Watson, Sean (1996) The emotions of social control : a study of paranoia in police occupational culture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis has several linked focuses:

1 I have argued for, and begun to develop, a theoretical and methodological framework too enable sociological research to encompass the affective dimension of human experience and action.

2.1 have put forward a model of culture as an affective phenomenon inhabiting the space between two poles of affective orientation. One pole can be characterised as desiring change, fluidity, difference, and complexity The other pole involves an enjoyment of order, and stasis, a strong tendency to split the world into good' and bad', together with a suspicion of complexity, change, and the other1. The latter of these two affective/cultural poles I have characterised as paranoid'.

3. I have explored, by means of non-participant observation and an interview study (37 interviews), the extent and nature of paranoid affective forms within police occupational culture. This is an examination of the affective cultural repertoires available to the police, and the subject positions they may therefore occupy within that cultural fabric (not an examination of psychopathology) 1 have gained evidence of a fragmentary, ambivalent and dynamic culture with distinct paranoid forms.

4. I have engaged with a number of theoretical sources in order to begin to develop a means for explaining my findings. In particular I have drawn on the work of Jaques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Theadore Adomo and Max Horkheimer, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari This is complex material and a good deal of space has been devoted to explaining the relevant aspects of their theoretical systems I have begun, however, to apply them to the question of police cultural paranoia with some success. The bipolar model of affect/culture is a common feature of all of these theorists and has enabled me to use their work to begin to link police cultural paranoia to our own paranoid visions, and to certain aspect of modernity as a whole.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Police -- Social aspects, Police psychology -- Research, Social control -- Research
Official Date:	July 1996
Dates:	Date Event July 1996 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Fine, Robert ; Ratcliffe, Peter
Extent:	vii, 255 leaves
Language:	eng

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