Didier Fassin

Enforcing Order (eBook, ePUB)

An Ethnography of Urban Policing

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Most incidents of urban unrest in recent decades - including the riots in France, Britain and other Western countries - have followed lethal interactions between the youth and the police. Usually these take place in disadvantaged neighborhoods composed of working-class families of immigrant origin or belonging to ethnic minorities. These tragic events have received a great deal of media coverage, but we know very little about the everyday activities of urban policing that lie behind them. Over the course of 15 months, at the time of the 2005 riots, Didier Fassin carried out an ethnographic study in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region, sharing the life of a police station and cruising with the patrols, in particular the dreaded anti-crime squads. Far from the imaginary worlds created by television series and action movies, he uncovers the ordinary aspects of law enforcement, characterized by inactivity and boredom, by eventless days and nights where minor infractions give rise to spectacular displays of force and where officers express doubts about the significance and value of their own jobs. Describing the invisible manifestations of violence and unrecognized forms of discrimination against minority youngsters, undocumented immigrants and Roma people, he analyses the conditions that make them possible and tolerable, including entrenched policies of segregation and stigmatization, economic marginalization and racial discrimination. Richly documented and compellingly told, this unique account of contemporary urban policing shows that, instead of enforcing the law, the police are engaged in the task of enforcing an unequal social order in the name of public security.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. September 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780745670942
• Artikelnr.: 39896593

Autorenporträt

Didier Fassin is James D. Wolfensohn Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His previous works include The Empire of Trauma and When Bodies Remember.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Preliminary Remarks
Preface to the Engish Edition
Prologue - Interpellation
In which the author comes to understand that it is sometimes dangerous to
wait for a bus in the outer city on New Year's Eve. How policing practice
provides the language for a philosophical theory, and how a philosophical
theory supplies the meaning of policing practice. That this is not a
testimony, and that indignation is not rage.
Introduction - Inquiry
How the present research was authorized and then forbidden, and that this
censorship is revelatory of petty exceptions in a democratic regime. That
an ethnography of the police requires resisting the dual temptation of
exoticism and culturalism. That a study is often the result of the
converging effects of chance and necessity.
Chapter 1 - Situation
How an imaginary of war came to be established in the relations between the
police and the projects. That a brief history of the social question and
security issues is essential in order to understand the context in which
law enforcement faces classes reputed to be dangerous. That the creation of
more aggressive special units was judged necessary to deal with the alleged
disorder in the outer cities.
Chapter 2 - Ordinary
How the daily work of police officers is far removed from the image they
had of it when they joined the force, and the illusion they continue to
maintain of it. That evaluation of the work of urban patrols yields such
unexpected results that it is not taken into account by government. That
inaction generates action, and what this phenomenon of spontaneous
generation means for the residents of the projects.
Chapter 3 - Interactions
How stops and frisks serve purposes other than those they are supposed to
serve, and prove more effective in perpetuating a social order than in
maintaining public order. That the way police officers speak about the
individuals with whom they deal throws light on their way of operating in
the outer cities. That the theater of police intervention sometimes plays
comedies in which not all spectators laugh at the same moment.
Chapter 4 - Violence
How a criminal court can offer valuable lessons on excessive use of force
by the police in the outer cities. That by not reducing violence to its
physical aspect and not limiting the definition of it to the legal sense,
one can gain a different understanding of it. That there are many ways of
preventing police brutality from being prosecuted
Chapter 5 - Discrimination
How police officers and sociologists challenge the existence of
discriminatory practices that the rest of the French population is
convinced prevail. That racist ideas do not automatically lead to
discriminatory practices, but that the two are far from incompatible. That
institutions show more tolerance toward institutional racism than toward
its victims.
Chapter 6 - Politics
How some signs are not deceiving, but may
nevertheless be surprising in a democratic regime. That local practices
enjoy great autonomy with respect to national guidelines, but that
government policy has some influence on the everyday work of law
enforcement. That the corollary of the increasing criminalization of
behaviors is an unprecedented casting of the police as victims.
Chapter 7 - Morality
How police officers disappointed by the justice of the courts began to
practice street justice. That jokes in the precinct can prove more serious
than is customarily maintained. That a code of ethics is not enough to
interpret the ethical forces at work in the behavior of police officers and
the moral impasse in which the police find themselves.
Conclusion - Democracy
How the French police preferred the model of the cop in the United States
to the style of the British bobby, and what was the result. That the
imposition of the rationale of security has a high social cost for
contemporary societies. That the interests of ethnography are intimately
bound with those of democracy.
Epilogue - Time
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, wonders about the
present as it is experienced by certain segments of French society and
ignored by the others, and expresses concerns about the future.
Notes
Bibliography

