{"title":"Police stops in Germany – between legal rules and informal practices","authors":"H. Aden, A. Bosch, Jan Fährmann, Roman Thurn","doi":"10.1108/joe-03-2021-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-03-2021-0016","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis paper analyzes micro-political strategies that police officers use during police stops, mostly based on their professional or personal life experience. Police stops take place in an asymmetric power relationship. Actions of police officers during a stop are backed by strong legal powers, and citizens typically do not negotiate how the stop should be carried out.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with German patrol officers.FindingsThe authors demonstrate that micro-political strategies relying on the officers' personal experience, rather than on strategies developed by the police agency based on empirical evidence, are highly problematic. Depending upon the acting officer, micro-political strategies can vary considerably according to the individual officer’s experience and attitudes. This leads to a risk of discrimination in police stops and of potential infringements on the citizens’ fundamental rights.Research limitations/implicationsSee the paper’s methodology section on the limitations of the empirical approach.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests improvements for the practice of police stops.Originality/valueThe article provides new empirical insights in the practice of police stops in Germany and situates the findings in a broader international debate on police stops and shortcomings of the legal rules that govern the police stops.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"62135538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Police spatial knowledge” – Aspects of spatial constitutions by the police","authors":"Evan Brauer, Tamara Dangelmaier, Daniela Hunold","doi":"10.1108/joe-12-2020-0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-12-2020-0053","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe article presents research results of an ethnographic survey within the German police. The focus is on practices of spatial production and the functions of spaces.Design/methodology/approachThe article draws on data from the DFG-funded research project KORSIT (Social Construction of security-related Spaces) based on an ethnographic survey in the German police force (https://www.dhpol.de/korsit). Participant observations were conducted in police stations in two large German cities (pseudonymised as “Dillenstadt” and “Rosenberg”). It involved 60 guided interviews with police officers at different levels of the hierarchy, as well as further interviews with local and societal actors for contrasting purposes. The data was analysed on the basis of grounded theory (Strauss and Cobin, 1996).FindingsThis paper shed light on institutional spatial knowledge, which is the basis of police practices, is preceded by experience-based narratives. In an expanded perspective, the paper argues that urban spaces themselves can be understood as materialisations of social practices that serve as social demarcation that legitimise unequal styles of action in the different precinct within the German police. In terms of a relational conceptualisation of space, it is shown that the categories of ethnicity and gender interrelate within the institutional production of space.Originality/valueThe article links organisational research with sociological spatial research and provides basic explanatory models on the conditions of emergence and the persistence of discriminatory practices within the police.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46431799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying trust in the leader by co-produced autoethnography: an organizational esthetics approach","authors":"Päivi Kosonen, Mirjami Ikonen","doi":"10.1108/joe-04-2021-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-04-2021-0020","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis paper aims at examining the prospects and possibilities of autoethnography in trust research. The focus of this study is on trust-building in a management team from an esthetic leadership perspective. The empirical context of the study is the organization of higher education during a funding reform.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a qualitative research strategy with co-produced autoethnographic methods. The data comprised the researcher's diary, field notes and written texts from informants. Autoethnographic methods were applied in data gathering; more precisely, the data were collected by the moving observing method of shadowing and complemented with the management team's written texts reporting their feelings. The data were analyzed by constructing autoethnographic vignettes and a critical frame story.FindingsThe findings of the study contribute to the methodological discussion of autoethnographic research when studying a complex phenomenon such as trust-building. The findings suggest that the role of authenticity in trust-building may vary depending on the esthetic leadership style. Furthermore, the findings contribute to the esthetic leadership theory by a proposal of esthetic reassurance as intentional leader-embodied communication aiming to reinforce follower trust in a leader.Originality/valueCo-produced autoethnography is applied in studying trust-building. Furthermore, this paper provides an inside view of the meaning of esthetics in leader-follower relationships in higher education organizations.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44913459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The missing builders: craftwork and crafty resistance in the “eco-metropolis” of Copenhagen","authors":"Maia Ebsen","doi":"10.1108/joe-03-2021-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-03-2021-0013","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe paper ethnographically explores modes of urban resistance emerging in tandem with climate change mitigation programs in Copenhagen.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on 11 months of fieldwork with a Danish construction enterprise, the paper examines the politics of urban climate change mitigation programs through the lens of a group of builders' struggles to rethink and resolve dilemmas related to environmental concerns in construction and urban development.FindingsBased on an analysis of a specific construction project connected to a larger urban climate change mitigation program in Copenhagen, the paper shows how the builders deliberately move between different perspectives and positions as they navigate the shifting power relations of urban planning. The paper argues that this form of crafty resistance enables the builders to maneuver the political landscape of urban planning as they seek to appropriate the role of “urban planners” themselves.Originality/valueTaking up recent discussions of “resistance” in anthropology and cognate disciplines (e.g. Theodossopoulos, 2014; Bhungalia, 2020; Prasse-Freeman, 2020), the paper contributes an ethnographic analysis of struggles between diverging and, at times, competing modes of engagement in urban climate change mitigation programs and thus sheds light on how professional actors negotiate the ambiguity of “sustainability” in urban planning.