Police in Contemporary World

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Public protests against police brutality in the United States have renewed interest in questions of reform and oversight with respect to law enforcement. Numerous stakeholders, from the Department of Justice to scholars and civil rights activists have made police brutality necessary and urgent problem that needs immediate attention. Their attention has brought up again in public discussion the question of the policing function and its limits, what is the role of the police in a democratic society, what are the racial and class structures that produce the powerful inequalities between the powers of the police and the communities in which they are embedded. These important questions are not only salient in the U.S., as protests across the world in recent years have shown us. How then, are we to think about the police as a force of law and order at a time when so much of their own practices seem unlawful, or worse, unjust? In this course, we will study the police: as an institution, as a set of disciplinary practices, as an agent of state power and monopoly, and as a mode of surveillance. The course will introduce you to some foundational texts that explore the relationship of ‘police’ to notions of authority, legitimacy, violence, private property, and security. We will read texts that undertake in-depth and long-term research on the history, emergence, and contemporary role of the police; the relationship between police and race, class, and gender; and explore how activists and protesters are involved in projects of police reform and even police ban from around the world. Selected Texts: 1. Beatrice Jauregui. 2016. Provisional Authority: Police, Order, and Authority in India. University of Chicago Press. 2. Ilana Feldman. 2015. Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza Under Egyptian Rule. Stanford University Press. 3. Ieva Jusionyte. 2015. Savage Frontier: Making News and Security on the Argentine Border. University of California Press. 4. Michelle Alexander. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press.