Title

Creating Order In The Bureaucratic Register: An Analysis Of Suicide Crime Scene Investigations In Southern Mexico

Keywords

crime scene investigations; critical discourse analysis; ethnography; Mexico; police report discourse; suicide

Abstract

Crime scene investigation reports, like other kids of official bureaucratic documents, serve an important purpose in the functioning of modern states. This article examines crime scene investigation reports from a city in southeastern Mexico pseudonymously called La Ciudad. The article combines textual discourse analysis of police suicide investigation reports with ethnographic analysis of police investigative practices to ask, how do law enforcement documents showcase the interactions between law enforcement agents and citizens? In what way can ethnographic analysis highlight and supplement the strengths and limitations of law enforcement documents as prisms of social reality? The complex and contested relationship between representatives of a Mexican law enforcement agency and the citizenry it claims to protect is visible in the documents it produces. The ethnographic material further deepens the reader's understanding of the ways in which law enforcement agents and common citizens form relationships based on negotiation and distrust.

Publication Date

10-26-2014

Publication Title

Critical Discourse Studies

Volume

11

Issue

4

Number of Pages

377-396

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2014.915383

Socpus ID

84919842411 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84919842411

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