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Reviews sponsorship of the arts on Merseyside since 1989. Whilst sponsorship may now reach where public funding cannot, that does not help the arts in regions which sponsorship doesn't reach. (SJK)

1 The history of police work : travelling models. - 2 The internal organisation of the police : movements and moral orders. - 3 Dockets, police community and politics : bureaucratic order in the police. - 4 Money, morals, and law at traffic checks : registers in police interactions. - 5 Patrolling public spaces : relational stateness. - 6 Criminal investigations : boundary work and boundary shifting. - 7 Private security, vigilantes and neighbours : relating to other policing actors. - 8 Three police officers : living bureaucratically. - Conclusion: Stateness as aura

Jan Beek 's book explores everyday police work in an African country and analyses how police officers, despite prevailing stereotypes about failed states and African police, produce stateness. Drawing on highly readable ethnographic descriptions, the book shows that Ghanaian police practices often involve the exchange of money (bribes), the use of violence and the influence of politicians. However, such informal practices allow police officers to deal with the inconsistent necessities and the social context of their work. Ultimately, Ghanaian police officers are also inspired by a bureaucratic ethos and their practices are guided by it. Stateness, the book argues, is a quality of organizations, gradually emerging out of such everyday encounters. Producing Stateness allows a close look at the realities of police work in Africa and provides surprising insights into the rationalities of policing and state bureaucracies everywhere.

ABSTRACTIn criminal investigations by police officers in northern Ghana, the lines are fluid: civilians arrest suspects on their own, assuming the tasks of the police. Police officers are heavily influenced by civilians, often forming paid alliances with them. Yet such entanglements paradoxically enable state policing and integrate the police into society in a context of low resources and low legitimacy. Other practices limit and frame such transgressions. Using the concept of boundary work, this article analyses how actors maintain and negotiate the seemingly blurred distinction between state and society in West Africa.

Les policiers du Nord-Ghana définissent la déviance de manière étonnamment imprécise et qualifient en général les habitants de désinformés 1 et de terroristes. La méthode ethnographique révèle le rôle de ces discours en tant que stratégies d'orientation et de légitimation et met en lumière la manière dont les pratiques informelles s'en écartent régulièrement. Ces pratiques policières, qui apparaissent à première vue comme problématiques, peuvent alors être comprises comme une adaptation réussie à un milieu accordant une faible légitimité à la police.