A Philosophical History of Police Power. ISBN 9781350204041 from Practitioner Books

Rethinking the philosophical grounds of police power, Melayna Lamb argues that traditional ideas of sovereignty and the law need to be radically re-evaluated. In placing police at the centre of analysis this book demonstrates the manner in which police power exists in a complex and overlapping relationship with sovereignty and law in a form which is not reducible to implementation. In doing this it argues for the centrality of order in any consideration of police and challenging a common narrative whereby a dynamic, interventionist sovereign power that follows from a belief of order as 'artificial' is replaced by a liberal, limited non-interventionist sovereign power that proceeds from a 'natural' order. Moving through thinkers such as Hobbes, Hegel and Adam Smith the book argues that police power is in fact an-archic in form, in a manner that makes it impossible to hold accountable through the law. Lamb adopts an interdisciplinary approach that turns to philosophy to make sense of global events that see police power at their centre. This includes the history of police brutality in the US, the structural injustices made more apparent by COVID-19 and the growing calls to abolish the police.

preface acknowledgements Introduction Sovereign Police? Oikonomia The end of Oikonomia? The Argument The Structure Prologue: Foucault, Order, Modernity Archaeology and Order Biopolitics, Discipline and Order Order: Physis or Nomos? Chapter 1 Sovereignty and Fear: Hobbes and the Production of Order The Political Animal vs. the Wolf (Dis)order, Teleology and the Life of the State Living and Living Well From the State of Fear to Fearing the State: Dealing with Disease The Splitting of Power Chapter 2 Hegel and Police: On the Relation between Universal and Particular The Hegelian State Hegel's Polizei Fichte's Police Hegel on Fichte's Police Polizei, Police, Police-Power Sovereign Individuals Chapter 3 Spontaneous Order and Disappearing Police From Polizei to 'the police' Adam Smith and the Order of Nature The Invisible Hand: Order and Providence Chapter 4 Policing, Disordering and Colonising Disordering Others Policing Colonies Policing Blackness Chapter 5 Law, Sovereignty and the Exception: Benjamin and Modern Police Schmitt's Sovereign The Transcendent made Immanent: Benjamin's response Violence and Critique Benjamin's Police Force-of-law Chapter 6 The Anarchy of Order: Agamben and the Police Divided Power and Oikonomia Fate, Government and Collateral Effects The Signature of Order The Anarchic Character of Police Power bibliography index

Author(s)	By Dr Melayna Kay Lamb (University of Sussex, UK).
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN	9781350204041
Format	Hardback
Pages	256
Published in	United Kingdom
Published	8 Feb 2024
Availability	Not yet available

A Philosophical History of Police Power

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