Information and communication technologies have transformed the dynamics of contention in contemporary society. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter and devices like smartphones have increasingly played a central role in facilitating and mobilizing social movements throughout different parts of the world. Concurrently, the same technologies have been taken up by public authorities (including security agencies and the police) and have been used as surveillance tools to monitor and suppress the activities of certain demonstrators.

This book explores the complex and...

Over the last two decades or so, community-based efforts have been increasingly pushed to the front line and promoted as the 'best' way to solve many, if not most, of our social problems--including homelessness, drug addiction, the spread of infectious diseases, home-grown terrorism, and delinquency and youth violence. Community-based, social justice organizations orient to youth crime as a product of social injustice. They have creative and often radical ideas about how social change can foster personal change and work daily to transform the social and penal policies aimed at poor young...

This is a book about the men and women who police contemporary South Africa. Drawing on rich, original ethnographical data, it considers how officers make sense of their jobs and how they find meaning in their duties. It demonstrates how the dynamics that lead to breakdowns in everyday policing, public order policing and high policing in transitional and neo-liberalising regimes such as South Africa, have their origins in the day to day experiences and ambitions of the average police officer.
By focusing on police officers, this book positions the individual in primacy over the...