Book review: Gregory Feldman, The Gray Zone: Sovereignty, Human Smuggling, and Undercover Police Investigation in Europe
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619879246 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | William Garriott |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews 711
Gregory Feldman, The Gray Zone: Sovereignty, Human Smuggling, and Undercover Police Investigation
in Europe, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 2019; 240 pp.: 9781503607651, $27.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: William Garriott, Drake University, USA
Readers expecting a conventional police ethnography may find themselves disoriented
by Feldman’s The Gray Zone which is the story of an undercover police investigative
team operating in an unnamed city in an unnamed maritime southern European country.
The opening chapter, for instance, spends most of its time engaging with theories of
sovereignty in anthropology and political philosophy, rather than presenting a more
conventional overview of the literature on policing in the social sciences. But readers
would do well to remain patient. Feldman’s approach offers a fresh take on the sociopo-
litical significance of police that avoids the familiar, predictable conceptual framings.
He uses his ethnographic engagement to deepen our understanding of this particular
investigative team and what it tells us about sovereignty, the state form, and human
activity in our current moment.
Feldman observed a seven-member team (six men, one woman) whose members
come from different backgrounds but have a shared passion for their work that is matched
only by their disdain for desk jobs and bureaucracy. They spend their time on the street
investigating international crimes such as human smuggling and trafficking. This
involves sophisticated undercover work as well as long, tedious hours conducting sur-
veillance. Feldman worked with a member of the team as part of an earlier project. This
relationship afforded him significant access to the team’s daily activities. Feldman went
with them as they engaged in the most exciting parts of their work as well as the most
mundane, such as eating lunch at one of the many (often illegal) restaurants in the city
and goofing around at their office. This makes for a rich ethnography, as does Feldman’s
own positionality as a researcher. He is not simply present as an observer, but engages
the members of the team as an interlocutor. He challenges them at times and even takes
on small roles in some of their operations.
Feldman’s text is conceptually rich. Two concepts ground the text and inform the
analysis: sovereignty and the gray zone. Feldman’s understanding of sovereignty rests on
a distinction between two sovereign forms. The first sovereign form is that of the nation-
state. It involves a vertical arrangement that abstracts subjects into equal but homoge-
nous entities. It is characterized by the “equality before the law” presumed in the rule of
law. The second sovereign form involves spaces where people “come to life as particular
persons” (p. xvii). It is characterized by a horizontal arrangement in which equality
occurs through the mutual recognition of difference. If the first sovereign form figures
people as generic subjects, the second empowers them as particular subjects who occupy
a unique standpoint relative to others. This is the basis for the ethical judgment particular
to the second sovereign form.
The gray zone is not a place but “an effect of human relations” (p. 17). It is a space
“where law and custom dissipate and opportunities arise to act without precedent” (p.
xvii). The gray zone is inextricably tethered to sovereignty insofar as it is “a point in
space-time free of the constraints and contours of moral code and law, which is where
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