Policing boundaries: The cultural work of African policing
Pratten D.
Starting from research on vigilantism and informal justice in Nigeria, this chapter looks at policing practices in the light of their links to wider practices and repertoires of legitimacy, visibility, knowledge, and punishment used in controlling crime and social deviance and resolving disputes in Africa. These practices include both long-established cultural framings of rectitude and popular legitimacy and practices which appropriate ‘state-ness’, as demonstrated by vigilante groups with whom police forces share a public space.