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: John Wiley & Sons
• 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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