Jeff Ferrell

Jeff Ferrell, professor of sociology, criminal justice and anthropology at the university, finds solace in trash, beauty in graffiti and love in the streets.

Ferrell has spent his life studying about, learning from, and writing on the scrounging-fringe groups of America, and he has done so from within their ranks.

“I’ve always kind of enjoyed living on the margins, even when I was a kid,” Ferrell said. “Combine that with my Ph.D. in sociology and I was compelled existentially and drawn to people in the margins.”

Ferrell has written 10 books and dozens of articles about his personal plunges into the margins, and that body of work culminated in the field of study he pioneered, “Cultural Criminality.”

“It is, at its most basic level, the study of people in the margins and how they live and how they survive,” he said. “It’s bringing together their culture and their values to be studied.”

His most recent work, “Empire of Scrounge” chronicles his experience as an urban dumpster diver.

After quitting his job as tenured professor at Southern Methodist University, he spent eight months rummaging through dumpsters, collecting metals, and literally living off of other peoples’ refuse.

Along the way he encountered a culture of what he calls “scroungers”—people who live entirely from what they collect from dumpsters.

“From being immersed in that society, I learned a lot about how they operate,” he said. “You learn when grocery stores no longer want stale produce, you learned which metals are more valuable and to collect aluminum cans. I had to figure out how to survive.”

Ferrell’s modus operandi for research is called Ethnography—a type of research in which you immerse yourself in the field.

“What I have realized is that it is a much more honest way to go about conducting research,” he said. “You get a real feel for what is going on, and you aren’t just observing from a non-invested position.”

Before “Empire of Scrounge” Ferrell did similar studies while writing his book “Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality.”

In studying that book he immersed himself in the culture of graffiti, traveled with a “crew” that scurried through the streets of Denver at night, spray painting murals and tagging walls.

“It’s illegal,” Ferrell said. “But it’s not gangs or violent—usually.”

Ferrell teaches a class on Ethnography at the university, where students get to learn about and partake in field studies of their own.

“The students do this kind of stuff but, of course, not the dangerous stuff,” Ferrell said. “They do things like go out and observe social situations to learn how to pay close attention.”

One of the tenets of ethnographies is learning to be attentive, he said.

“Most of my colleagues who got Ph.D.’s usually went the way of sitting in classrooms studying books,” he said. “It’s very important that people do that, don’t get me wrong. But I always felt drawn to the margins.”