From Family to Police Force illuminates the production and contestation of social, familial, and national order on a South Asian borderland. In the borderland that divides Kutch, a district in the western Indian state of Gujarat, from Sindh, a southern province in Pakistan, there are many forces at work: civil and border police, the air wing of the armed forces, paramilitary forces, and various intelligence agencies that depute officers to the region. These groups are the major actors in the field of security and policing. Farhana Ibrahim offers a bird's-eye view of these groups, drawing on long-standing anthropological engagement with the region. She observes policing on multiple levels, showing in detail that the nation-state is only one of the scales at which policing is enacted at a borderland.

Ibrahim draws on multiple sources and forms of policing structure to illuminate everyday interaction on the personal scale, bringing families and individuals into the broader picture. From Family to Police Force looks beyond the obvious sites, sources, and modes of policing to show the distinctions between the act of policing and the institution of the police.

About the Author

Farhana Ibrahim is Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She is author of Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns.

Reviews

To explore, illustrate, and advance theories about such "policing," Ibrahim draws on her fieldwork in western India's Rann of Kutch desert region, a contested borderland with Pakistan. She analyzes how patriarchs and senior wives deploy domestic secrecy against surveillance by the public, the Indian state, NGOs, and anthropologists.

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Book Information
ISBN 9781501759543
Author Farhana Ibrahim
Format Paperback
Page Count 210
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 16mm