Provisional police authority in Maputo's inner-city periphery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4475284 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helene Maria Kyed (0000-0002-8020-7743, Dansk Institut for Internationale, Denmark, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 528-545 |
| Publication date | 2020-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263775819865553 |
| OpenAlex | W2989300557 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 28 |
In Maputo city, post-war liberalisation implied new police reforms based on the rule of law, but it also led to rising crime and an unequal distribution of public security provision that favours the inner-city over the poorer peripheries. This article explores how this spatial bordering of the city affected the configuration of police authority in an underprioritised inner-city periphery. Based on ethnography, I show how police officers struggle to perform their duty and assert authority through what I refer to as institutional-jurisdictional 'bordering practices'. Central here is the borders that separate law from popular justice and civilians from the police as a state authority with the de jure monopoly on violence and law enforcement. The officers themselves continuously deborder their own distinct authority by resolving crimes informally and by relying on civilians. Yet, this co-exists with efforts to re-border their authority through displays of state power and threats of legal processes. These (de/re)bordering practices, I argue, reflect the provisional authority of the police. The officers constantly face conflicting demands: between the new rule of law restrictions and popular preferences for immediate justice, which are both informed by historical legacies of popular justice and by the spatial bordering of the city that produces the inner-city periphery as unsafe and uncertain spaces
Criminology · Duty · Economic Justice · Law enforcement · Monopoly · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Rule of law · Sociology · State (computer science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Public Administration · Sex work and related issues
Police in Africa
African Cities
Provisional Authority
Plural Policing
The Killing Consensus
Security Blurs
City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique
The Difficulties of Donor Coordination
From General to Commissioner to General—On the Popular State of Policing in South Africa
Crime, state and civil society responses in Maputo (Mozambique)
Sovereign Bodies
Engaging, transcending and subverting dichotomies
The Government Has Long Hands
State Discourse on Internal Security and the Politics of Punishment in Post-Independence Mozambique (1975-1983)
The Heterogeneous State and Legal Pluralism in Mozambique
Critical Border Studies
Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders
Twilight Institutions
Theorizing Borders
Security Beyond the State
Politics in the City-Inside-Out
The Hybrid Authority of Sierra Leone's Chiefs
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2022 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |