Policing Ethnography

This paper explores the dilemmas and opportunities that confront ethnographers of police organisations. It recounts my experience of doing ethnographic research in the Durban Public Order Police unit, previously known as the Riot Unit or the Internal Stability Division. I argue that being reflexive about your own personal characteristics and standpoint is crucial to the outcome of ethnographic research. Ethnographic research in organisations such as the police may also lead to moral compromises and vulnerability to potential danger, dilemmas that individual ethnographers have to negotiate in ways that are most ‘comfortable’ to them.