Teaching
Cultural Anthropology
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Unit 7
Policing
Governments task police forces and other security units with the responsibility of maintaining order and control over civilian populations. In this unit, students will learn about policing in different countries around the world and observe the differences and similarities in law enforcements’ approaches and methods. They will also gain an understanding of how policing affects different communities and become familiar with how power, violence, and control are embodied and meted out by the institution and by individual officers. Students will study critiques of policing put forth by various scholars.
Sapiens articles
When Harmony Silences Resistance
The recent violence in Hong Kong has stunned the world, but one anthropologist sees a much less visible threat.
Combating Anti-Black Racism in Brazil and Beyond
An interview with anthropologist Christen A. Smith provides insights into resisting police violence and creating safe societies for people of African descent.
Keywords
View All in Race
![A person wearing a black baseball cap and a shirt covered in a collage of different images of a man’s face walks down a presentation hall. A screen showing many people elsewhere is to their right and a poster with a graphic of a gun hangs over a booth in front.]()
![On a wood-paneled floor, four barefoot people wearing different outfits in shades of red, yellow, and blue dance in front of a gray wall. Captured in motion, and therefore blurry, each has several of their dance moves overlapping and visible at once.]()
![Three people stand on a grassy field holding signs with pictures of young people’s faces pasted on them. Also on the signs, in colorful text, are two phrases: “Invest in Us” and “End the War on Drugs” with the word “Drugs” crossed out and the word “Blacks” added before it.]()
![A person wearing a sleeveless shirt with a white paper attached that reads “Assefa” holds up a white sneaker with three black stripes in front of a blue structure with a digital time clock on it.]()
![Two people hug in a bathroom, with one seated on a closed toilet and the other kneeling on a tan-and-brown tiled floor. Two standing onlookers flank the image’s foreground.]()
![A person wearing a white dress whose skirt is made of ribbons, each with a name written on it, leans back with their eyes closed. They are on grass with a Black Lives Matter banner on the ground beside them and a circle of drummers and bystanders around them.]()
Among Gun Rights Activists, Fears About Survival Reign
An anthropologist delves into what the rising ranks of local firearm-touting militias in Virginia reveal about intensifying political polarization in the U.S.—and what these shifts might mean for the 2024 presidential election.
Making Anthropological Poetry Reel
In featuring three SAPIENS poems, students in a digital anthropology seminar infused video reels for Instagram with vivid history and powerful emotions.
How Racism Shapes the U.S. Opioid Epidemic
Public health officials say opioid use and related deaths have reached a crisis point in the U.S. An interview with anthropologist and psychiatrist Helena Hansen unpacks the racial disparities in how drug addiction is interpreted, portrayed, and treated.
Why Shoes Do Not Make the Runner
East African runners wearing “super shoes” have outpaced global marathon records. But the shoe fervor—alongside older stereotypes about African runners’ “natural” abilities—means athletes’ hard work often gets sidelined.
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
View All in Violence
![The toppled steeple of a church lies on the ground among other pieces of collapsed metal. A large blue and white building with a gold object on its roof towers in the background.]()
![Three people stand in a line holding lit candles. The person in the center holds a piece of paper with a red triangle colored in with marker on the left side, and three horizontal stripes—black, white, and green—on the right. In the white area, text written in red marker reads, “MSJC family in solidarity.”]()
![Several people wearing matching brown jumpsuits sit on a long brown bench, holding landline phones and facing a large clear wall. On the other side of the first window, a person with a white headscarf on cries while holding a phone.]()
![A large, tan cardboard box sits on a shelf with a label that reads “C2” below it. On two small pieces of black tape on the box’s front side, white letters read “Infant” and “Name Once Known.”]()
![At sunset, a large, gently rippling body of water reflects yellow, orange, and pink light. Small lights scatter along dark silhouetted mountains on the horizon.]()
![A crowd of people, with several taking pictures on cellphones, surround a damaged structure in a public square. The small building, with its tiling cracked and wooden seating splintered, has a large arrangement of white flowers in front of it.]()
Spotlighting War’s Cultural Destruction in Ukraine
An archaeologist, anthropologist, and film expert examine the staggering amount of damage to cultural heritage caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The Responsibility of Witnesses to Genocide
Palestinian narratives of their own dispossession are routinely dismissed—making witnessing Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Palestine that reignited in 2023 an urgent task. But witnessing is not enough.
How Israeli Prisons Terrorize Palestinians—Inside and Outside Their Walls
An anthropologist in the West Bank explains how Israel’s prison regime dehumanizes Palestinians, who nevertheless dream of freedom and resist erasure.
Infant, Name Once Known
A poet-anthropologist of the Chickasaw Nation honors infant remains historically used in teaching collections at the University of Illinois.
Fishing for Dust
A poet-historian from Manipur, India, shapes tensions between violence and beauty into an allegory, calling residents and readers alike to stay awake.
At the Intersection of Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin Street
A poet-anthropologist in Indonesia criticizes extremist militants who use religion to commit violence.
