After twenty-five years of police service in urban Tyneside, Malcolm Young, a policeman and social anthropologist, was promoted to Superintendent of the West Mercia Constabulary. The arrival of this 'import' in West Mercia coincided with monetarist demands for efficiency and effectiveness, a political thrust which clashed against rural ideas of hierarchy and paternalism and a culture that denied credibility to outsiders. Detailing the way West Mercia operated and justified some bizarre practices, the ethnography shows how cultural identity was defined and deployed on a daily basis and...
After twenty-five years of police service in urban Tyneside, Malcolm Young, a policeman and social anthropologist, was promoted to Superintendent of t...
