{"title":"(In)security in subordination: Policing and policework in postcolonial Pakistan","authors":"Zoha Waseem","doi":"10.1177/09670106241245262","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"How do elite interests intersect with inequality in postcolonial state institutions and shape the consumption and provision of public services such as policing and security? Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan, this article explores how subordinate officers experience insecurity within postcolonial policing structures owing to class-based hierarchical divisions, and analyses how these conditions shape their experiences, relationships and performances. I argue that structural inequalities within public institutions, influenced by private interests of external actors, compel subordinates to strategically operationalize informality in policework, deploying it in the service of influential actors and institutions. Furthermore, these subordinates rely upon informal networks and practices to appear indispensable and subvert the hierarchy, securing greater personal and professional gains and steering past class-based constraints. This ‘strategic informality’ enables the rank and file to relationally and procedurally navigate otherwise rigid hierarchical institutional structures that suppress them. In exploring how insecurity and inequality, within and beyond policing institutions, in the context of blurred public–private security divides, necessitates reliance upon informality, and what impacts this has, this article makes a critical contribution to scholarship on security provision in postcolonial contexts.","PeriodicalId":21670,"journal":{"name":"Security Dialogue","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Security Dialogue","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106241245262","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
How do elite interests intersect with inequality in postcolonial state institutions and shape the consumption and provision of public services such as policing and security? Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan, this article explores how subordinate officers experience insecurity within postcolonial policing structures owing to class-based hierarchical divisions, and analyses how these conditions shape their experiences, relationships and performances. I argue that structural inequalities within public institutions, influenced by private interests of external actors, compel subordinates to strategically operationalize informality in policework, deploying it in the service of influential actors and institutions. Furthermore, these subordinates rely upon informal networks and practices to appear indispensable and subvert the hierarchy, securing greater personal and professional gains and steering past class-based constraints. This ‘strategic informality’ enables the rank and file to relationally and procedurally navigate otherwise rigid hierarchical institutional structures that suppress them. In exploring how insecurity and inequality, within and beyond policing institutions, in the context of blurred public–private security divides, necessitates reliance upon informality, and what impacts this has, this article makes a critical contribution to scholarship on security provision in postcolonial contexts.
期刊介绍:
Security Dialogue is a fully peer-reviewed and highly ranked international bi-monthly journal that seeks to combine contemporary theoretical analysis with challenges to public policy across a wide ranging field of security studies. Security Dialogue seeks to revisit and recast the concept of security through new approaches and methodologies.