In his edited collection Writing the World of Policing: The Difference Ethnography Makes, renowned anthropologist-sociologist Didier Fassin brings together some of the greatest minds in the social sciences to reflect on the question of urban policing in disadvantaged neighborhoods worldwide. The aim of the volume is both to show how ethnography can illuminate the role of policing in society as well as to show how an attention to law enforcement can alter and provoke the practice of ethnography itself. Spanning five continents and tackling such concepts as accountability, complicity, morality, detention, alibi, and others, this volume is bound to become one of the major statements on a topic of increasing interest. Structured around three sections--position, observation, and description--the book mirrors the process of the ethnographic method itself, taking us deep within each local context it investigates while never losing sight of the global relevance of crime, law, and the exercise of power inherent to both.

Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.