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Critical Approaches to Global Police Power

Theory, History, Activism

Critical Approaches to Global Police Power cover

Critical Approaches to Global Police Power

Theory, History, Activism

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Pre-order. Available Oct 29 2026
$103.50 RRP $115.00 Website price saving $11.50 (10%)

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Description

What is the global nature of police power? What are its features and how can they be studied? This landmark multidisciplinary volume looks beyond policing as experienced at the local level, and instead explores the “police idea,” practices, and institutions that have been historically developed through the interaction of capitalist growth, nation-state formation, and imperial encounters.

Drawing on a set of uniquely global case studies including that of the UK, China, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, and the US, this volume shows how police power has been formed by, and has likewise formed, capitalism, nationalism, and imperialism by acting as midwife, guardian, or guarantor
of the norms and forms of life produced by these vast global processes.

Table of Contents

Introduction:
Towards a Critical Analysis of Global Police Power
by Amit Prakash and Max Ward

Part I: Questioning “Origins” and Global Circulations of the Police Idea
Chapter 1:
Policía beyond the Police
by Laura Gutiérrez and Mark Neocleous

Chapter 2:
Japan and the Global Circulation of the Police Idea
by Max Ward

Part II: Coloniality, Globality, and the Police
Chapter 3:
The “Colonial-Global” and the Birth of the New Police in England and the United States
by Julian Go

Chapter 4:
The French Connection: The “Oil Stain” Theory of Counterinsurgency and the Making of Global Police Power
by Amit Prakash

Part III: Global Perspectives, Local Police
Chapter 5:
Revisiting the Perfect Policeman, Questioning Global Perspectives: Policing and Modernity in 1930s Colonial Indonesia
by Marieke Bloembergen

Chapter 6:
Policing Against Capitalism: A Maoist Genealogy of Revolutionary Policing
by Jeffrey T. Martin

Part IV: The Challenge of Understanding and Confronting Global Police Power
Chapter 7:
Policing Us into Extinction
by Guillermina Seri

Chapter 8:
A Critique of Global Police Power: A Conversation
Alex Vitale and Stuart Schrader

Bibliography
List of Contributors

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Oct 29 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Pages 288
ISBN 9781350574861
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Max Ward

Max Ward is Professor of History at Middlebury Col…

Anthology Editor

Amit Prakash

Amit Prakash is Visiting Assistant Professor of Gl…

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