Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

High Policing Theory and the Question of ‘What is to be Done?’

  • Published:
Critical Criminology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Within the field of high policing theory it has become increasingly difficult to pose the question of ‘What is to be done?’ in ways that do not result in a pragmatic accommodation of existing political arrangements. This essay proposes a way of reanimating the normative impulse of earlier high policing theory such that this outcome is exceeded. It does so by drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s distinction between representation and representation in motion, such that the emergent state of normativity takes the form of normativity as a representation of itself in motion. This form of normativity draws upon the performative character of the power that is particular to the practices associated with high policing. The proposition is illustrated with normative responses made to instances of political policing within the New Zealand context.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baldino, D. (Ed.). (2010). Democratic oversight of intelligence services. Sydney: The Federation Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope (Vol. 1–3). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Born, H. (2004). Democratic and parliamentary oversight of the intelligence services: Practices and procedures. In P. Fluri & M. Hadžić (Eds.), Sourcebook on security sector reform: Collection of papers (pp. 275–295). Geneva/Belgrade: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces/Centre for Civil-Military Relations.

    Google Scholar 

  • Born, H., & Caparini, M. (2007). Democratic control of intelligence services: Containing rogue elephants. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brodeur, J.-P. (1983). High policing and low policing: Remarks about the policing of political activities. Social Problems, 30(5), 507–520.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brodeur, J.-P., Gill, P., & Töllborg, D. (Eds.). (2003). Democracy, law and security: Internal security services in contemporary Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caparini, M. (2002). Challenges of control and oversight of intelligence services in a liberal democracy. Conference paper. Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces: Geneva.

  • Chesterman, S. (2008a). We Can’t Spy … If We Can’t Buy!; The privatization of intelligence and the limits of outsourcing ‘inherently governmental functions. The European Journal of International Law, 19(5), 1055–1074.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chesterman, S. (2008b). Globalization rules: Accountability, power and the prospects for international administrative law. Global Governance, 4, 39–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly, G. (2009). Politics of the political: Psychoanalytic theory and the left(s). Journal of Political Ideologies, 14(3), 279–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Lint, W., & Virta, S. (2004). Security in ambiguity: Towards a radical security politics. Theoretical Criminology, 8(4), 465–489.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1990). Force of law: “The mystical foundations of authority”. In D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, & D. G. Carlson (Eds.), Deconstruction and the possibility of justice (pp. 3–67). New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, S. (1906). The motives of jokes—Jokes as a social process (1905). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 8, pp. 140–158). London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, P. (2004) Democratic and parliamentary accountability of intelligence services after September 11th. In P. Fluri, & M. Hadžić (eds.), Sourcebook on security sector reform. Collection of Papers. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces/Centre for Civil-Military Relations: Geneva/Belgrade, pp. 297–316.

  • Hendrickson, N. (2008). Critical thinking in intelligence analysis. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 21, 679–693.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Innes, M., Fielding, N., & Cope, N. (2005). The application of science? The theory and practice of crime intelligence analysis. British Journal of Criminology, 45, 39–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (1981). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (1984). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism. New Left Review, 146, 53–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (1988a). Metacommentary. In F. Jameson (Ed.), The Ideologies of theory. Essays 1971–1986, volume 1: Situations of theory (pp. 3–16). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (1988b). The vanishing mediator; or, Max Weber as storyteller. In F. Jameson (Ed.), The ideologies of theory. Essays 1971–1986, volume 2: The syntax of history (pp. 3–34). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (1997). Culture and finance capital. Critical Inquiry, 24(1), 246–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (2004). The politics of utopia. New Left Review, 25, (Jan/Feb), 35–54.

  • Jameson, F. (2006). Lacan and the dialectic: A fragment. In S. Žižek (Ed.), Lacan: The silent partners (pp. 365–397). London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, F. (2009). Valences of the dialectic. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knight, P. (2000). Conspiracy culture: From the Kennedy assassination to the X-files. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacan, J. (1966/2006). Response to Jean Hyppolite’s commentary on Freud’s “verneinung”. In J. Lacan, & Jacques Lacan Écrits (Ed.), The first complete edition in English (pp. 318–333). New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

  • Lefebvre, S. (2004). A look at intelligence analysis. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 17(2), 231–264.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lenin, V. L. (1902). What is to be done? Selected works, vol. 1 (pp. 119–271)/Lenin’s Collected Works (pp. 347–530). Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961.

  • Levitas, R. (2007). Looking for the blue: The necessity of utopia. Journal of Political Ideologies, 12(3), 206–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maddrell, P. (2009). Failing intelligence: U.S. intelligence in the age of transnational threats. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 22(2), 195–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mathiesen, T. (1974). The politics of abolition. Oslo: Scandinavian University Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merlingen, M., & Ostrauskaite, R. (2005). Power/knowledge in international peacebuilding: The case of the EU police mission in Bosnia. Alternatives, 30, 297–323.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller, D. G. (2009). Improving futures intelligence. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 22(3), 382–395.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. (2003). Report of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service: Report to the House of Representatives for the year ended 30 June 2003. Wellington: New Zealand Government.

  • New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. (2005). Report of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service: Report to the House of Representatives for the year ended 30 June 2005. Wellington: New Zealand Government.

  • New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. (2006). Report of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service: Report to the House of Representatives for the year ended 30 June 2006. Wellington: New Zealand Government.

  • O’Reilly, C., & Ellison, G. (2006). “Eye spy private high”: Re-conceptualising high policing theory. British Journal of Criminology, 46(4), 641–660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliver, W. H. (2001). The future behind us: The Waitangi tribunal’s retrospective utopia. In A. Sharp & P. McHugh (Eds.), Histories, power and loss: uses of the past—A New Zealand commentary (pp. 9–30). Wellington: Bridget Williams Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pritchard, M., & Goodman, M. (2009). Intelligence: The loss of innocence. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 22(1), 147–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, A. (2004). The politics of lack. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6, 259–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turk, A. (1981). Organizational deviance and political policing. Criminology, 19(2), 231–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Žižek, S. (2002). For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a political factor London and New York. Verso.

  • Zupančič, A. (2003). Addendum: On love as comedy. In A. Zupančič (Ed.), The Shortest shadow: Nietzsche’s philosophy of the two (pp. 164–182). Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Cultural Studies, Massey University, Private Bag 102 904, North Shore City, Auckland, 0745, New Zealand

    Warwick Tie

Authors
  1. Warwick Tie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Warwick Tie.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tie, W. High Policing Theory and the Question of ‘What is to be Done?’. Crit Crim 19, 155–174 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-010-9109-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-010-9109-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation