Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing - Hardcover

Wood, Lesley J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745333893 ISBN 13: 9780745333892

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2014

Synopsis

Crisis and Control explains how neoliberal transformations of political and economic systems are militarising the policing of protest, based on a compelling empirical study of police agencies and practices from 1995 until the present.

Lesley J. Wood shows that the increasing role of the security and defense industries, professional police associations, anti-terrorism initiatives and 'best practices' in policing networks have accelerated the use of less lethal weapons, pre-emptive arrests, infiltration and barricading strategies against protesters.

The book uses Bourdieu and Boltanski to analyse court transcripts, police reports, policy, training materials and the conference programs of professional police organisations to argue that police agencies are neither omnipotent strategists, nor simple tools of the elite, but institutions struggling to maintain legitimacy, resources and autonomy in a changing field.

About this title

About the Author

Lesley Wood is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Crisis and Control (Pluto, 2014), Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion (2012) and co-author of the third edition of Social Movements 1768-2012 (Pluto, 2012). She is an activist in the global justice and anti-poverty movements.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0745333893
• ISBN 13: 9780745333892
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 216