Summary
"This research focuses on the identity performances of NP [neighbourhood policing] officers and the different ways that NP is enacted within different contexts and situated interactions. My conceptual framework draws on both ethnomethodological and poststructural approaches in understanding how officers in different contexts constructed, reconstructed and resisted discourses in the performances of particular identities. This framework is therefore sensitive to how power and resistance works through discursive constructions within particular contexts. To further improve our appreciation of context, emphasis is given to the importance of cultural meanings as an important source of discursive constraint. However, the research clearly shows that while some discourses may be dominant in influencing identity performances, these are always contested and it is though the clash of competing discourses that the agency of NP officers is revealed (Holmer-Nadesan 1996). The study adopts an ethnographic methodology, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews to examine four broad NP contexts. These are the PCSO training course and the three neighbourhood teams, all of which are located in a different policing environment. Drawing on ethnomethodology, my approach focused on the front and back stage contexts of neighbourhood policing, examining the relationships between discourses and performances within these contexts."--Abstract.