This paper will not address questions about police officers because my
focus here is on how I managed the interrelatedness between the research
scene, the academic scene, and the private scene. Thus the analysis material
consists of my research experience while remaining relatively involved in
my daily social life as a young mixed-race woman in her thirties. I am a
mother, involved in a long-term relationship, the eldest of the five daugh-
ters of a Belgo-Congolese couple, and I have a wide social network consist-
ing of friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.
While preparing fieldwork, the position I chose was direct, albeit passive,
observation, limiting the participatory aspect of observation to my presence
alongside the actors and to my involvement in discussions with them during
their work hours. It was out of the question for the researcher to participate
actively in police interventions. I thus went along with police officers follow-
ing the pace of their shifts (or “services”) organized on the observation site
in 10-hour spans, in order to observe as closely as possible their interactions
with the population. For the population, the distinction between the police
officers and myself was most likely not obvious,^2 but on the contrary it was
for the police officers. They were not accompanied by an intern (which they
are used to), so they had nothing to expect from me in terms of active sup-
port during hearings, searches, scoping the scene, etc. I thus remained a
third party, definitively “situated” outside the police force and thus in their
eyes not clearly “won over.” As a result, throughout the fieldwork, my posi-
tion in relation to the observed actors required constant adjusting. On the
whole, the welcome on the part of the police officers was active and benevo-
lent, in each of the services encountered. A space of trust could thus emerge
with the actors from the field, sufficient to welcome my presence, their ques-
tions, their answers, their curiosity about my aims, their protection, and to
a certain extent my participation in their group life. I obviously did not have
access to all of the practices of the police officers or to the meanings they
lent to interactions in which they were engaged. However, data collection
seems to me to have taken place in a favorable spacetime continuum that
allowed a relative confidence in the former’s quality.
Empirical research on the police has been developing over more than
halfa century. Monjardet has noted that, despite the diversity of objects of
their respective fields of observation, one common trait brought the
researchers together: their works devoted a portion of their development
“to the position of the researcher toward his object, and more concretely to
the relationship established with the police officers in observation situa-
tions” (Monjardet, 1994,p. 393). I am no exception to this long tradition,
and participate with the greatest interest.
46 CAROLINE DE MAN