Unveiling police(men) histories. Urban policing in Portugal, 1860-1960´s
Unveiling police(men) histories. Urban policing in Portugal, 1860-1960´s
The aim of this project is to sketch out a social and institutional history of the Portuguese urban police between the 1860's, when a set of debates around the need of a modern police system and new public safety policies emerged, and the 1960's with the peak and beginning of decline of Estado Novo authoritarian regime. The project seeks to study the Polícia Civil, created in 1867, transformed in Polícia Cívica in 1911, and in Polícia de Segurança Pública in 1927. Even though the project is mainly concentrated in Lisbon's case, all urban policing in Portugal will be considered.
Portuguese history is notoriously marked by the macrocephaly of Lisbon. Urban policing policies, institutional model, and human resources were thought, implemented and displayed having the Capital in mind, and then extended to the whole country. Therefore, by studying Lisbon we can also infer the national trends in urban policing in the considered period. The project uses the catchword "unveiling police(men) histories" in the title because it sets a research agenda centered upon the history of the infrastructure that frames the action of the police, i.e. the material and technological culture, and the social, anthropological and moral conditions that rendered effective the enforcement of public order, the countervailing of crime and the upholding of hygienic conditions, public health and traffic circulation. Even tough this line of research does not neglect the most visible political endeavors of police action upon the central State, it is grounded, above all, on methodological perspectives rooted in the bottom-up construction of the field of study. The study of material resources available to modern state apparatus, and its transformation in the last two hundred years, has been a field of systematic attention by historians. This project intends to look more carefully to the construction and reproduction of order from the point of view of modern state fringes and to its actors. Police has been identified in the last forty years by social scientists as one of the main street-level bureaucracies (where the degree of discretion is higher), we intend then to consider this characteristic in an historical perspective.The project also places emphasis in a comparative view, given that modern police is marked by a transnational circulation of models and experiences; while we can distinguish single national histories, we can also observe a European common process of change. To identify the singularities and continuities present in the Portuguese case (from the liberal conception to the authoritarian transformation) in the European context is a key goal to this project. The overall approach is grounded in four main thematic axes: the physical insertion of the police in the city, with the development of specific organizational strategies (police stations and beat patrols); the use of technology in policing practices; the place of, and effects on, the police of rapid and radical political change; the building of the police socioprofessional community through methodologies that make use of social memory. With these different, but complementary, approaches we can explore the multiple facets that encompassed the development of urban police in Portugal. From the outset this project is conceived as an interdisciplinary project, considering contributions from History, Anthropology and Political Science, in the belief that only combining theories and methodologies of different disciplinary fields we can effectively achieve the understanding of the complexities involved in modern urban policing phenomenon. This project is also seen as step in the consolidation of an important international field of historical study in Portugal: firstly, because is a continuation of a previous project financed by FCT (POCTI/ANT/47227/2002); and, secondly, because it combines researchers that in the last years have actively researched in this field. A final word in this introduction just to mention that the project intends moreover to have a distinct interface with the Police University Institute (Instituto Superior de Ciências Policiais e Segurança Interna), trough periodical conferences, and with the Police staff itself (Polícia de Segurança Pública) trough a web site about the history of Portuguese police.
Project Unveiling police(men) histories. Urban policing in Portugal, 1860-1960´s - PTDC/HIS-HIS/115531/2009 - Financed by FCT
Urban Police,
Order and Public Safety,
State,
Street-Level Bureaucracy
The aim of this project is to sketch out a social and institutional history of the Portuguese urban police between the 1860's, when a set of debates around the need of a modern police system and new public safety policies emerged, and the 1960's with the peak and beginning of decline of Estado Novo authoritarian regime. The project seeks to study the Polícia Civil, created in 1867, transformed in Polícia Cívica in 1911, and in Polícia de Segurança Pública in 1927. Even though the project is mainly concentrated in Lisbon's case, all urban policing in Portugal will be considered.
Portuguese history is notoriously marked by the macrocephaly of Lisbon. Urban policing policies, institutional model, and human resources were thought, implemented and displayed having the Capital in mind, and then extended to the whole country. Therefore, by studying Lisbon we can also infer the national trends in urban policing in the considered period. The project uses the catchword "unveiling police(men) histories" in the title because it sets a research agenda centered upon the history of the infrastructure that frames the action of the police, i.e. the material and technological culture, and the social, anthropological and moral conditions that rendered effective the enforcement of public order, the countervailing of crime and the upholding of hygienic conditions, public health and traffic circulation. Even tough this line of research does not neglect the most visible political endeavors of police action upon the central State, it is grounded, above all, on methodological perspectives rooted in the bottom-up construction of the field of study. The study of material resources available to modern state apparatus, and its transformation in the last two hundred years, has been a field of systematic attention by historians. This project intends to look more carefully to the construction and reproduction of order from the point of view of modern state fringes and to its actors. Police has been identified in the last forty years by social scientists as one of the main street-level bureaucracies (where the degree of discretion is higher), we intend then to consider this characteristic in an historical perspective.The project also places emphasis in a comparative view, given that modern police is marked by a transnational circulation of models and experiences; while we can distinguish single national histories, we can also observe a European common process of change. To identify the singularities and continuities present in the Portuguese case (from the liberal conception to the authoritarian transformation) in the European context is a key goal to this project. The overall approach is grounded in four main thematic axes: the physical insertion of the police in the city, with the development of specific organizational strategies (police stations and beat patrols); the use of technology in policing practices; the place of, and effects on, the police of rapid and radical political change; the building of the police socioprofessional community through methodologies that make use of social memory. With these different, but complementary, approaches we can explore the multiple facets that encompassed the development of urban police in Portugal. From the outset this project is conceived as an interdisciplinary project, considering contributions from History, Anthropology and Political Science, in the belief that only combining theories and methodologies of different disciplinary fields we can effectively achieve the understanding of the complexities involved in modern urban policing phenomenon. This project is also seen as step in the consolidation of an important international field of historical study in Portugal: firstly, because is a continuation of a previous project financed by FCT (POCTI/ANT/47227/2002); and, secondly, because it combines researchers that in the last years have actively researched in this field. A final word in this introduction just to mention that the project intends moreover to have a distinct interface with the Police University Institute (Instituto Superior de Ciências Policiais e Segurança Interna), trough periodical conferences, and with the Police staff itself (Polícia de Segurança Pública) trough a web site about the history of Portuguese police.
Project Unveiling police(men) histories. Urban policing in Portugal, 1860-1960´s - PTDC/HIS-HIS/115531/2009 - Financed by FCT