Police and Policing

The anthropology of policing draws from a range of intellectual traditions to generate new understandings of the police as an institution and policing as a social practice. This article reviews recent anthropological work on police, situating it in longer-term disciplinary concerns. I begin with the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnual review of anthropology Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 133 - 148
Main Author Martin, Jeffrey T
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Palo Alto Annual Reviews 21.10.2018
Annual Reviews, Inc
Subjects
Anthropology
Community policing
Critical theory
Discipline
Dominance
Ethics
Ethnography
Interpersonal relations
Kinship
Law
Moral agency
Natural environment
Personhood
Police
Policing
Political culture
Politics
Power
Social conditions & trends
Social control
Sovereignty
Traditions
violence
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Summary:The anthropology of policing draws from a range of intellectual traditions to generate new understandings of the police as an institution and policing as a social practice. This article reviews recent anthropological work on police, situating it in longer-term disciplinary concerns. I begin with the connection between policing and personhood, exploring how the subject-object dynamics of police domination are related to anthropological conceptions of kinship, law, and social control. I then turn to the contribution that anthropological ethnography makes to a critical theory of the relationship between sovereignty, violence, and police power. I conclude by reflecting on the situation of scholarship in our current political environment, suggesting that the anthropological turn to policing is animated, in part, by hope for a better understanding of the nature of moral agency under difficult conditions.
ISSN:0084-6570
1545-4290
DOI:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102317-050322