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- Convenors:
-
Thomas Bierschenk
(Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
David Sausdal (Lund University)
Jérémie Gauthier (University of Strasbourg)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Lanyon Building, LAN/0G/074
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
What insights do we gain by studying everyday policing from a perspective of the anthropology of work and of professions, and does such a perspective give us reasons to hope for transformation of often-criticized police practices?
Long Abstract:
While the emerging anthropology of the police tends to foreground public policing and violence practices, this panel asks what insights we may gain by examining everyday police practices from an anthropology of work perspective, and how such a perspective would in turn reflect on the anthropology of the state. And how, in the present moment were the police are often criticized for their practices, such a lens might give us reasons to hope for change and transformation. More specifically, we invite empirically grounded papers which focus on, e.g., recruitment patterns and selection criteria; formal training as well as professional socialisation; policing as a profession with particular knowledge and skills, career patterns as well as status, role and prestige configurations; the legal contexts of policing and managerial control techniques as well as their day-to-day negotiation to retain some control over the labour process; material aspects such as salaries, technical equipment and working and living conditions; forms of sociability and recreation; as well as self-image, esprit de corps and perceived societal positionings, not least in reaction to citizens' reactions to public policing. Also of interest are the relations between police organisations and their employers, including attempts at political control of police practices, and conversely, forms of collective enforcement of interests by staff representatives and police unions. More generally, how do issues of social class, gender, ethnicity, culture and age play out in such a policing-as-work perspective?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how U.S. police officers are trained to embody “command presence,” the unspoken language of state authority. I argue that analyzing the labor of command illuminates the tensions of embodying state power, and suggests possibilities for transforming police violence.
Paper long abstract:
Advocates of U.S. police reform often argue for improved de-escalation trainings, understood to lessen violence by teaching officers to preempt and control conflict. Police recruits learn that their elementary tool for doing so is “command presence,” which ideally displays police dominance in the form of demeanor, tone, and attire. By projecting this unspoken language of authority, command presence is designed to nonviolently dissuade civilians from attacking officers. It thus manifests state power. At the same time, command presence signals vulnerability and contingency: it is not innate but rather must be inculcated in trainings, where officers learn that a failure to command obedience can threaten their own bodily survival. In this paper, I draw on 16 months of ethnographic research with police in Maryland to explore the labor of learning to command. I analyze how trainers taught recruits of all genders to cultivate a convincingly dominant heteromasculine affect meant to convey indisputable authority. I also demonstrate how command presence trainings deployed pedagogic common sense to construct a racialized object of control: the poor Black civilian who understands only the language of dominance. I argue that trainings therefore illuminate the tension of personifying the patriarchal control and anti-Black imagination of the state on the one hand, and the embodied fragility of governmental authority on the other. I conclude that examining the everyday work of policing reveals fractures in hegemony, which suggest possibilities for transforming the violence of the state.
Paper short abstract:
Despite highly standardized procedures and selection criteria, moral alchemy (R. K. Merton) plays out in police personnel selection, in which applicants with social ties into the police are evaluated leniently and representatives of ethnic minorities are evaluated paradoxically, sometimes adversely.
Paper long abstract:
In police personnel selection, professional motivation and intercultural competence are common selection criteria. During selection procedures, recruiters evaluate whether applicants’ perspective on the job of policing matches the organization’s expectations towards future police workers. The two criteria - professional motivation and intercultural competence - allow for matching a certain (formalized) self-image of policing as work with the demonstrated knowledge, behavior, and stated attitudes of applicants. While professional motivation captures knowledge about the demands of the job (familiarity with the organization and with policing as work), intercultural competence focusses on an applicants’ loyalty in situations of cultural ambiguity.
The empirical data, gained from participant observations during 28 recruitment interviews (assessment centres) in several German police recruitment authorities, show a) a paradoxical, sometimes adverse evaluation of minority representatives and b) a preferential and lenient evaluation of those that can refer to social ties (family or friends) within the organization. The analysis shows that, despite highly standardized procedures and selection criteria, moral alchemy (R. K. Merton) is still at work in police personnel selection. This is to say that a similar performance by candidates during personnel selection is evaluated differently according to the person who exhibits it. Assumptions on in-group and out-group affiliations effect recruiters’ evaluation of applicants, with issues of social class, ethnicity and age playing out in particular.
