Overview

What if the job of police was to cultivate the political will of a community to live with itself (rather than enforce law, keep order, or fight crime)? In Sentiment, Reason, and Law, Jeffrey T. Martin describes a world where that is the case. The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (1949-1987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. Here, Martin describes the social life of a neighborhood police station during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition. He shows an apparent paradox of how a strong democratic order was built on a foundation of weak police powers, and demonstrates how that was made possible by the continuity of an illiberal idea of policing. His conclusion from this paradox is that the purpose of the police was to cultivate the political will of the community rather than enforce laws and keep order. As Sentiment, Reason, and Law shows, the police force in Taiwan exists as an ""anthropological fact,"" bringing an order of reality that is always, simultaneously and inseparably, meaningful and material. Martin unveils the power of this fact, demonstrating how the politics of sentiment that took shape under autocratic rule continued to operate in everyday policing in the early phase of the democratic transformation, even as a more democratic mode of public reason and the ultimate power of legal right were becoming more significant.

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9781501740046

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Reviews

Against the classical idea that the police are an apolitical law enforcement institution entitled to the legitimate use of force, Jeffrey Martin shows, through his lively ethnography of a Taiwanese precinct, that, deeply rooted in their illiberal national past, the police resort to affective solidarities and mediated compromises much more than to legal instruments and violent actions. His book thus provides a fascinating addition to contemporary theories of policing. -- Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study, author of <I>Enforcing Order</I> Through an ethnography of policing in a recently democratized state, Sentiment, Reason, and Law offers a deep, nuanced, and exhaustively researched analysis of policing as a fraught but integral aspect of any democracy. This book is intricate, grounded, and engaging. -- Anya Bernstein, University at Buffalo School of Law

Through an ethnography of policing in a recently democratized state, Sentiment, Reason, and Law offers a deep, nuanced, and exhaustively researched analysis of policing as a fraught but integral aspect of any democracy. This book is intricate, grounded, and engaging. -- Anya Bernstein, University at Buffalo School of Law Against the classical idea that the police are an apolitical law enforcement institution entitled to the legitimate use of force, Jeffrey Martin shows, through his lively ethnography of a Taiwanese precinct, that, deeply rooted in their illiberal national past, the police resort to affective solidarities and mediated compromises much more than to legal instruments and violent actions. His book thus provides a fascinating addition to contemporary theories of policing. -- Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study, author of <I>Enforcing Order</I>

Jeffrey T. Martin's book is a masterful addition to the ethnographic literature both on the anthropology of the state and for the anthropology of police and policing...The strength of the book lies in the in-depth fieldwork that, combined with a refusal of presentism, enables Martin to distance himself from culturalism and present Taiwanese police and its work as part of a historical process...Thus, this book can be highly recommended as a contribution to the anthropology of policing and of the state. -- Maria de Fatima Amante, Universidade de Lisboa * Polar * Jeff Martin's book is a very welcome volume in Cornell's ground-breaking Police/ Worlds series on security, crime and governance, and this book offers the kind of sustained intellectual analysis of police that I wish I had been able to read as a neophyte comparative criminological researcher prior to visiting Taiwan nearly 20 years ago..Sentiment, Reason and Law does precisely that, and invites us to consider what concepts, contexts and forms are most pertinent for building a reflective relation to the present. Jeff Martin spent almost a decade living in Taiwan, and this book is a fittingly rich intellectual legacy of his sojourn on that enchanted island. -- Bill Hebenton, manchester.c.uk * The China Quarterly *

Author Information

Jeffrey T. Martin is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Follow him on X @jematica.

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