Police guns and private security cars. Ordering the state through socio-material policing assemblages in Nairobi

In this article, I show how the work of heterogeneous security and policing assemblages in Nairobi hinges upon and reproduces physical urban borders, and consequentially enacts social orders. While these assemblages enrol a diverse collection of people and objects, I liken their work to that of the state: some urban residents are considered as belonging to safe spaces and in need of extra protection, while others are considered dangerous and targets of policing activities. I draw on one year of ethnographic fieldwork with private security companies and police patrols in middle- and upper-class Nairobi. In Nairobi, armed police personnel are commonly seen in vehicles that are marked with the logos and colours of security companies or private vehicles. These arrangements are not only based on agreements between companies managers, urban residents and police, but rely on what specific infrastructures (such as road or radio networks) and various objects (such as guns and cars) afford. These material elements are not insignificant details. Rather they become central to the unfolding of the patrols. They contribute to the work of security and policing assemblages of categorizing Nairobis residents as either dangerous and potentially criminal subjects or as residents in need of extra protection.Funding Agencies|European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant)European Research Council (ERC) [337974]</p

Urban decarbonization policy as assembling process : heterogeneous elements, networks and (un)making of target groups in a Swedish municipality between serendipity and design

In this paper, I approach urban decarbonization policy as an assembling process. Based on interview material in the municipality of Umea, Sweden, the article highlights three important aspects of how planners, strategists and project managers produce decarbonization policies, initiatives or experimental projects. The first shows how an important part of the policymaking is to contend with and bring together heterogeneous elements (e.g. low-carbon mobility initiatives, private companies, municipal transport system) to work for one goal (e.g. some families experimenting with car-free life). The second shows how cultivating relations within and outside the municipality offices allows project managers to form trusted networks that are instrumental towards more efficient policymaking and implementation. The last shows how planners unmake and remake target groups to produce coherent and effective policies. While each of these aspects, respectively, highlight typical tropes of assemblage thinking (i.e. heterogeneity, relationality and coherence) together they share a concern with the labour and work required by policy as an assembling process. Making policy on cross-sectional issues such as decarbonization, reveals labour as a relevant category to attend to the necessary tension between mission-oriented design and an openness and ability to capitalize on more serendipitous moments and opportunities

"Eyes, Ears, and Wheels": Policing Partnerships in Nairobi, Kenya

Research on policing in Africa has provided tremendous insight into how non-state actors, such as gangs, vigilantes, private security companies, and community initiatives, increasingly provide security for urban dwellers across the continent. Consequently, the state has been categorized as one order among many whose authority is co-constituted through relations with other actors. Drawing on our ethnographic fieldwork in the past two years, we highlight how the state police dominates security arrangements in Nairobi and asserts itself not just as one order among many. We show how, in various policing partnerships between police, private security companies, and residents’ associations, the state police acts as a coagulating agent of such practices. In order to elucidate this relationship, we utilize the “junior partner” model from the criminology literature and expand based on the community policing initiatives that in Nairobi act as the “eyes, ears, and wheels” of the police

"Eyes, Ears, and Wheels" : Policing Partnerships in Nairobi, Kenya

Research on policing in Africa has provided tremendous insight into how non-state actors, such as gangs, vigilantes, private security companies, and community initiatives, increasingly provide security for urban dwellers across the continent. Consequently, the state has been categorized as one order among many whose authority is co-constituted through relations with other actors. Drawing on our ethnographic fieldwork in the past two years, we highlight how the state police dominates security arrangements in Nairobi and asserts itself not just as one order among many. We show how, in various policing partnerships between police, private security companies, and residents’ associations, the state police acts as a coagulating agent of such practices. In order to elucidate this relationship, we utilize the “junior partner” model from the criminology literature and expand based on the community policing initiatives that in Nairobi act as the “eyes, ears, and wheels” of the police

A New Case of Autosomal-Dominant <i>POLR3B</i>-Related Disorder: Widening Genotypic and Phenotypic <i>Spectrum</i>

POLR3B encodes the RPC2 subunit of RNA polymerase III. Pathogenic variants are associated with biallelic hypomyelinating leukodystrophy belonging to the POLR-related disorders. Recently, the association with dominant demyelinating neuropathy, classified as Charcot–Marie–Tooth syndrome type 1I (CMT1I), has been reported as well. Here we report on an additional patient presenting with developmental delay and generalized epilepsy, followed by the onset of mild pyramidal and cerebellar signs, vertical gaze palsy and subclinical demyelinating polyneuropathy. A new heterozygous de novo missense variant, c.1297C > G, p.Arg433Gly, in POLR3B was disclosed via trio-exome sequencing. In silico analysis confirms the hypothesis on the variant pathogenicity. Our research broadens both the genotypic and phenotypic spectrum of the autosomal-dominant POLR3B-related condition

From Aarhus to Manila: Policing Practices in a Global Perspective

Policing in the global South and North are commonly characterized as vastly different by researchers and policy-makers alike. By exploring how the state police makes order in urban settings around the world, this policy brief provides insight into emerging global commonalities, including the blurring of boundaries between bureaucratic and intuitive policing styles