'What Next, Dwarves?': images of police culture in Life on Mars

This article addresses the nature of police television dramas through an in-depth analysis of the characters and plotlines of the BBC show Life on Mars. It assesses how the series compares and contrasts with other cop shows such as The Sweeney and The Wire and questions whether the fictional representations of police and society in Life on Mars are indicative of what criminologists know about police culture from the 1970s onwards. The article also explores what this complex programme means for the general public with their anxieties about the efficacy of criminal justice agencies in a post-industrial society. The piece then addresses the representations of police occupational cultures depicted during the series (including elements of officer corruption, sexism, racism and homophobia) and how these help us to understand the changes in policing that occurred between 1973 and the 2000s. It suggests that, despite its ambiguities, Life on Mars in many ways acts as a paean to 1970s policing by appearing to reject the ‘politically correct’ strictures that surround policing in the 21st century

The fiction of development: literary representation as a source of authoritative knowledge

This article introduces and explores issues regarding the question of what constitute valid forms of development knowledge, focusing in particular on the relationship between fictional writing on development and more formal academic and policy-oriented representations of development issues. We challenge certain conventional notions about the nature of knowledge, narrative authority and representational form, and explore these by comparing and contrasting selected works of recent literary fiction that touch on development issues with academic and policy-related representations of the development process, thereby demonstrating the value of taking literary perspectives on development seriously. We find that not only are certain works of fiction 'better' than academic or policy research in representing central issues relating to development but they also frequently reach a wider audience and are therefore more influential. Moreover, the line between fact and fiction is a very fine one, and there can be significant advantages to fictional writing over non-fiction. The article also provides an Appendix of relevant works of fiction that we hope academics and practitioners will find both useful and enjoyable