View All in Power
![Several people wearing matching brown jumpsuits sit on a long brown bench, holding landline phones and facing a large clear wall. On the other side of the first window, a person with a white headscarf on cries while holding a phone.]()
![A header image on a cellphone of several people wearing military uniforms and holding hands is above a yellow logo and white text that reads, “Israel Defense Forces.” White text underneath reads, “Official IDF Twitter account. We tweet real-time information and updates in 7 languages—choose yours.”]()
![A person with short black hair looks away from the viewer out of a window on the room’s back wall. Between the person and the window is a narrow bed with blue, pink, and red linens.]()
![A computer-rendered graphic depicts a group of people in torn clothes and furs with black smudges on their faces and bodies. They gather in front of a rock overhang, with one sitting in front and poking at a pile of wood near which are dangling pieces of meat.]()
![In a building’s large, carpeted atrium, several people in button-down shirts, khakis, and slacks lie on the floor. People on the perimeter hold up two signs, one that reads, “No Business as Usual While Canada Funds Genocide” and another that says, “Ceasefire Now!”]()
![In a brick-covered public square surrounded by buildings, a metal statue features two people with flattened fronts and their hands extended sideways facing each other. They stand on opposite sides of a gap in the rounded brick hill they are built on.]()
How Israeli Prisons Terrorize Palestinians—Inside and Outside Their Walls
An anthropologist in the West Bank explains how Israel’s prison regime dehumanizes Palestinians, who nevertheless dream of freedom and resist erasure.
The Viral Atrocities Posted by Israeli Soldiers
Tracing 75 years of Israeli war photography, an anthropologist explains how images that reframe disproportionate violence as proof of victory have intensified in the war on Gaza that erupted in 2023.
What It’s Like to Grow Old on the Margins
In a brief documentary, an anthropologist provides a glimpse into the precarious lives of poor older Peruvians whose experiences mirror those of countless elders around the world.
Dismantling the “Man the Hunter” Myth
Two biological anthropologists analyze archaeological and physiological evidence to debunk enduring assumptions about the gendered division of labor in ancient times.
Anthropologists on Palestine
Amid the war on Gaza and long before, anthropologists have been speaking out against Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Here’s a curated list of their perspectives as scholars and activists.
Dismantling the Walls in Our Heads
The Berlin Wall fell more than three decades ago—but political, social, and economic divides between East and West Germany continue to reverberate, even among those born after Reunification.
Professor Talking Points
- Police forces exist in countries around the world and hold differing levels of power depending upon the type of government that presides over them.
- As an institution, the police are expected to protect, serve, and maintain order among civilian populations. Because of their mandate, any violence they use to achieve order is generally viewed as legitimate and supported by the state.
- Anthropologists study police and policing through a cultural lens, and focus on a number of salient topics: for example, power dynamics within police forces and between the police and the people they protect; the police as an arm of the state; population control; the historical roots of policing that are often linked to European colonialism and plantation slavery; and the role of class, race, sexuality, mental health, and gender as they affect police officers, and influence which communities are likely to be targets of policing.
- Anthropologists have also played important roles in ongoing conversations around police violence and solutions to it. Their research reveals that other approaches can be used to ensure safety and that the style of policing as currently conducted in many countries has not always existed. These scholars support different strategies and tactics to achieve security and safe societies: for example, community policing, building trust between civilians and the police, legal change, police reform, and abolition of police forces.
Academic Articles
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Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha. 2020. “The Jungle Academy: Molding White Supremacy in American Police Recruits.” American Anthropologist 122 (1): 143–156.
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Martin, Jeffrey T. 2018. “Police and Policing.” Annual Review of Anthropology 47 (1): 133–148.
Student Discussion Questions
- What social factors contribute to differing opinions about the police?
- What similarities and differences do you see, if any, across accounts of policing in different parts of the world?
- Does the concept of coerced harmony discussed in Lau’s SAPIENS article apply to other readings? If so, how?
- What does Smith say in the interview with SAPIENS about the results people can expect from diversifying the police force and how we might think of individual officers as opposed to the police as an institution? How does Smith’s perspective on these two issues differ from Gusterson’s argument in his SAPIENS column post?
- Why is it important to learn about the culture of police academies and training? Can this information give clues to how to improve policing?
- What alternatives to current forms of policing are mentioned in these articles? Which of them resonate with you and why?
Activities
- Have students write an op-ed about policing that responds to key arguments of the unit readings.
Additional Resources
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Article: Favian Alejandro Martín and Mona J. E. Danner’s “Elusive Justice: Tribal Police Officers’ Perception of Justice in an American Indian Community”
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Book: Laurence Ralph’s The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence
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Book: Savannah Shange’s Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness, and Schooling in San Francisco
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Podcast: SAPIENS’ “Police Violence and the Pandemic”
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Podcast: The Conversation’s Pasha “Talking #EndSARS and the New Proposed Unit”
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Podcast: CANADALAND’s “Everybody Else is Abolishing the Police, So Why Can’t We?”
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Website: Movement for Black Lives’ Defund the Police page
Unit By
Eshe Lewis (2020)
Teaching
Cultural Anthropology
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Unit 8
Pandemics
