Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing

313 Pages·2013·1.523 MB·English

by  Didier Fassin

Enforcing Order

Enforcing Order
An Ethnography of Urban Policing
Didier Fassin
polity
First published in French as La Force de l’ordre. Une anthropologie de la police des
quartiers © Seuil, 2011
This English edition © Polity Press, 2013
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6479-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6480-4 (pb)
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For Thomas, Baptiste and Camille
For their friends in the neighborhood of M. and their parents
Parrhesia is the courage of the truth in the person who speaks and
who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth
that he thinks, but it is also the interlocutor’s courage in agreeing to
accept the hurtful truth that he hears.
Michel Foucault, The Courage of the Truth:
Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983–1984
Contents
Preface to the English edition ix
Acknowledgments xx
Preliminary remarks xxii
Prologue – Interpellation 1
In which the author comes to understand that it is
sometimes dangerous to wait for a bus in the projects on
New Year’s Eve.
Introduction – Inquiry 13
How the present research was authorized and then forbidden,
and why this censorship is revelatory of petty exceptions in a
democracy.
1 – Situation 34
How an imagination of war came to be established in the
relations between the police and the projects, and how it
justified specific types of operation.
2 – Ordinary 59
How the daily work of police officers is far removed from the
image they had of it when they joined the force, and how they
maintain the illusion of it.
viii Contents
3 – Interactions 85
How stops and searches serve purposes other than those they
are supposed to serve, and why they are more effective in
perpetuating a social order than in maintaining public order.
4 – Violence 113
How a criminal court can offer valuable lessons on excessive
use of force by the police, and why observation invites
rethinking of the question of violence beyond brutality.
5 – Discrimination 144
How social scientists challenge the existence of discriminatory
practices that the population is convinced prevail, and why
racism must be considered beyond individual behavior.
6 – Politics 174
How the exhibition of certain signs may be surprising in a
public institution, and how authoritarian national policies can
converge with local police discretion.
7 – Morality 193
How police officers disappointed by the justice of the courts
began to practice street justice, and how tensions in
professional ethics are resolved.
Conclusion – Democracy 215
How the French police preferred the model of the cop in
the United States to the style of the British bobby, and why
ethnography matters for democracy.
Epilogue – Time 224
In which the author looks back to a not-so-distant past,
observes that the more things change the more they do not
stay the same, and expresses concerns about the future.
Notes 230
Bibliography 266
Index 275