In the Sticks Cultural Identity in a Rural Police Force [Hardcover]

After twenty-five years of police service in urban Tyneside, Malcolm Young, a policeman and social anthropologist, was promoted to Superintendent of the West Mercia Constabulary. The arrival of this 'import' in West Mercia coincided with monetarist demands for efficiency and effectiveness, a political thrust which clashed against rural ideas of hierarchy and paternalism and a culture that denied credibility to outsiders. Detailing the way West Mercia operated and justified some bizarre practices, the ethnography shows how cultural identity was defined and deployed on a daily basis and explores the diverse and rich cultural baggage the rural world sustained in the face of intense calls for change. The author links the idiosyncratic practices he encountered to the racism he observed--a powerful means of maintaining social boundaries, defending edgy environments and preserving a semi-closed culture from the intrusions of outsiders.

From reviews ofAn Inside Job: This is not simply the story of peculiar police practices; it is a wholly original account of how critical myths about the relative stability of our entire society were generated and maintained...in these duplicitous days, we can only be grateful that here is one police notebook that has so evidently made it untouched to the outside world. --Laurie Taylor,New Statesman and Society