Overview

Police are becoming ever more militarized and routinely commit transgressive acts of intimidation, coercion, and violence. Cognizant of the dangers that policing poses to the general public, the sheer number of violations in the contemporary moment, and the fact that brutality has been an intrinsic part of policing since its origin, Towards Anti-policing: Prefiguring Possibilities beyond the Thin Blue Line establishes that communities should be ever vigilant of the potential for abuse and harassment. Offering a diagnostic global perspective on police brutality, this edited collection raises critical questions about whether policing is needed at all and what underlying purpose it actually serves. In this post-pandemic era, where the grip of authoritarianism has only tightened, Towards Anti-policing positions radical grassroots activism as a first line of critical defiance against the ‘Fear Terror Paradigm’ of policing logics and the pervasive brutality that this form of community control represents.

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9781666931914

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Reviews

"""Edited by two leading scholars in anarchist geographies, Simon Springer and Richard J. White, this book is a cry for freedom against the brutality of constituted powers and all associated dogmatisms, militarisms, and fanaticisms, even when they are styled as 'alternative'. A cry that concerns everybody who wants to make scholarship a socially relevant practice."" --Federico Ferretti, University of Bologna ""Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, Towards Anti-policing confronts the horror that is contemporary policing. As the book shows, state policing stands consistently on the wrong side of history, enforcing racialized hierarchies, deploying deadly technologies, and blocking progressive social change. Impressively international in scope, Towards Anti-policing documents the global nature of this police violence, while exploring global alternatives to policing as well. In fact, with its spirit of anarchist defiance, this book will make you think and make you mad--but it will ultimately give you hope for building a better world beyond the police."" --Jeff Ferrell, author of Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy ""Towards Anti-policing does what a lot of criticisms of policing struggle to do--it articulates a critique of the institution and its practices while also giving hope and possible trajectories for a post-policing future. There is depth in careful analysis alongside breadth of case studies, themes, and contexts across the Global North and South. It is a work of real scholarly merit, and can be read as such, but perhaps more importantly it is a curation of incisive imaginaries and visions. The police hold together many intersecting structures and relations of unequal power, and unravelling these threads of power is one of the central matters of the global permacrisis we face."" --Anthony Ince, Cardiff University"

"""Edited by two leading scholars in anarchist geographies, Simon Springer and Richard White, this book is a cry for freedom against the brutality of constituted powers and all associated dogmatisms, militarisms and fanaticisms, even when they are styled as 'alternative'. A cry that concerns everybody who wants to make scholarship a socially relevant practice."" --Federico Ferretti, University of Bologna ""Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, Towards Anti-policing confronts the horror that is contemporary policing. As the book shows, state policing stands consistently on the wrong side of history, enforcing racialized hierarchies, deploying deadly technologies, and blocking progressive social change. Impressively international in scope, Towards Anti-policing documents the global nature of this police violence, while exploring global alternatives to policing as well. In fact, with its spirit of anarchist defiance, this book will make you think and make you mad--but it will ultimately give you hope for building a better world beyond the police."" --Jeff Ferrell, author of Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy ""Towards Anti-policing does what a lot of criticisms of policing struggle to do--it articulates a critique of the institution and its practices while also giving hope and possible trajectories for a post-policing future. There is depth in careful analysis alongside breadth of case studies, themes, and contexts across the Global North and South. It is a work of real scholarly merit, and can be read as such, but perhaps more importantly it is a curation of incisive imaginaries and visions. The police hold together many intersecting structures and relations of unequal power, and unravelling these threads of power is one of the central matters of the global permacrisis we face."" --Anthony Ince, Cardiff University"

"""Edited by two leading scholars in anarchist geographies, Simon Springer and Richard J. White, this book is a cry for freedom against the brutality of constituted powers and all associated dogmatisms, militarisms, and fanaticisms, even when they are styled as 'alternative'. A cry that concerns everybody who wants to make scholarship a socially relevant practice."" ""Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, Towards Anti-policing confronts the horror that is contemporary policing. As the book shows, state policing stands consistently on the wrong side of history, enforcing racialized hierarchies, deploying deadly technologies, and blocking progressive social change. Impressively international in scope, Towards Anti-policing documents the global nature of this police violence, while exploring global alternatives to policing as well. In fact, with its spirit of anarchist defiance, this book will make you think and make you mad--but it will ultimately give you hope for building a better world beyond the police."" ""Towards Anti-policing does what a lot of criticisms of policing struggle to do--it articulates a critique of the institution and its practices while also giving hope and possible trajectories for a post-policing future. There is depth in careful analysis alongside breadth of case studies, themes, and contexts across the Global North and South. It is a work of real scholarly merit, and can be read as such, but perhaps more importantly it is a curation of incisive imaginaries and visions. The police hold together many intersecting structures and relations of unequal power, and unravelling these threads of power is one of the central matters of the global permacrisis we face."""

Author Information

Simon Springer is professor of human geography at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Richard J. White is reader in human geography at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

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