I recently gave a “Lunch and Learn” talk for the Washtenaw County League of Women Voters on the topic of “Policing, Justice, and Community: An Anthropological Perspective” in which I outline why I think anthropological studies of policing can be helpful for thinking through some of the larger issues associated with policing today
Exertions, the blog of the Society for the Anthropology of Work, has published a new series of posts entitled “Policing and Labor.” Many wonderful people have contributed to it, so I suggest you check it out. My own, “What is the ‘Work’ in ‘Police Work’,” briefly explores some of the political valences of the concept of “work” amidst the police reforms that are the subject of my upcoming book The Police Against Itself. Here’s more or less the punchline:
Continue reading What is the “work” in “Police Work”?
I’ve finally been reading bits and pieces of Donna Haraway’s Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, which, I’ve been doing as part of a larger project to imagine the end of policing.
I had been meaning to do this for a while, but I was recently inspired her performance as discussant at a double panel at the American Anthropological Association Meetings I was a part of, honoring Aihwa Ong. There were many wonderful moments there (one tidbit: Haraway, who became mega-famous for her essay “A Cyborg Manifesto,” declared that “Aihwa taught me more about cyborgs than anyone else.” She was especially inspired by the complex entanglements of women and machinery in Ong’s first book, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline) but it was actually one word that she kept using that stuck with me: critter. Continue reading Donna Haraway’s “Critters”
I’ve recently published a piece of creative non-fiction–part of my forthcoming book The Police Against Itself–as part of the blog Somatosphere’s series “Notes on Guns and Violence.” Below is an excerpt:
Continue reading New piece, “Time, Regained” on Somatosphere Blog
I’m happy to announce that a collective project I’ve been working on for a very long time (over 3 years!) is finally out. The Anthropology of Police, edited by myself and William Garriott is now available for purchase in a variety of formats. It includes contributions from Peter K. Manning, Jeff Martin, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Jennie M. Simpson, Avram Bornstein, Katherine Verdery, Yagmur Nurhat, Erika Robb Larkins, Paul Mutsaers & Tom Van Nuenen, Didier Fasssin, Laurence Ralph and Heath Cabot.
You can use the promotional code on the above flyer to save 20% when you order directly from Routledge. Below, you can also read the Introduction I co-authored with Will Garriott, as well as the rest of the front matter
On September 28th I will be giving a talk entitled “Electric Burns: attending the microphysics of police power” sponsored by the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Anthropology Colloquium and Taft Research Center
I’m so excited to be announcing Police/Worlds: studies in security, crime & governance, a new monograph series that I will be co-editing with Ilana Feldman, William Garriott and Sameena Mulla for Cornell University Press.
We’re currently accepting proposals. Authors should send inquiries to Cornell University Press Senior Editor Jim Lance at jml554@cornell.edu. Guidelines for submitting proposals can be found at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/info/?fa=text101.
Indio Police Building (Indio, Calif.), 1958 © J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Photo by Julius Schulman.
Police/Worlds: Studies in Security, Crime and Governance, is a new series forthcoming from Cornell University Press. It will be edited by anthropologists Ilana Feldman, Will Garriott, Kevin Karpiak and Sameena Mulla.
Sage House: We’re very happy to launch the new monograph series, Police/Worlds: Studies in Security, Crime, and Governance here at Cornell University Press. To begin, tell me about Police/Worlds. What does the title mean? What is the series focus and what makes it different from other series?
Sameena Mulla: We’re glad you asked, because we chose the title Police/Worlds to invite that question. You see two very recognizable terms, “Police,” and “Worlds,” with some punctuation between them; their relationship is not exactly clear, and that’s what we hope to explore in the series. We…
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Things have been so busy this semester I haven’t even been able to keep up with spreading the word about my own work! There are three major publications I wanted to let you all know about. I have been working on some of these for several years now, and I’m very proud of them:
Continue reading Recent Publications by Kevin Karpiak on the Anthropology of Police (Fall 2016)
Postscript to Of Heroes and Polemics: ‘The Policeman’ in Urban Ethnography This piece had a long gestation. The earliest version of this article was written in 2002, while I was a graduate student …
Source: 2015 Virtual Edition: Kevin Karpiak
The AAA Meetings were a wonderful flurry of activity that I’m just now recovering from, however one thing slipped under my radar while it was happening: my new article, co-authored with Paul Mutsaers and Jennie Simpson, on “The Anthropology of Police as Public Anthropology” is now available for early viewing*. The hard-copy version of the article is set to appear in the December issue of the journal American Anthropologist. This should be the first in a flurry of exciting things coming in the next semester or so, so keep an eye out!
*I’d prefer you download the article via Wiley’s site, if you have access through your home institution or Anthrosource. If not, however, you an find a copy I’ve uploaded onto Academia.edu
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