31. Watching the watchers: Policing and ethnography of the coercive state.

Convenor 
Michael Sierra-Arévalo, University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University
msa@utexas.edu
ms34@princeton.edu

This panel explores the role of ethnographic inquiry in understanding contemporary policing across international contexts, focusing on how policing structures power and social inequality (Martin, 2018; Ray et al., 2024). The session will address key methodological, ethical, and reflexive challenges encountered by ethnographers studying powerful and often opaque institutions like the police. Specifically, the panelists will examine how policing as a tool of state governance is not only a mechanism of state power but also a cultural system that shapes the everyday experiences of officers and the body politic (Fassin, 2013).

By drawing on a range of qualitative data, including but not limited to ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with police officers, panelists will offer fresh insights into the cultural imperatives that drive policing. Topics will include, but are not limited to, how organizational processes that appear race-neutral in practice serve to reproduce systemic inequalities (Bonilla-Silva, 2006), the racial and gendered dimensions of police violence (Simon, 2021), the role of firearms in shaping police identity (Carlson, 2020), and how community relations are manipulated to resist institutional reforms (Cheng, 2023).

This session will also reflect critically on the ethical dimensions of conducting ethnography within institutions that wield considerable power with little supervision (Cousin et al., 2018). The panelists will discuss the methodological dilemmas involved in gaining access to these institutions, the risks of becoming complicit in the very systems they seek to study, and the strategies they use to maintain critical distance while ensuring the safety of their research subjects and themselves (e.g., Fassin, 2017). Through these reflections, the panel will provide valuable insights into the broader ethical considerations of studying state agents who operate with significant discretion and coercive authority in settings across the globe.

This panel welcomes contributions from scholars who study policing across all contexts and countries, and is intended as an interdisciplinary discussion across sociology, criminology, anthropology, law, gender studies, and other fields.

Open questions

  • How do police cultures and practices shape and reinforce social inequalities related to race, class, and gender?
  • In what ways do organizational processes that appear race-neutral contribute to the reproduction of systemic inequality in policing?
  • How do police officers’ cultural preoccupations with violence and risk affect their interactions with communities, and what are the broader social implications?
  • What ethical and methodological challenges arise for ethnographers studying powerful, opaque institutions like the police, and how can these challenges be addressed?
  • How do police use community relations and political capital to resist institutional reforms aimed at addressing inequality and violence?

Keywords
policing; social inequality; state power; violence; culture; organizations and institutions.

Sub-disciplines or cross-disciplinary areas of concern
urban studies; criminology; race and ethnic studies; political science; gender studies; public health.

References
Bonilla-Silva, E.
2006 Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Carlson, J.
2020 Policing the second amendment: Guns, law enforcement, and the politics of race. Princeton University Press.

Cheng, T.
2023 The Policing Machine: Enforcement, Endorsements, and the Illusion of Public Input. University of Chicago Press.

Cousin, B., Khan, S., Mears, A.
2018 «Theoretical and methodological pathways for research on elites», in Socio-Economic Review, 16, 2, pp. 225–249. 

Fassin, D.
2013 Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Polity Press.

2017 Writing the World of Policing: The Difference Ethnography Makes. University of Chicago Press.

Martin, J. T.
2018 «Police and Policing», in Annual Review of Anthropology, 47, pp. 133–148. 

Ray, R., Powelson, C., Fuentes, G., Doan, L.
2024 «The Sociology of Police Behavior», in Annual Review of Sociology, 50, pp. 565–579.

Simon, S. J.
2021 «Training for War: Academy Socialization and Warrior Policing», in Social Problems, 70, 4, pp. 1021–1043. 

Convenor’s bio
Michael Sierra-Arévalo is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and current Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton University. His research focuses on violence, policing, firearms, and public safety policy in the U.S., using quantitative and qualitative methods. His book, The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing (Columbia University Press, 2024), explores how policing’s focus on violence shapes practice and inequality. The book received the ASA Sociology of Law Distinguished Book Award and the ASC Division of Policing Outstanding Book Award in 2024.