A short essay I wrote over @ Savage Minds, featuring shout outs to 
several Anthropoliteia contributors!
Author Archives: kevinkarpiak
Just happened to be looking this up today in the OED:
community policing n. policing at a local or community level; spec. a system of policing by officers who have personal knowledge of and involvement in the community they police.
1934 New Castle (Pa.) News 20 Feb. 16/3 Major Adams asserted that the modern principles of community policing are based on antiquated methods.1973 Times 24 Sept. 2/6 Community policing, at present one of the most controversial talking points in Andersontown.2000 P. Beatty Tuff i. 4 The mayor think rhyming sound bites, community policing, and the death penalty going to stop fools from getting paid.
Not sure exactly who major Adams is or what he’s about, but it is interesting to think that the newness of “community policing” was in question even way back in 1934. Of course, I’m also not sure what Adams meant by “community policing” had…
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“Community Policing” in the Oxford English Dictionary
This post is my first, personal, attempt at refiguring anthropological inquiry after the internet 2.0. I guess this is just a fancy way of saying that I’m beginning to try to come to terms with doing ethnography after the birth of social media. For context, my original fieldwork in France, way back between 2003-2005, coincided with Friendster, but that’s about it (it’s no coincidence that it was juring that time that I met my first “blogger”). I’ve long though about what it would mean to start up a new project in the age of blogging, microblogging, social media and whathaveyou. I’ve had various personal inspirations, and a few more or less inchoate collaborations (especially through the various iterations of the ARC Collaboratory, whose website seems to be down right now), but, at yet, no sustained engagement. So here goes.
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I’ve just uploaded a copy of the syllabus for a new class I’ll be teaching the second half of this semester, “Ethnographies of Police”. I’m pretty psyched about it. You can find a pdf version here, or go to the “Teaching” page of my blog and see it amongst the other syllabi uploaded there.
[Extended Deadline] CFP: Bureaucracy as Practical Ethics: attending to moments of ethical problematization through ethnography
Panel to be submitted for the American Ethnological Society & Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Spring Meeting Chicago, Illinois April 11-13, 2013
A significant strain of scholarship on the anthropology of ethics suggests that, since the Enlightenment, ethical thought in the West has been reduced to sheer will to power. A key point of evidence for this claim has been the reliance on bureaucratic forms of administration, which are highlighted as examples of alienating “anti-politics” machines of indifference. This panel hopes to challenge that broad understanding of the role of ethical thought within the contemporary world by using sensitive ethnographic accounts of bureaucratic praxis to explore how ethical challenges are confronted across a variety of contexts. The goal is to use these accounts in order to open up a conversation in which anthropologists might more adequately attend to moments of ethical problematization; moments that offer concrete opportunity for ethical refiguration and, therefore, ethical thought within contemporary political forms.
If you are interested in participating in the panel, please email a proposed paper title and abstract of no more than 250 words to Dr. Kevin Karpiak (kkarpiak@emich.edu) by Tuesday, January 22nd.
[Update: Since the deadline to submit panel proposals has been moved back, I’ve decided to extend this as well: paper abstracts should now be submitted by Wednesday, February 13th.]
Special Issue of Anthropology News features two articles on Police
Although there’s been quite a bit of rumbling over the AAA’s “open access” policies over the last several years, one positive development IMHO has been to move the association’s newsletter, Anthropology News, to an online and OA format.
Police propaganda billboard advertising goals for building a “Peaceful and Healthy Society.” This photograph was taken in Taiwan in the early 2000s. Photo courtesy Jeffrey T Martin
And now readers of this blog can benefit. The most recent issue features several articles on the Anthropology of Law in its “In Focus” section, including two articles on the anthropology of policing: one from Anthropoliteia’s own Jeff Martin, entitled “How the Law Matters to the Taiwanese Police” and another by Jennie Simpson, a recent PhD from American University, “Building the Anthropology of Policing” (the latter featuring a short–and unexpected cameo from yours truly).
Personally, I’m super-psyched that the anthropology of policing is beginning to carve out a space in the larger world of anthropology. Not only am I currently brainstorming how to incorporate these blog posts into my course on Policing in Society, but I’m secretly formulating a response to Jeff arguing that his use of my beloved Max Weber is all wrong!
In The News: Anthropologists, Criminologists (and some others) on the Newtown Shootings
I still haven’t found much of a voice or aptitude for addressing current events in a timeframe that seems relevant, so like the Trayvon Martin incident, I feel like this blog post is a bit “late to the game” and with less than I’d like to offer. This is of course made more difficult by the fact that research on gun violence has been blocked in the U.S. along multiple lines for some time.
Despite these impediments, there have been several serious attempts to gain an understanding of the role of guns and gun accessibility on mass shootings:
Continue reading
Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman and the Anthropology of Police
I’m sure I’m not the only one on this blog who’s been trying to think of a way to approach the whole Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman fiasco. Like a lot of scholarship, it’s just so hard to figure out what to add to the constant shit-storm of a media frenzy. But in my Police & Society class at EMU we have broached the topic, and the discussion has been both passionate and useful.
I thought I’d share the online discussion question I just prompted my students with. I’m curious to hear what readers of this blog might have to say. Here’s the prompt:
So our discussion seems to have gotten us to an interesting place: on the one hand, the question of what to do with George Zimmerman–did he have the right to be policing his neighborhood? did he have the right to carry and use a gun? did he have the right to suspect and pursue Trayvon?–brings us back to a question we’ve been asking repeatedly in the class… What should be the relationship between “police” and “society,” especially when we consider the use of force/power/gewalt? Should they be fully integral things, so that there’s no distinct institution of policing? Should there be an absolute distinction, so that only a small community can claim the right to police power? If the answer is somewhere in the middle, how would that work?
On the other hand, we’ve also been circulating around the question of freedom and security, norms and rights. Was George Zimmerman policing legitimately when we acted upon his suspicions, regardless of any evidence of law-breaking? Should the goal, the ends, of policing be the maintaince of community norms at the expense of individual liberty, or is a technocratic focus on law enforcement and civil rights the necessary priority of a democratic police force?
Anyone have any thoughts on how we can use some of the ideas and/or authors from this course to help us answer some of these questions?
In the spirit of continuing our discussion of the British “riots”, Jonathan Simon has an interesting post that I think echoes many of the things that came up in our own discussion. Here’s one particularly cogent nut he offers up in describing the importation of American criminal justice techniques to Britain over the past decade:
“….[C]hronic overuse of criminal justice as a ready made tool for addressing social insecurity under Neo-liberal economic assumptions has led to collapse of both deterrence and legitimacy.”
Now there’s a thesis. Thoughts?
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