AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF A SPECIAL KIND: Recent writings by and on the police in South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3108/2013/i46a808Keywords:
Police, SAPS, police culture, South Africa, police autobiographiesAbstract
The occupational culture of police organisations has long fascinated policing scholars. In the Anglo- American world ethnographic enquiries have contributed much to our understanding of police perceptions, beliefs and actions. This article takes a closer look at efforts to describe and analyse police culture in South Africa. Three genres of writings are considered. Structural accounts of police culture and ethnographic accounts of the police are briefly discussed before turning to a more detailed consideration of a third and emerging genre: police autobiographies. Two recent autobiographies written by former policemen are explored in some detail with the view to considering the contribution of the autobiography to our understanding of the complex occupational dynamics of police and policing in South Africa.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2013 Author and Institute for Security Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
SACQ is licenced under a creative commons licence (CC BY) that allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long a they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
Copyright for articles published is vested equally between the author/s, the Institute for Security Studies and the Centre of Criminology (UCT).
.png){kind=spacer}