Caroline Doyle's Researching Crime and Violence in Medellín, Colombia: Truth versus Truths is an incisive and immersive ethnographic exploration of urban violence, state presence, and the moral and epistemological tensions of fieldwork in one of Latin America's most complex cities. Drawing from extensive fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015, and supplemented by the author's return in 2023, the book investigates the intricate dynamics of organised crime and the contested nature of ‘truth’ in Medellín. At its core lie two interrelated questions: ‘Why do residents from marginalized neighbourhoods turn to criminal groups to provide them with services and social order? Why do residents perceive these criminal groups as being more effective service providers than the state, despite their awareness of these criminal actors using extreme violence?’ Doyle's investigation serves not only as an empirical response to these questions, but also as a sustained reflection on what it means to research violence from the position of both an outsider and a partial insider. The book opens with Doyle's own trajectory into Latin America, emphasising how her linguistic fluency, regional experience, and identity as a white Australian woman shaped her access, perceptions, and interactions in the field. Rather than concealing the personal, Doyle foregrounds it as methodologically and ethically central to her enquiry. Her presence as a mona (blonde woman) (p. 10) with a hybrid Spanish accent becomes both a point of intrigue and a gateway into the intimate and often painful stories shared by taxi drivers, community leaders, policymakers, and residents. The methodological transparency that emerges here sets the tone for the book's commitment to positional reflexivity. Doyle organises the empirical content across three central chapters. Chapter 2 traces the multiplicity of terms used to describe violent actors—from bandas and combos to BACRIM and las oficinas (p. 56)—highlighting the problem of labelling in contexts where authority and illegality frequently co-govern. Chapter 3 interrogates the much-celebrated ‘Social Urbanism’ policies in Medellín (p. 81), questioning whether their attribution to homicide reduction withstands critical scrutiny. Chapter 4 navigates the often underexamined terrain of measurement—how crime is counted, how silence and fear shape reporting (pp. 123–124), and how criminal governance renders state presence both visible and complicit. These empirical chapters not only explore the evolving roles of criminal actors and state policies, but also lay the foundation for the book's deeper analytical concerns. Building on this empirical foundation, Doyle explores why residents from marginalised neighbourhoods might turn to criminal groups for services and social order, and why such actors are sometimes perceived as more effective than the state—despite their reliance on violence. Her findings point to systemic deficiencies in public service provision, entrenched inequalities, and pervasive distrust in formal institutions. Criminal actors, though coercive, often fill governance vacuums by offering a sense of predictability, protection, and local belonging. Yet, these relationships are neither stable nor uniform; they are shaped by fluid, sometimes contradictory ‘truths’ that reflect the complex and contingent nature of life under criminal governance. Rather than offering a singular answer, the book insists on the coexistence of multiple, fragmented realities that challenge conventional state-centric understandings of authority and legitimacy. The book's analytical strength lies in its careful juxtaposition of lived experience with state discourse. Doyle does not accept the ‘Medellín Miracle’ (p. 14) at face value; instead, she unpacks how urban development, policy messaging, and the normalisation of violence intersect in a landscape where armed actors negotiate territorial order in parallel with the state. Through vignettes, interview excerpts, and diary entries, she shows that while homicides may have declined, fear, coercion, and impunity remain embedded in daily life. Her concept of ‘truths’—plural, contested, shifting—is a poignant motif throughout the narrative. One of the most compelling contributions of the book is its layered ethnographic sensibility. Doyle oscillates between vulnerability and analytical clarity. Whether recounting the murder of a prospective interviewee, the discomfort at being photographed in marginalised neighbourhoods, or her conversations with former paramilitaries posing as taxi drivers, she invites the reader into the visceral experience of conducting research in violent contexts. Importantly, these moments are not romanticised. They are methodologically framed as moments of epistemic tension, where data is partial, contingent, and at times, unverifiable. Narratively, Doyle's writing is clear, engaging, and often deeply personal while maintaining scholarly precision. The book resists a linear structure in favour of thematic layering, which mirrors the non-linear and fragmented nature of violence itself. This strategy effectively captures the uncertain epistemological terrain that researchers confront when studying illicit orders and invisible power relations. In conclusion, Researching Crime and Violence in Medellín is a valuable contribution to both the literature on urban violence and the methodology of researching conflict. Its most powerful insight may be its humility: the acknowledgement that ‘truth’ in violent settings is rarely singular, often elusive, and shaped by the positionality of both researcher and researched. For scholars of organised crime, critical security studies, and ethnographic methodology, Doyle's work offers a textured, ethically attuned, and analytically rigorous model of engaged scholarship. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Onur Ağkaya (Wed,) studied this question.