Paper short abstract:
How victim support police officers negotiate their role and value within a police corps allows us to understand policing within the intersection of issues of gender, the politics of care, mental health needs, and organisational culture, particularly regarding changes in a force’s self-image.
Paper long abstract:
Mossos d’Esquadra, the autonomous police force of Catalonia (Spain), has a current public image linked to the self-determination process, as well as to scandals of evictions, the repression of demonstrations, and torture cases. Against this image, the corps’ victim support police officers, and particularly those focused on gender-based and domestic violence, experience a sense of disconnectedness or alienation from the rest of their police force, as they are criticised, questioned, or misunderstood by colleagues who may not see victim support as “‘real’ police work”. At the same time, their own perception of police work seeks to take distance from the corps’ image of repression, highlighting their role of care. Their work within the Mossos d’Esquadra is affected by political and media campaigns that focus on the force’s proximity to the citizens and victims, on the one hand, and a corps-wide self-image that limits discussion over mental health, as well as the appraisal of the tasks linked to victim support, on the other. Drawing from research among victim support police officers of three geographically and socially distinct regions within Catalonia, this paper discusses the needs and challenges faced by these officers within a specific organisational culture. The analysis of how their job is understood and valued within the force is directly linked to issues of gender, the politics of care, and mental health needs, but also to how procedures and priorities may change within the organisation, particularly in order to advance a more humane and closer idea of a police force.
Paper short abstract:
Since 1993, the Somaliland Police has undergone a bureaucratisation process characterised by the growing importance of written procedures. Based on an ethnographic survey conducted in a police station, this article examines the ways in which these macro-scale changes affect daily level-street work.
Paper long abstract:
In 1991, after years of civil war, the leaders of the Somali National Movement unilaterally declared independence of Somaliland from Somalia. A reconciliation conference was organised and made demobilisation and disarmament a priority for the new government. Former fighters were asked to hand over their weapons to the governmental police force, or to join it.
Since 1993, the Somaliland Police Force has undergone many changes. In particular, the creation of several services organised the division of police work and fostered the increase of skills within the administration. This specialisation is part of a broader bureaucratisation process, which has deeply transformed police work. Among these changes, the growing importance of written procedures occupies a prominent place.
Based on an ethnographic survey conducted in a police station of the capital city Hargeisa, this article shows that the changes affecting the police institution have a concrete influence on the daily practice of police work. An analysis of biographical trajectories of police officers reveals the ways in which the bureaucratisation process contributes to the diversification of their sociological profiles, in connection with the evolution of recruitment criteria. While the police force was originally grounded on the military skills of its first recruits, new skills are nowadays more highly valued, especially the educational level.
This article aims to analyse how bureaucratic procedures are growingly influencing daily police practices. It addresses the bureaucratisation of the police - and the state - through assessing the transformation of recruits selection procedures as well as police officers professional advancement.
Paper short abstract:
In the Portuguese Public Security Police, proximity policing coexists with different modalities of policing. Through an ethnographic study in two police stations in Lisbon, this research sought to understand the process of personnel placement in the policing proximity patrols.
Paper long abstract:
In the Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP), proximity policing (Moore, 2002; Skogan, 2006; Skolnick & Bayley, 2002) coexists with different modalities, being the professional policing (Schaap, 2018) the main one in this institution (Durão, 2012). In terms of proximity policing, the programmatic dimension of it (Cordner, 1995) is very evident in the PSP, i.e., the ideas and philosophies of this perspective are translated into specific programs, with their own tactics, operationalities and teams. Through an ethnographic study conducted from October 2019 to October 2021 in two police stations in Lisbon, this research sought to understand the process of personnel placement in the proximity patrols. The data revealed that: i) the process of recruitment and selection is not standardized and neither has well-defined bureaucratic steps, and it can happen by agents' initiative or by the initiative of the chiefs in a complex articulation of network (Ii) there is an ideal profile for the job, with a set of relational and professional skills and great motivation that are expected from the police officer ( the officer needs to be a patient, friendly, good listener, sensitive to vulnerable populations matters, self-disciplined to work with autonomy, flexible to shifts changes) iii) not always the ideal profile or the articulation of social capital are determinant, since the organization uses the proximity teams also to place agents in extraordinary situations that need job reallocation, such as female police officers who have just become mothers and need shifts more suited to their maternal condition, for example.