Informed in and through difference: The perspectives of Johannesburg's suburban reservists and their role in the SAPS
(2013) SIMV18 20131Graduate School
- Abstract
- Despite a fair amount of academic attention being afforded to the South African Police Service (SAPS), one actor within it has been constantly ignored. Considering reservists make in excess of 15% of the overall policing staff (albeit only as temporary staff) in Gauteng this gap is surprising. Reservists wear an identical uniform and carry out the same functions as permanent members but are not remunerated for their services and do it on a part time basis (minimum 16 hours per month).
Using McClintock’s (1995) ‘situated psychoanalysis’; Acker’s (2006) ‘inequality regime’, and Foucault’s (1977) concept of ‘bio-power’ this paper analyses the perceptions of reservists working in suburban Johannesburg. It maps how inequalities are... (More) - Despite a fair amount of academic attention being afforded to the South African Police Service (SAPS), one actor within it has been constantly ignored. Considering reservists make in excess of 15% of the overall policing staff (albeit only as temporary staff) in Gauteng this gap is surprising. Reservists wear an identical uniform and carry out the same functions as permanent members but are not remunerated for their services and do it on a part time basis (minimum 16 hours per month).
Using McClintock’s (1995) ‘situated psychoanalysis’; Acker’s (2006) ‘inequality regime’, and Foucault’s (1977) concept of ‘bio-power’ this paper analyses the perceptions of reservists working in suburban Johannesburg. It maps how inequalities are historically reproduced and have, in turn, impacted on how reservists come to understand themselves as subjects in the SAPS.
Following 14 semi-structured individual interviews and two focus group discussions it was found, using critical discourse analysis, that the most common discourses among reservists, with regard to difference, circulate around who and why people become reservists (which is informed by geography and history), how people are prioritised for different work (based on essentialist constructions of who should do what), as well as anxiety over organisational changes which directly affect reservists’ functioning.
Key words: police, reservist, inequalities, articulated categories, subjectivity, South Africa (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/3806208
- author
- Forster-Towne, Claudia LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMV18 20131
- year
- 2013
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Police, reservist, inequalities, articulated categories, subjectivity, South Africa, Johannesburg, South African Police Service, SAPS, identity, inequality regime, situated psychoanalysis, bio-power, gender, race, class
- language
- English
- id
- 3806208
- date added to LUP
- 2013-06-14 12:06:40
- date last changed
- 2013-06-14 12:06:40
@misc{3806208,
abstract = {{Despite a fair amount of academic attention being afforded to the South African Police Service (SAPS), one actor within it has been constantly ignored. Considering reservists make in excess of 15% of the overall policing staff (albeit only as temporary staff) in Gauteng this gap is surprising. Reservists wear an identical uniform and carry out the same functions as permanent members but are not remunerated for their services and do it on a part time basis (minimum 16 hours per month).
Using McClintock’s (1995) ‘situated psychoanalysis’; Acker’s (2006) ‘inequality regime’, and Foucault’s (1977) concept of ‘bio-power’ this paper analyses the perceptions of reservists working in suburban Johannesburg. It maps how inequalities are historically reproduced and have, in turn, impacted on how reservists come to understand themselves as subjects in the SAPS.
Following 14 semi-structured individual interviews and two focus group discussions it was found, using critical discourse analysis, that the most common discourses among reservists, with regard to difference, circulate around who and why people become reservists (which is informed by geography and history), how people are prioritised for different work (based on essentialist constructions of who should do what), as well as anxiety over organisational changes which directly affect reservists’ functioning.
Key words: police, reservist, inequalities, articulated categories, subjectivity, South Africa}},
author = {{Forster-Towne, Claudia}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Informed in and through difference: The perspectives of Johannesburg's suburban reservists and their role in the SAPS}},
year = {{2013}},
}