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  • Published: 7 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781635422504
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $49.99

Policing the City

An Ethno-graphic



What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from tragic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts obscure two crucial aspects of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols under constant pressure to meet quotas, and the banality of racial discrimination and ordinary violence.
        Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anticrime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities.
        This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin’s investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today in the United States as in France.

Adapted from the landmark essay Enforcing Order, this striking graphic novel offers an accessible inside look at policing and how it leads to discrimination and violence.

What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from tragic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts obscure two crucial aspects of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols under constant pressure to meet quotas, and the banality of racial discrimination and ordinary violence.
        Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anticrime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities.
        This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin’s investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today in the United States as in France.

  • Published: 7 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781635422504
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $49.99

Praise for Policing the City

Praise for Enforcing Order:
 
“Fascinating…Enforcing Order is an intriguing read, not least for what it reveals about the politics of law and order, and of policing, in France in recent times…a rich text.” LSE Review of Books

“Powerful, distressing, and thought-provoking…an undertaking unprecedented in France and one that, as the difficulties of access Fassin encountered suggest, will not be conducted again for some time.” Times Higher Education

“Fassin’s book—the most significant contribution to the public anthropology of policing—has opened up space to discuss the unresolved tension underlying the contemporary state, that between providing security and protecting human rights.” Social Anthropology