The Police and the Public: Risk as Preoccupation
JOURNAL ARTICLE
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The Police and the Public: Risk as Preoccupation
Sociologus, Vol. 63 (2013), Iss. 1–2 : pp. 59–80
6 Citations (CrossRef)
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Oliver Owen, Oxford Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK.
Cited By
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Abstract
This article uses observations from ethnographic fieldwork carried out in central Nigeria in 2010–2011 to address the nature of the relationship between the public and the police in contexts of everyday interaction. It begins by recounting the everyday discourse on police corruption, before employing ethnographic insights to look ’inside" and ’behind" those tropes. In doing so, it contrasts public discourses which stigmatise the Nigeria Police Force with the instrumental manner in which some citizens engage with the police in order to maximise their own agency. It highlights the risk embedded in policing encounters, both for the public and for police officers themselves, and illustrates how both parties seek to reinforce or modify situations of formal procedure by recourse to particularist logics. Examining this informs a wider understanding of modes of policing in Nigeria which combine both authoritarian and negotiated social action.