Use and representations of the body among Police officers in the Province of Buenos Aires

GARRIGA ZUCAL, JOSÉ ANTONIO

Thinking the body as a basis,provocation, and burden of life. Studies in Intercutural and historical contextes

DeGruyter

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2015; p. 235 - 249

By means of an ethnographic study among officers of the Buenos Aires provincial police force, we will analyze the representations that our interlocutors make concerning their bodies and their contexts of action. There is among police officers in the province of Buenos Aires an ideal police officer, a model of the "true cop", characterized by his courage, his bravery, and his absence of fear in the "fight against crime". In this archetype, the body takes on a leading role, given that physical strength emerges as one of the required and distinctive features of police activity. This representation establishes a constant conversation with "what should be" for officers in everyday life. There is in the police world a plurality of different and distinctive ways of being a police officer. However, these multiple ways of being are confronted with a mandate that stipulates how police officers should be. An ideal police officer emerges among our informants, with a "true", distinctive and characteristic style. For members of the force, the "true cop" is one guided by his bravery in fighting crime , a police model with a bodily dimension. The imaginary profile, characterized by the use of force and courage, brings courage and bravery together with a specific type of body. We must mention that many of our interlocutors, we can notice in these pages the heterogeneity of the police universe, do not fit this mold, even though they (re)produce it.