Journal of Rural Studies
Volume 39, June 01, 2015, Pages 278-286
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom
Abstract
The rhetoric of
community is widely deployed in rural policing but can be problematic
for three main reasons. The idea of community can exclude as well as
include; be used as a way of shifting responsibility for policing away
from the state and sometimes produces insular, bounded views of places.
In response to these concerns, this paper uses a relational approach to
re-conceptualise rural policing as a networked activity that enrols
various actors to produce different forms of policing in different
places. To illustrate the potential of this approach it considers how
various agencies are drawn into searches for missing people in the
countryside. It pays particular attention to non-human agencies,
specifically search-dogs
handled by volunteers, in searches for missing people. As well as
broadening empirical and conceptual knowledge of rural policing, the
paper also contributes to wider debates in rural studies about the place
of animals, and especially working dogs, in the countryside. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
Author keywords
Animal geography; Community; Dogs; Missing people; Relational networks; Rural policing
Indexed keywords
GEOBASE Subject Index: animal; canid; police force; rural society; social network
Species Index: Animalia; Canis familiaris
