Spaces of Abjection and a ‘Civic-Disciplining’ Model of Policing

Abstract

This chapter examines the discursive production of some spaces as ‘filthy’ and ‘criminal’ places, and thus requiring a specific form of policing. By attaching meanings to geographical spaces and people therein, such constructions create a division between a ‘self’ to be protected and an ‘other’ to be policed, and in the context of a postcolonial society ridden by hierarchies of various nature makes for easy accommodation and tolerance of violence. The chapter draws on texts of laws and court judgments, reports of state bodies and rights advocacy organizations, and personal interactions and ethnographic observations in the field. Focusing on everyday policing practices in contemporary Delhi, and conceptualizing categorizations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘civilized’ and ‘criminal’, ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, the chapter looks for their implications in the acceptance and understanding of the role of the state in society.