beliefs, reciprocity (at least in so far as one doesn't harm them since they are giving something to us with little in return), with the need to be objective, to be faithful to our moral concerns, and not to be captured by our subjects?

9. How do you know when you are done? When do you let go? I stopped largely because of the sponsor's expectations, but could easily have spent several more years working on comparative international materials and on literary and film treatments. I was not quite ready to let go. But I know if I had worked on the book for several more years new topics would have appeared justifying further-work, in an endless spiral. In finishing a book on a contemporary topic one risks being out of date as soon as the work is published. On the other hand partial information is better than none at all.

10. With respect to book reviews, was it possible to balance the cynicism of the sociology of knowledge perspective with the belief that there really are empirical and normative truths that transcend social settings?

    While I am in this work primarily for the process, I can't claim the degree of disinterestedness or disdain that some artists have for critics (e.g., playwrights who report they never look at reviews). This partly reflects the tentativeness of the scholarly enterprise in which we must learn from each other and any one person is limited in what he or she knows (occupational norms require scholars to be less arrogant than artists).

    The many reviews of the book have been fair and more laudatory than I anticipated. Yet I was not above applying a sociology of knowledge view in which a book review is often a Rorschach test revealing as much, or more, about the reviewer as about the book. This is not to suggest that reviewers are simply hapless captives of deterministic social forces. But about half the time I could predict at least some of a reviewers' responses by knowing their discipline and politics. Thus a law professor and a historian found things to criticize in the book's legal and historical sections, respectfully. A sociologist of organizations praised the chapter that dealt with bureaucracy and lamented the fact that the conceptual concerns of that chapter were not found throughout the book and he was impatient with the literary quotes. In contrast, an ethnographer was most critical of the bureaucracy chapter, finding it too abstract and lifeless. A conservative prosecutor accused me of losing my cool and exaggerating the dangers to civil liberties, while a radical criminologist faulted the book for failing to fully consider the macrosystem that leads American police to behave in the ways the book documents.

    It is not news that opinions have social correlates. It does not follow from this that all views are necessarily equal, whether scientifically or morally, merely because they are socially situated and constructed. So are tunnels and bridges, but they show great variation in quality and usefulness. Yet awareness of the social construction of perspectives can be a salve for critical reviews, if also a bearer of humility for laudatory ones.

11. What obligations did I have to promote the book in order to have it be seen and reviewed beyond the confines of a few specialists and friends? Many in the university have a naive faith that if you do good work it will be noticed (as in the film Field of Dreams they assume that if you build it the audience will come). But this is life, not the movies. At its worst this optimistic view involves a conceit about how important the work we do is and how eager the outside world is for it. As graduate students in a meritocratic appearing system, we are led to believe that the cream will rise to the top. If it doesn't, no matter, since virtue in scholarship is seen to be its own reward. Even in the American academic context, with only a hint of the genteel, scholarly aristocratic tradition, there is something a bit crass and self-serving about promoting your own ideas. Doing this risks contamination with the corrupt outside world.

    The Twentieth Century Fund financed the study of undercover police and receives the royalties. I was glad to be finished and wanted to move on to other things. Yet I also felt a sense of responsibility to shape public debate. This was also consistent with the sponsor's interest in funding books that were accessible to a broad public and in having the results be widely disseminated.

    I did not want the book's main impact to be taking up space in libraries and further depleting the rain forests. With more than fifty thousand books published each year in the United States it is rare that a book speaks for itself. I was not shy in calling the book to the attention of audiences whether colleagues, journal editors, policy makers, or bookstores.

    Many reporters fell into one of two camps: either the devil's advocate, questioning my call for restraint in the face of serious crime problems, or the alarmist demanding to know what needed to be done to stop the sky from falling. I enjoyed educating the former about means and ends relationships in a democracy and the latter about frames of reference. However, I was frustrated by the media's inability to see the difference between a sociologist and a social engineer.

    There is a difference between helping to identify the right questions and having the right factual and then normative answers. Having the right questions is a first step. I think I have those and I have many of the factual answers, but I am far from the normative and policy answers. My initial concern was to identify the issues and encourage public discussion, and only secondarily to offer solutions. Indeed these topics are fascinating because there often are no solutions in the usual sense.

