Description
Book SynopsisWhat 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 (19491987) 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
Trade Review
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 twenty 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. Martin spent almost a decade living in Taiwan, and this book is a fittingly rich intellectual legacy of his sojourn on that enchanted island.
* The China Quarterly *
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.
* Polar *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Backstage Passage
2. The Paichusuo and the Jurisdiction of Qing
3. Policing and the Politics of Care
4. Administrative Repair
5. Holding Things Together
6. Strong Democracy, Weak Police
Notes
Bibliography
Index
