Waiting for Europe: Utopia, Narratives of the Imaginary West and the Materiality of Police Culture in Ukraine

Ivan Shmatko

The British Journal of Criminology, 2023, vol. 63, issue 5, 1327-1342

Abstract: Despite the long-held interest of researchers in the police culture(s), police imaginaries have barely received attention. This article is concerned with the imaginaries of the West produced by Ukrainian police officers. Based on the 5-month ethnography in two Ukrainian cities, I argue that Ukrainian police officers construct the idealized non-place of the Imaginary West to cope with the pressures of their work and criticize their working conditions, perceived lack of support from the state, gaps in infrastructure and lack of authority in encounters with the public. I discuss the implications of research on imaginary non-places for the field of police studies, arguing for the need to account for the materiality of culture.

Keywords: Policing; police culture; Imaginary West; utopia; working conditions; materiality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azac087 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:crimin:v:63:y:2023:i:5:p:1327-1342.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The British Journal of Criminology is currently edited by Eamonn Carrabine

More articles in The British Journal of Criminology from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().