Doctoral Dissertation Research: Community Policing Preparedness and the State

该奖项支持的研究调查了当代美国地方社区和民族国家之间不断变化的联系。作为福利的分配者，官僚机构的管理者，安全的提供者，以及在许多其他方面，国家对当地生活至关重要。但这种关系的性质是动态的，随着时间和地点的变化而变化，从而改变了我们对各级政府的理解。这个项目问，现在这种关系的关键新元素是什么？它们对当地有什么影响？注意到近年来关于安全问题的讨论是如何成为中心的，研究人员通过地方治安的透镜和增加使用曾经为军队保留的设备来处理这些问题。这种明显模糊的国家和社区界限告诉我们今天民族国家的地方影响是什么？这项研究将在华盛顿/巴尔的摩地区进行，由布朗大学博士生杰西卡·卡岑斯坦在凯瑟琳·A博士的监督下进行。卢茨她将重点介绍如何提供这种设备，为什么警察部门选择获得这种设备;如何培训人员使用这种设备;这种设备的提供如何影响他们应对威胁的责任感及其与当地公民的关系。为了收集数据，她将采用一系列人类学研究方法，包括：访谈，参与者观察培训和骑行，以及设备运动的空间分析。从这个项目的调查结果将提供重要的洞察军事化意味着什么矛盾和国家影响力的变化在一个历史性的时刻，社区警察有更有效的资源，但更有限的空间来使用这些资源没有公众的挑战，并在那里他们被要求作为国土防御扩大阵列的威胁。这些信息将有助于建立新的社会科学的理解民族国家现在意味着什么地方社区的新方面。

The research supported by this award investigates changing linkages between local communities and the nation state in the contemporary United States. As distributor of welfare, administrator of bureaucracy, provider of security, and in many other ways, the state is critical for local life. But the nature of that relationship is dynamic, shifting over time and place in ways that change our understanding of what a government is at all levels of scale. This project asks, What are the key new elements of that relationship now? And what are their local effects? Noting how central discussions of security have become in recent years, the researcher approaches these questions through the lens of local policing and the increased use of equipment once reserved for the military. What does this apparent blurring of state and community lines tell us about the local impact of the nation state today? The research will be carried out in the Washington/Baltimore area by Brown University doctoral student, Jessica Katzenstein, under the supervision of Dr. Catherine A. Lutz. She will focus on how this equipment is made available and why police departments choose to obtain it; how personnel are trained in its use; and how its availability affects their sense of responsibility for threat response and their relations with local citizens. To gather data, she will employ a range of anthropological research methods including: interviews, participant observation in trainings and ride-alongs, and spatial analysis of equipment movements. Findings from this project will provide important insight into what militarization signifies about the contradictions and shifts in state influence in a historical moment in which community police have more effective resources and yet more limited room to use those resources without public challenge, and where they are called upon to serve as homeland defense against a broadening array of threats. This information will help to build new social scientific understanding of new aspects of what the nation state now means for local communities.