Of Heroes and Polemics: “The Policeman” in Urban Ethnography

Karpiak, Kevin G.

doi:10.1111/j.1555-2934.2010.01063.x

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…But we are in luck. In steps the real hero, transnational criminal justice, to protect us and others, to protect the world, from falling from grace and descent into darkness (see also Karpiak, 2010).…”

Section: Concluding Perspectives: First As Theatre Then Tragedy Then As Farce?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theatrics of transnational criminal justice: Ethnographies of penality in a global age

Sausdal

Lohne

2021

Theoretical Criminology

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This special issue sets out to explore the Theatrics of Transnational Criminal Justice. ‘Why’, we ask, ‘do transnational criminal justice actors perform themselves as they do?’ ‘Why are their representations frequently, if not different from, then often quite dramatized versions of the average reality of their practices?’ ‘What does such dramatization tell us about not only the symbolism but also the structure and state of transnational criminal justice?’ And, more generally, ‘what do such performances of transnational criminal justice reveal about the nature of penal power in a global day and age?’ In probing such questions, the special issue draws together a number of accomplished ethnographers who have been exploring the performative nature of transnational criminal justice issues around the world, considering both international bodies such as Frontex, Europol, UNODC, the ICC as well as the many national actors involved in the prevention, policing and prosecution of border-crossing issues.

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Section: Concluding Perspectives: First As Theatre Then Tragedy Then As Farce?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theatrics of transnational criminal justice: Ethnographies of penality in a global age

Sausdal

Lohne

2021

Theoretical Criminology

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“…This is the point at which he is able to demonstrate his vision of anthropology as a project of reading cultural texts "over the shoulders" of our subjects, but it is also remarkable that this same event both introduces the police as a figure outside the anthropological project and one upon which it hinges. Police act as the methodological pivot through which "real" ethnographic relations can be established; a move which casts them as paradoxically both outside this relationship and crucial to it (Karpiak, 2010).…”

Section: Anthropology and The Study Of Policementioning

confidence: 99%

No longer merely “good to think”: The new anthropology of police as a mode of critical thought

Karpiak

2016

Theoretical Criminology

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Images of police, punishment, and crime were central to the work of several of the key thinkers of the 20th century: the interpolative hail of the policeman for Althusser; the violence of the policeman in the shadow of law’s excess for Benjamin; the figure of the panopticon and, later, of police as the administration of man internal to the State for Foucault (to name just a few). Police, crime, and punishment were useful to consider a wide swath of issues including subjectivity, inequality, sovereignty, power, and text. If police have been such a productive tool through which to think, how does the emergence of anthropological research projects focused squarely on such practitioners stand to change that thought? Pushing this question more broadly, how does studying such subjects “head on” reshape how we reflect on the larger issues in critical theory today? This collection of articles will attempt to address such questions through ethnographic accounts that interrogate the limits and alternative possibilities for thinking about police. In the process these articles will push us to reexamine the practices of policing at the heart of collective life in such a way that challenges not only our understanding of such critical theorists but also places critical police studies at the center of our understanding of what it means to be human today.

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“…For police anthropologists, this has an important implication, related to what Jef Van der Aa () has called “epistemic solidarity.” Anthropologists have documented the profound effects of policing on minority communities as well as the profound creative resistance of marginalized individuals and communities in the face of such. However, as Kevin Karpiak () suggests, such writing generally occurs against the police, not with or for them. Conversely, Van der Aa's (:98) “epistemic solidarity” calls for a practical knowledge: “[The ethnographer] is driven by praxis: knowledge as a crucial instrument for social change.…”

Section: Public Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%