Archive | Vol. 16/2023 | No. 1. Polizeiliche Performanzen von Gewalt

Fink, Felix; Kretschmann, Andrea [Publishing editor]

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Scientific article

Editorial: Polizeiliche Performanzen von Gewalt / Fink, Felix [Autor:in] … – 2023

Fink, Felix; Kretschmann, Andrea

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Pages: 1-11

Scientific article

Alltägliche Gewalt der Kontrolle : die Performanz staatlicher Gewalt im Kontext anlassunabhängiger Personenkontrollen durch die Polizei / Thurn, Roman [Autor:in] – 2023

Thurn, Roman

Abstract:

Random police stops in Germany in so-called ‘dangerous areas’ are characterized by a performance of violence. They target a variety of offenses, the majority of which are so-called victimless crimes. Officers select individuals for these controls based on a combination of different characteristics that portray them as deviant and, therefore, as the police's counterpart. Since the control is not prompted by a specific punishable behavior, its aim is less about regulating a particular offense and more about degrading a specific social identity. The officers aim to let the affected individuals know they are being watched by police officers, displace them, demonstrate their presence to them (and to citizens), and exert discipline. Throughout the control, they employ various performative practices, including giving instructions and imperatives, issuing threats and provocations, intruding into private territories (i.e., conducting searches), wearing uniforms and equipment, as well as using physical force.

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Pages: 12-28

Scientific article

Affective violence-work anger and the performance of stateness

Schmidt, Stephanie

Abstract:

The legitimacy of police action is derived from the stateness and legal binding that is visible in the action itself. Specifically, the exercise of police violence serves to legitimize the police by asserting that such violence is applied in a moderate, lawful, objective, and, above all, impartial manner, free from personal interests of the police officers. This notion of neutral professionalism, attributed to police actions and claimed by the police, is part of a performative representation of police action. Following a praxeological understanding of emotions as doing emotion, this article explores the affective dimensions of violence and anger as part of a comprehensive physically performed and sensually experienced performance in everyday police work. On the basis of ethnographic research, the article demonstrates how anger is manifested as an emotional practice in order to make the state's promise of a restrained use of force credible.

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Pages: 29-40

Scientific article

Materialities of the performative : a sociology of the police uniform

Kretschmann, Andrea; Legnaro, Aldo

Abstract:

Police equipment (uniforms and armament) is rarely analyzed for its symbolic means. This text focuses on a cultural-sociological analysis of police materialities, bringing together material semiotics with theories of performativity. The last 180 years of German history serve as a case study, which, due to its changes in political regimes, is particularly revealing. It shows that while the materiality of state power was largely oriented toward the policing of subjects through the direct use of force, since the 1970s, there has been an increasing tendency toward making uniforms and equipment more civilized and defensive as a way to create distance between the police and the public. In a longitudinal view, therefore, the police’s materialities can be seen as an indicator of respective political and social conditions that correspond with changes in the police’s self-image.

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Pages: 41-56

Scientific article

Performanzen von polizeilicher Verletzlichkeit : Szenariotraining für lebensbedrohliche Einsatzlagen / Burg, Leon von der [Autor:in] … – 2023

Burg, Leon von der; Ebenau, Johannes

Abstract:

This article takes the question of police performances of violence to the policing of life-threatening situations. In the face of events of urban terrorism in Europe in recent years, German police have introduced a nationwide police directive that aims to prepare patrol officers for sensing and instantly fighting emerging threats. The new directive introduces a flexible and scalable operational framework as well as new training curricula that include scenario exercises in order to prepare officers for the policing of uncertain and dangerous events. The concept of performativity helps to understand how scenario exercises affect the bodies of officers and allows us to capture the processes that form and shape them. Performing vulnerability aims to create physical experiences that help patrol officers as bodily reminders for engaging in life-threatening situations. Ultimately, the new police directive materialises in the officers’ bodies and thus becomes part of the daily patrol routine. However, it remains unclear how these materialisations manifest in everyday policing, as they differ widely from the usual patrol practices.

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Pages: 57-69

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