Policing the World:

Entanglements & Convergences across the North-South Divide

March 24-25, 2023

David Rubenstein Forum, University of Chicago

This conference brings together scholars in sociology, history, political science and anthropology to explore policing from a comparative and global perspective. Existing studies of policing have tended to presume that policing in the Global North and in the Global South, or in the metropole and colony, are separate, distinct and different. Overthrowing the limitations of methodological nationalism, Eurocentrism and exceptionalism, this conference explores similarities, shared patterns, and conjoined histories of policing. We hope to encourage new conversations between scholars of policing who are already doing comparative or transnational work with those who focus upon individual countries and time periods.