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43324117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inclusive gentrification? Reproducing logics of exclusion in strategies for inclusive urban planning","authors":"Maj Nygaard-Christensen, Bagga Bjerge","doi":"10.1108/joe-05-2021-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-05-2021-0024","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe authors investigate two contrasting, yet mutually constitutive strategies for regulating open drug scenes in the city of Aarhus, Denmark: A strategy of dispersing marginalized substance users from the inner city, and a simultaneous strategy of inclusion in a new, gentrifying neighbourhood.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply a multi-temporal ethnography approach, including data from studies dating back to 2002. This enables us to scrutinize reconfigurations of processes of exclusion and inclusion in urban city life based on studies that in different ways feed into the broader picture of how socially marginalized citizens are included and excluded in urban space.FindingsThe municipality of Aarhus sways between strategies of dispersion and exclusion and those of inclusion of marginalized citizens. Taken together, these strategies constitute a “messy middle ground” (May and Cloke, 2014) in responses to the street people rather than either clear-cut punitive or supportive strategies. Finally, we point to the limit of inclusion in more recent strategies aimed at including marginalized citizens in urban planning of a new, gentrifying neighbourhood.Originality/valueThe article builds on studies that in critical engagement with the dominating focus on punitive or revanchist approaches to regulation of homeless citizens' presence in urban space have shown how such regulating practices are rarely punishing alone. We contribute to this literature by showing how seemingly contradictory attempts to exclude, disperse and include socially marginalized citizens in different urban settings are relational rather than in outright opposition. In continuation of this, we show how dispersal strategies both depend on and are legitimized by the promotion of alternative and more inclusive settings elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49321715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Police selectivity “on demand”: the role of organisational justice in promoting procedural justice","authors":"Sarah Van Praet","doi":"10.1108/joe-01-2021-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-01-2021-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose This paper presents the results of an action research with a Brussels’ police force. This research aimed to identify elements or mechanisms within police selectivity that put pressure on the relationship between the public and the police and affect the equal treatment of individuals and groups. Montjardet (1996) looks to understand structural, organisational of other factors as weighing on police selectivity. This article focusses more precisely on the interaction between organisational justice on striving to improve procedural justice.Design/methodology/approach This study was made possible through a partnership between UNIA, the PolBruNo police force and the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC). The methodology of this two-year action research around two phases. The first one led through (22) interviews with management, (200 h of) observations and three group analysis to a shared diagnosis of problems regarding police selectivity. The action part centered on intervisions with the patrol officers based during further (over 420 h of) observations, giving extra information that has been integrated in the analysis.Findings This research points out that even when police interventions are oriented by the demands of the public – public that sometimes formulates demands based on (ethnic) stereotypes – the intervention can be problematic. Organisational aspects played an important role in how the intervention unfolded: if those demands will be treated rather as orders given by the caller or as problematic situations needing analysis by the police officers. The paper arguments that organisational justice as experienced by the police officers impact how much consideration will be given to procedural justice.Originality/value Many scholars have shed a light on the various situations patrol officers deal with and identified problems regarding police selectivity. Procedural justice was developed as an interesting notion to look at the relation of police officers and the (diverse groups within the) public as well as the broader impact of these encounters. The importance to look to the organisational level in the decisions made by the police officers has also been established. The paper arguments that organisational justice as experienced by the police officers impact how much consideration will be given to procedural justice.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46127234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Police interactions in post-colonial India: how particularistic accountability, legitimacy and tolerated illegality condition everyday policing in Delhi and Kerala","authors":"Ashwin Varghese","doi":"10.1108/joe-12-2020-0057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-12-2020-0057","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe paper aims to relocate discussions on police stops and police interactions from the Anglophone world to the particularistic context of the post-colonial state of India. The paper further frames the everyday policing practices in a theoretical dialog between questions of legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities. For that purpose, the author contextualizes the discussion in the post-colonial state of India, in the jurisdictions of two police stations (PSs), in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the State of Kerala.Design/methodology/approachThe author conducted ethnographic studies in one station each in Kerala and Delhi, India, from February to July 2019 and July 2019 to January 2020, respectively. The study mapped everyday power relations as the relations manifested within the site and jurisdiction of the PSs.FindingsThrough the research, the author found that to fully understand everyday practices of policing, especially police interactions and police stops, one must contextualize the police force within the administrative power-sharing relations, police force's accountability structures, legal procedures and class dynamics, which mark the terrain in which personnel function. In that terrain, the author found that the dialog between particularistic legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities offered an important framework to interpret the everyday policing practices.Originality/valueThrough the paper, the author seeks to expand the analysis of ethnographic descriptions of policing by contextualizing them in the political economy of the state. In doing so, the author aims to provide a framework through which police interactions in post-colonial India could be understood","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48804197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moral urban citizenship and the youth problem in a Danish ghetto","authors":"Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Nanna Schneidermann","doi":"10.1108/joe-12-2020-0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-12-2020-0055","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis article examines the interventions from municipality, state and other actors in the Gellerup estate, a Danish “ghetto” by focusing on the youth problem and its construction, by examining a cross-disciplinary academic workshop intending to “solve the youth problem” of the estate.Design/methodology/approachThe article is based on the two authors' participation in the academic workshop, as well as their continued engagement with the Gellerup estate through separate project employments and ethnographic research projects in the estate, consisting of both participant observation and interviews.FindingsIn the article the authors suggest that the 2015 workshop reproduced particularly the category of idle urban young men as problematic. The authors analyze this as a form of “moral urban citizenship”. The article also analyzes some of the proposed solutions to the problem, particularly architectural transformations, and connects the Danish approach to the problems of the “ghetto” to urban developments historically and on a global scale.Originality/valueCross-disciplinary academic attempts to solve real-world problems are rarely incorporated as ethnographic data. In this article the authors attempt to include part of their own practice as academics as valuable data that opens up new perspectives on a field and their own involvement and analysis of it.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48044438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Urbanization and the organization of territorial cohesion – results from a comparative Danish case-study on territorial inequality and social cohesion","authors":"Anja Jørgensen, Mia Arp Fallov","doi":"10.1108/joe-01-2021-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-01-2021-0006","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThere is a growing importance for public facilitation of corporate social responsibility and involvement of civil organizations in securing territorial cohesion and development. In the present article, the authors focus on how we are to understand a locally sensitive organization of territorial cohesion in the Danish context. Traditional sociological concepts and standardized area-types used for administrative purposes have turned out not being very helpful in understanding the interrelation between inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion. The authors argue for a processual and relational approach to urbanization.Design/methodology/approachThe present article is based on interview material and policy documents from three Danish case studies representing urban, suburban and rural forms of settlement. The case studies are part of a cross-European research project.FindingsThe authors show how territorial governance play a key role in the strategies of densification/de-densification facilitating shielding capacities of collective efficacy, and reversely that bottom-up innovations are crucial for the ability of territorial governance to mobilize territorial capital and mediate in effects of territorial inequality. Spatial imaginaries legitimize these efforts to organize cohesion. The spatial imaginaries work as common frame of references for the interplay between strategies of (de)densification and collective efficacy, and they activate particular balances between growth agendas and everyday life.Originality/valueThese findings represent an original perspective on how and why urbanization impact on places in a more specific and variated way than often portrayed as it highlight how social capacities tied to place might work with or against existing social, economic and cultural structures shaping territorial cohesion.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48409380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ea Høg Utoft, Mie Kusk Søndergaard, Anna-Kathrine Bendtsen
{"title":"A lack of mess? Advice on undertaking video-mediated participant observations","authors":"Ea Høg Utoft, Mie Kusk Søndergaard, Anna-Kathrine Bendtsen","doi":"10.1108/joe-07-2021-0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/joe-07-2021-0037","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis article offers practical advice to ethnographers venturing into doing participant observations through, but not about, videoconferencing applications such as Zoom, for which the methods literature offers little guidance.Design/methodology/approachThe article stems from a research project about a BioMedical Design Fellowship. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Fellowship converted all teaching activities to online learning via Zoom, and the participant observations followed along. Taking an autoethnographic approach, the authors present and discuss concrete examples of encountered obstacles produced by the video-mediated format, such as limited access and interactions, technical glitches and changing experiences of embodiment.FindingsChanging embodiment in particular initially led the authors to believe that the “messiness” of ethnography (i.e. misunderstandings, emotions, politics, self-doubts etc.) was lost online. However, over time the authors realized that the mess was still there, albeit in new manifestations, because Zoom shaped the interactions of the people the authors observed, the observations the authors could make and how the authors related to research participants and vice versa.Practical implicationsThe article succinctly summarizes the key advice offered by the researchers (see Section 5) based on their experiences of converting on-site ethnographic observations into video-mediated observations enabling easy use by other researchers in relation to other projects and contexts.Originality/valueThe article positions video-mediated observations, via e.g. Zoom, which are distinctly characterised by happening in real time and having an object of study other than the online sphere itself, vis-à-vis other “online ethnography” methods. The article further aims to enable researchers to more rapidly rediscover and re-incite the new manifestations of the messiness of ethnography online, which is key to ensuring high-quality research.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46826690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}