"Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life" takes a unique approach to several abiding issues in criminology and sociology from the standpoint of philosophy and aesthetics. This study by a self-described philosopher-cop develops a phenomenological interpretation of police-citizen encounters, revealing the importance of metaphysics in everyday life through a disclosure of the grounding principles that inform the bureaucratic approach to human predicaments.

Jonathan M. Wender, a social philosopher and veteran police sergeant, draws on Martin Heidegger to argue that praxis is poetry,...