Policing the Black Metropolis: Race, Surveillance, and Resistance

Abstract.  This talk examines a fundamental issue of concern: How do policing policies shape the everyday experiences and social statuses of targeted residents living in impoverished and criminalized communities? Moreover, how do the frequent targets of policing contest and resist this surveillance and regulation? This talk uses ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews to analyze the perceptions that low-income Black men develop while living under the shadow of policing in Chicago.

Brandon Alston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. Before joining OSU, Brandon completed his PhD in Sociology at Northwestern University, where he was a Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation and a Pre-doctoral Fellow with the Ford Foundation. His research examines how formal and informal policies and procedures sustain surveillance in everyday life. Brandon’s research has been published in Law & Society Review, Socialism and Democracy, and has received awards from the American Sociological Association, and the American Society of Criminology.