David Sausdal
Docent | Biträdande universitetslektor
A fighting fetish : On transnational police and their warlike presentation of self
Författare
Summary, in English
Transnational police readily use martial language in the stories they tell about their work. Their actual work, however, tells a different and less dramatic story. Why, then, do they insist on these warlike tales? Why is there a discrepancy between the self-representation of transnational policing and its reality? Using an ethnographic study, this article provides some answers. First, it includes an overview of three established explanations of the inclination of transnational police to represent their work in warlike terms. Next, an additional reading is presented. Building on Reiner’s discussion of “police fetishism”, this reading proposes that transnational policing actors have an idée fixe about their own professional inevitability. They blindly believe that policing must exist, but also that it has to be done combatively to truly work. In conclusion, the article contemplates what the existence of such a “fighting fetish” means in both theoretical and reform terms.
Avdelning/ar
- Sociologi
Publiceringsår
2021
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
400-418
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Theoretical Criminology
Volym
25
Issue
3
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
SAGE Publications
Ämne
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Nyckelord
- police culture
- police fetishism
- presentation of self
- transnational ethnography
- transnational policing
- warfare
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1362-4806