Afterword

Abstract

The essays collected in this volume reveal the vast range of issues evoked by an anthropology of policing and they put them in a much-needed international comparative light. From the logics of coercive authority to the vulnerability of the cop on the beat to the nature of crime itself, volume contributors show how law enforcement engages the most potent questions of social theory while revealing the contingencies of physical action in the world. As John Comaroff notes in his introduction, there is an important difference between theorizing the police as an abstract expression of state power and the everyday, embodied practice of policing in a specific time, place, and political culture. The chief instrument of the state’s “monopoly on violence” as theorized by Weber, is, in practice, often the terrified individual, who’s uniform makes him or her feel more target than ultimate coercive authority. It is perhaps this dichotomy between authority and vulnerability that makes police work a point of such fascination in modern life. There is a seemingly endless rehearsal today in popular culture of law enforcement—with proliferating television shows devoted to policing (from the long-running procedurals Law and Order and CSI, to the great exposition of the drug economy in post-industrial Baltimore, The Wire).