Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing (Part I)

• Published in: Policing & society Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Bacon, Matthew, Loftus, Bethan, Rowe, Mike
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 02.01.2020; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Covert; Criminology; Discretionary power; Ethnographic research; Ethnography; Law enforcement; Legitimacy; Morality; Police; Policing; Qualitative research; Social control; Social order; Surveillance; Symbolism; Weber, Max (1864-1920)
• ISSN: 1043-9463; 1477-2728
• DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2019.1701453

Ethnography has proved to be a crucial methodology for entering and understanding the world of policing. Recent developments in the fields of policing, and within police organisations themselves, have expanded the prominence of the police and other social control professionals, inviting new avenues for ethnographic research and debate. Within criminology and the sociology of policing, there has always been a recognition that the police are one of the most powerful institutions in society – not least because a defining feature of their role is the potential for the use of state sanctioned violence (Bittner 1970, Fassin 2013). But, as Manning (2014a, p. 24) notes, the symbolism and cultural significance of the police reaches further since they are ‘connected to state legitimacy, tradition, social order, law, morality, national pride and visible state function’ (see also Loader and Mulcahy 2003). Police officers across most societies are bestowed with discretionary powers to stop, search, arrest and detain members of the public (Weber and Bowling 2014, Skinns 2019). They are also permitted to undertake covert and intrusive surveillance against those people suspected of having committed – or are in the course of committing – crimes (Marx 1988, Loftus et al. 2016, Bacon 2016, Loftus 2019). Brodeur (2010) conceptualises these powers as ‘extralegality in policing’, in that police officers are authorised to use diverse means that are ‘generally prohibited by statute or regulation to the rest of the population’ (p. 130).