Materialities of the Performative: A Sociology of the Police Uniform

Police equipment (uniforms and armament) is rarely analyzed for its symbolic means. This text focuses on a cultural-sociological analysis of police materialities, bringing together material semiotics with theories of performativity. The last 180 years of German history serve as a case study, which, due to its changes in political regimes, is particularly revealing. It shows that while the materiality of state power was largely oriented toward the policing of subjects through the direct use of force, since the 1970s, there has been an increasing tendency toward making uniforms and equipment
more civilized and defensive as a way to create distance between the police and the public. In a longitudinal view, therefore, the police’s materialities can be seen as an indicator of respective political and social conditions that correspond with changes in the police’s self-image.