A fighting fetish: On transnational police and their warlike presentation of self
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/13624806211009487 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211009487
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(3) 400 –418
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806211009487
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A fighting fetish: On
transnational police
and their warlike
presentation of self
David Sausdal
Lund University, Sweden
Abstract
Transnational police readily use martial language in the stories they tell about their
work. Their actual work, however, tells a different and less dramatic story. Why, then,
do they insist on these warlike tales? Why is there a discrepancy between the self-
representation of transnational policing and its reality? Using an ethnographic study,
this article provides some answers. First, it includes an overview of three established
explanations of the inclination of transnational police to represent their work in
warlike terms. Next, an additional reading is presented. Building on Reiner’s discussion
of “police fetishism”, this reading proposes that transnational policing actors have an
idée fixe about their own professional inevitability. They blindly believe that policing
must exist, but also that it has to be done combatively to truly work. In conclusion,
the article contemplates what the existence of such a “fighting fetish” means in both
theoretical and reform terms.
Keywords
police culture, police fetishism, presentation of self, transnational ethnography,
transnational policing, warfare
Introduction: Ready for combat!
To set the context, let us first consider something I was told during my ongoing ethno-
graphic study of European transnational policing. In this case, I received two explanations
Corresponding author:
David Sausdal, Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sandgatan 11, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden.
Email: David.sausdal@soc.lu.se
1009487TCR0010.1177/13624806211009487Theoretical CriminologySausdal
research-article2021
Article
Sausdal 401
which, though representing the work of transnational policing in very different ways,
were given to me by the same transnational policing actor, in this case a Europol officer:
1. This is where we are most days [using his eyes to indicate the office], sitting in front of our
computers, close to our phones. If not, we’re probably attending yet another meeting in one of
the conference rooms downstairs. Or maybe we’re chatting to a colleague, turning over some
information we’ve been asked for, gathering some ourselves, forwarding requests or maybe just
having a chat. That’s honestly how it is most days.
2. Trust me, we’re the last line of defense! The work we do is what’s needed in this day and age.
I’m not saying we don’t need preventive work, meetings, diplomacy, information sharing,
analyses and other such softer and bureaucratic approaches. That’s also part of it. But most of
all we’re here to put up a fight against the kinds of crimes that know no limits. These are crimes
that don’t wait for us to finish legal debates and so on . . . For transnational crime the rule is
that there’s no rule . . . And this is why we need more men, more hi-tech solutions, the best
weapons, and more resources in general . . . If we’re to bring about change, we need to be fully
equipped, ready for combat!
Taken together, these two dissimilar representations of transnational policing give the
gist of this article’s theoretical interest. On the one hand, they convey the different kinds
of work involved in transnational policing. As research has firmly established, transna-
tional policing is not just a matter of crime fighting, but very much a matter of intelli-
gence work, information management, preventing and preempting future or further
harms, as well as promoting collaboration between public and private stakeholders (see
Bowling and Sheptycki, 2012; Franko and Gundhus, 2015; Lemieux, 2013; McDaniel
et al., 2019).
On the other hand, the two illustrations also exemplify what I have repeatedly experi-
enced during my last six years of ethnographically researching transnational policing
efforts at both the national and international level across Europe: namely that transna-
tional police—be it a local Danish, Romanian, Spanish or Portuguese detective involved
in transnational policing activities or a Europol, Frontex or Interpol employee—tend to
represent the quintessence of their work in martial terms. Transnational police do indeed
communicate the necessity of, for example, “preventive work, meetings, diplomacy,
information sharing, analyses and other such softer and bureaucratic approaches”, nev-
ertheless, one is left with the impression that, to them, transnational policing is first of all
a “combat”, a “fight”. This is an observation also made by other scholars of transnational
policing who point to the fact that such war-talk is not just prevalent but even more
accentuated in transnational policing than in other forms of policing, in the sense that
transnational policing is repeatedly portrayed as central to the fight against the great
harms of transnational crime (see Andersson, 2014a, 2016; Bowling and Sheptycki,
2012; Feldman, 2019; Sheptycki, 2000a, 2007a, 2017; Walker, 2012).
As part of a special issue exploring representations or “theatrics” of transnational
criminal justice, this article examines this combative dramaturgy. Why, it asks, do trans-
national police often present their work in warlike terms, though they are also engaged
in work that is much less dramatic yet, by their own admission, also of significance?
Looking at their actual work, one could even claim that the majority of transnational
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