Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The interface between police and citizens in Taiwan is no crisp confrontation between state and society. It is a thickly layered space of mediation, populated by diverse agents, authorities, institutions, and networks. This article uses an ethnographic study of this space to explore its historical and cultural organization. I assemble a series of descriptions of situations in which people sought to mobilize police powers on their behalf, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully. I use this evidentiary basis to reflect on the cultural skills involved in making an effective call to police in democratic Taiwan. These skills, I argue, are best understood as a reflection of the meaningful foundations in which the democratic qualities of state powers have taken root in the context of Taiwan’s historical experience with modern governance.

Keywords

Policing democracy mediation regime change anthropology of police Taiwan

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abrams

(1988) Notes on the difficulty of studying the state. Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1): 58–89.

Agamben

(2000) Sovereign police. In: Means without End. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Almond

Verba

(1963) The Civic Culture. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co.

Balbus

(1977) Commodity form and legal form. Law & Society Review 11(3): 571–588.

Balbus

(2010) Governing Subjects. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Benjamin

(1996) Critique of violence. In: Selected Writings, Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Bernstein

(2008) The social life of regulation in Taipei City Hall: The role of legality in administrative bureaucracy. Law & Social Inquiry 33(4): 925–954.

Bittner

(1990) Functions of police in modern society. In: Aspects of Police Work. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Bourdieu

(1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Bourdieu

(1999) Language and Symbolic Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

11.

Brodeur

J-P

(2003) Violence and the police. In: Heitmeyer

Hagan

(eds) International Handbook of Violence Research. New York: Springer.

12.

Burns

(1999) A Theory of the Trial. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

13.

Buyandelger

(2008) Post-post-transition theories. Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 235–250.

14.

Chao

Meyers

(1998) The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press.

15.

Chin

K-L

(2003) Heijin: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan. New York: ME Sharpe.

16.

Clifford

Marcus

(1986) Writing Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

17.

Cohen

(1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London, UK: MacGibbon and Kee.

18.

Dickson

(1997) Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

19.

Dixon

(1997) Law in Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

20.

Duara

(1988) Culture, Power and the State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

21.

Evans

Rueschemeyer

Skocpol

(1985) Bringing the State Back In. New York: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Fassin

(ed.) (Forthcoming) Writing the Worlds of Police: The Difference Ethnography Makes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

23.

Ferguson

Gupta

(2002) Spatializing states: Towards an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American Ethnologist 29(4): 981–1002.

24.

Garriott

(ed.) (2013) Policing and Contemporary Governance: The Anthropology of Police in Practice. New York: Palgrave.

25.

Garriott

Karpiak

(Forthcoming) The Anthropology of Police. London, UK: Routledge.

26.

Gupta

(1995) Blurred boundaries: The discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. American Ethnologist 22(2): 375–402.

27.

Hall

Critcher

Jefferson

. (1978) Policing the Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

28.

Hansen

Stepputat

(2001) Introduction. In: Hansen

Stepputat

(eds) States of Imagination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

29.

Hsiao

(1990) Emerging social movements and the rise of a demanding civil society in Taiwan. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24: 163–180.

30.

Huang

PCC

(1993) Between informal mediation and formal adjudication. Modern China 19(3): 251–298.

31.

Hull

(2012) Documents and bureaucracy. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 251–267.

32.

Jauregui

(2013) Cultures of legitimacy and postcolonial policing. Law & Social Inquiry 38(3): 547–552.

33.

Karpiak

(2016) The anthropology of police. In: Bradford

Jauregui

Loader

. (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Global Policing. London: SAGE, 103–121.

34.

Keane

(2003) Self-interpretation, agency, and the objects of anthropology: Reflections on a genealogy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45: 222–248.

35.

Klockars

(1985) The Idea of Police. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

36.

Lin

(1997, May 5) From Near and Far Walking Together, All United For Taiwan. Lianhe Bao, Taipei Edition.

37.

Linz

(1975) Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. In: Greenstein

Polsby

(eds) Handbook of Political Science. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

38.

Maine

(1861) Ancient Law. London, UK: John Murray.

39.

Manning

(1988) Symbolic Communication: Signifying Calls and the Police Response. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

40.

Manning

(2010) Democratic Policing in a Changing World. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press.

41.

Marks

(2013) The nature/culture of genetic facts. Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 247–267.

42.

Martin

(2007) A reasonable balance of law and sentiment: Social order in democratic Taiwan from the policeman’s point of view. Law & Society Review 41(3): 665–697.

43.

Martin

(2010) Volunteer police and the production of social order in a Taiwanese village. Taiwan in Comparative Perspective 3: 33–49.

44.

Martin

(2013) Legitimate force in a particularistic democracy: Street police and outlaw legislators in the Republic of China on Taiwan. Law & Social Inquiry 38(3): 615–642.

45.

Martin

(2014) The Confucian ethic and the spirit of East Asian police: A comparative study in the ideology of democratic policing. Crime, Law & Social Change 61(4): 461–490.

46.

Mauss

(1969) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen & West.

47.

Mitchell

(1991) The limits of the state. American Political Science Review 85(1): 77–96.

48.

Nader

(1972) Up the anthropologist: Perspectives gained from studying up. Available at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED065375 (accessed 6 April 2016).

49.

Poulantzas

(1973) Political Power and Social Classes. London: New Left.

50.

Putnam

Leonardi

Nanetti

(1994) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

51.

Pye

(1968) The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychosocial Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

52.

Pye

(1985) Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

53.

Rigger

(1999) Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy. London: Routledge.

54.

Rigger

(2003) Political science and Taiwan’s domestic politics: The state of the field. Issues & Studies 39: 49–92.

55.

Skolnick

(1966) Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

56.

Thacher

(2001) Policing is not a treatment: Alternatives to the medical model of police research. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38(4): 387–415.

57.

Tien

H-M

(1989) The Great Transition: Political and Social Change in the Republic of China. Taipei: Southern Materials Center.

58.

Verdery

(1996) What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

59.

Weber

(1958) Politics as a vocation. In: From Max Weber. New York: Galaxy.

60.

Weber

(2001) Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

61.

Weller

(1999) Alternate Civilities: Democracy and Culture in China and Taiwan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

62.

Williams

(1977) Marxism & Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Calling the police,more or less democratically

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References