3.3 Observation

The technique: the researcher's own eyes — the participant observation (inside the setting: the intern's courtroom ethnography) and the non-participant (the gallery's systematic watching); the structured (the observation schedule's categories — the hearing's minute-by-minute) and the unstructured (the open fieldwork). The legal settings' classics: the courtroom's sociology (the hearing's actual time, the actors' behaviour, the interpreter's role), the police station's front desk (the FIR's real treatment — the refusal study), the prison's day, the mediation room, the kachahari and the badghar's justice (the informal system's observation — Anthropology's and Nepali Legal System's terrain). The strengths: the behaviour itself (not the account of behaviour); the context's depth. The limits: the observer's effect (the watched behave), the selectivity, the ethics (the covert observation's bar; the court's rules), the generalisation's limits.