Policing the Frontier

This book explores what it means to be a gendarme investigating cases, writing reports, and settling disputes in rural Niger. At the same time, the book looks at the larger bureaucracy and the irresolvable tension between bureaucratic structures and procedures and peoples' lives. The world of facts and files exists on one side, and the chaotic and messy human world exists on the other. The book contends that bureaucracy and police work emerge in a sphere of constant and ambivalent connection and separation. The book's frontier in Niger (and beyond) is seen through ideas of space, condition, and project, packed with constraints and possibilities, riddled with ambiguities, and brutally destructive yet profoundly empowering. As the book demonstrates, the tragedy of the frontier becomes as palpable as the true impossibility of police work and bureaucracy.