    The mannered debates of the academy are very different from the raucous rhetoric of the radio talk show open to all callers. The ethic of many of the ideologues I encountered in publicizing the book on television and radio was one of simple expediency: say anything that will advance your case. The standards of logic, evidence, fairness, and civility that in principle characterize scientific debate were not much in evidence.

    Nor did I enjoy having to fit what often should have been complex answers into the time, space, and sophistication limits of the media format in question. Reporters often ask good questions, but conditions rarely permit your giving good answers. It is frustrating to be told, "Come on, Professor, never mind all the qualifications and hedges, just answer the question yes or no", or "We only have a minute, can you give us a quick summary of the book?" When the story is complicated and ambiguous and there are no easy answers, as with the case of covert policing, the yes/no quick fixes that media questioners are after aren't there. In trying to fit into their format, you must either appear glib and inauthentic or indecisive and academic. The latter is a surefire method for being edited out or not being asked back.

    As the above suggests, I never felt fully comfortable marketing the book. I am more comfortable as a producer than a promoter, but books do not reach wider audiences on their own.

    Yet in spite of these tensions there is a strong need for qualitative, interdisciplinary, and integrative approaches to broad topics of social importance. The softer social sciences residing between the humanities and the sciences are uniquely qualified for such inquiries. The building blocks of our highly specialized research endeavors must occasionally be brought together in an effort to see the broader landscape.

    Comprehensive work on controversial topics takes time and scholarly independence. The Twentieth Century Fund was an ideal sponsor. I spent a decade working on the book and would not want to have been judged for tenure (or anything else) after only five years. The pressure to produce work quickly and to bring in research grants only on topics that established agencies want to fund can be highly dysfunctional.

    There is no necessary opposition between policy and basic research, nor between writing for colleagues and the educated public. We need to search for wisdom, as well as knowledge. The former is impossible without the latter and the latter is pedantic and lifeless when divorced from the concrete details of everyday life and questions of value.

NOTES

1. This paper extends and revises Marx (1992c).
2. Of course, this is not to suggest that just because they are first-person accounts and seem believable they are necessarily correct. Proust's observation that his remembrances were a theory and not a record of the past may apply.
3. Were I to revise the book today, conceptually I would give greater attention to the literature on roles and role conflict and attenuation, identity inversion, situational stress, and con artists. The chapters on unintended consequences would be made more analytic and the book's policy chapter more closely tied to the earlier analysis. I would more fully differentiate between, and consider the different policies that may be required for, controlling infiltration into a constitutionally and/or traditionally protected zone, as against merely providing a public opportunity for a violation to be committed (e.g., as with fencing fronts and decoys). Empirically I would give more attention to comparative international questions, to images of surveillance in culture, to jail house informing [see Brown and Duffy (1991) for an Australian example], reverse stings, internal affairs units, private police, the use of sex in covert investigations, and the parallels between confidence men and undercover police. Some of these themes are treated in a special September 1992 issue of Crime, Law and Social Change devoted to covert policing. Marx (1987a, 1992a, 1992b) treats internal affairs units, private police, and sex as they involve undercover means. Fijnaut and Marx (1995) consider undercover means in Europe and across borders.
4. For example, units that were disbanded came back. Thus the San Diego Police Department's controversial undercover border patrol unit described by Joseph Wambaugh in Lines and Shadows was eliminated in 1978 after a scandal. It was reconstituted only to be abandoned again under similar circumstances. In 1989 it was recreated, although in a less aggressive mode.
5. Our understanding of the political uses more generally has been recently expanded by the good material in Powers (1987), Theoharis (1988), O'Reilly (1989), Keller (1990), and Churchill and Vander Wall (1990).
6. On the other hand, long mandatory sentences may have unintentionally made undercover work more dangerous. Some agents have suggested that suspects, feeling they have nothing to lose, will become more violent in an effort to avoid arrest.
7. Although one couple filed a suit against Nissan, claiming that a researcher who they let live in their home was spying on them to gain insight into how American families live. Nissan denied the charge, but did acknowledge that the researcher was engaged in a project to determine how Americans feel about cars (New York Times, 12 December 1989).
8. For a sensitive and insightful treatment of qualitative understanding see Eisner (1991).
9. My own modest efforts at such writing have been very satisfying and much more widely read than straight social science writing (Marx 1987b, 1990a).

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