What are the potential contributions of anthropology to the study of
police? Even beyond the methodological particularities and geographic
breadth of cultural anthropology, there are a set of conceptual and
analytical traditions that have much to bring to broader scholarship in
police studies.
Including original and international contributions from both senior and
emerging scholars, this pioneering book represents a foundational
document for a burgeoning field of study: the anthropology of police.
The chapters in this volume open up the question of police in new ways:
mining the disciplinary legacies of anthropology in order to discover
new conceptual tools, methods, and pedagogies; reworking relationships
between "police," "public," and "researcher" in ways that open up new
avenues for exploration at the same time as they articulate new demands;
and retracing a hauntology that, through interactions with individuals
and collectives, constitutes a body politic through the figure of
police.
Illustrating the various ways that anthropology enables a reassessment
of the police/violence relationship with a broad consideration of the
human stakes at the center, this book will be of interest to
criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and the broad
interdisciplinary field invested in the study of policing, order-making,
and governance.