Rezensionen

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | Besprechung von 28.06.2013

Staat und Ohnmacht in den Vorstädten

Jede Nacht die gleiche Routine: Die Polizisten der Spezialeinheit "Brigade anti-criminalité" fahren durch die Pariser Banlieues. In den Vororten mit ihrer überdurchschnittlichen Kriminalitätsrate sollen die Beamten Verbrechen bekämpfen, jederzeit bereitstehen, um auf einen Anruf reagieren zu können. Doch meistens passiert nichts. Keine Meldung kommt über den Polizeifunk herein; auch auf der Straße nichts Auffälliges.

Von 2005 bis 2007 begleitet der Soziologe Didier Fassin fünfzehn Monate lang eine "Brigade anti-criminalité" in ihrem Alltag. Bei den nächtlichen Streifen sitzt er hinten im Wagen, beobachtet das Verhalten der Polizisten. Ohne einen Anlass werden Immigranten nach Drogen durchsucht oder Jugendliche einer Ausweiskontrolle unterzogen - nur weil sie zu später Stunde unterwegs sind. Für das oft beleidigende, proaktive Handeln der Beamten erkennt Fassin nicht zuletzt in der Langeweile eine Ursache. Die Sicherheitskräfte würden schlicht zu selten gebraucht, denn in Frankreich sinke die Kriminalitätsrate in den letzten fünfzig Jahren stetig.

Fassin hat seine Forschungsergebnisse 2011 in dem Buch "La force de l'ordre. Une anthropologie de la police des quartiers" veröffentlicht. Mitte Juli erscheint nun die englische Ausgabe (Didier Fassin: "Enforcing Order. An Ethnography of Urban Policing". John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken 2013, 320 S., geb., 69,90 [Euro]). Vor allem geht es dem Autor darin um die Moral der Beamten: Wie rechtfertigt ein Polizist sein Handeln vor sich selbst? Nimmt er es als gerecht wahr? Denken alle Mitglieder der Brigade gleich rassistisch?

Diese Fragen hat Fassin, der in Princeton und Paris Sozialwissenschaften lehrt, auch in einem Vortrag am Dienstag dieser Woche in Frankfurt erörtert. Dazu eingeladen hatte ihn der Frankfurter Kunstverein, der seine aktuelle Ausstellung "Ohnmacht als Situation" mit einer Veranstaltungsreihe begleitet. Anschaulich schilderte Fassin, welche Faktoren zu diskriminierenden Aktionen der Sicherheitskräfte führen, die sich hauptsächlich gegen Jugendliche aus unteren Schichten, Immigranten und Roma richten.

Negativ wirke sich unter anderem aus, dass viele der Polizisten nicht dort aufgewachsen seien, wo sie eingesetzt werden. Weil sie weder das Terrain noch die Bewohner kennten, fühlten sie sich schneller bedroht. Einer Bedrohung wiederum glaubten die Beamten hart begegnen zu müssen. Polizisten, die das herabsetzende Verhalten ihrer Kollegen offen anprangerten, gebe es kaum, so Fassin. Wer sich unwohl fühle, lasse sich eher still und leise versetzen: Als Begründung werde die Familie oder die Karriere vorgeschoben. Die meisten aber machen mehr oder minder bereitwillig mit.

ANNE KOHLICK

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