“Keeping the Queen’s Peace”: A Sociomaterial Study of Police and Guns in a “Mangle of Risk”

• Published in: Information and organization 2024-06, Vol.34 (2), p.100513, Article 100513
• Main Authors: Fraher, Amy L., Kanji, Shireen, Branicki, Layla J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: High-risk work; Pickering's mangle of practice; Policing; Risk; Sociomateriality
• ISSN: 1471-7727; 1873-7919
• DOI: 10.1016/j.infoandorg.2024.100513

This sociomaterial study analyzes the ways that material agency plays a key role in the organizing dynamics of risky work through a study of the carrying and use of handguns by U.S. and U.K. police officers. Qualitative data (interviews and focus groups) were collected over a three-year period with police (N = 61) in New York, where officers routinely carry guns, and in London, where they typically do not. Police unanimously describe the agentic role non-human artefacts like guns play in: a) framing their cognitive processes, b) influencing their behaviour and decision-making processes, and c) impacting individuals around them. Expanding Pickering's theorization of a mangle of practice, we inductively develop a mangle of risk to explain how human and non-human agency become entangled in risky work contexts, where danger is real and time pressure is high. Understanding these dynamics requires analysis of both frontline police narratives and the prescribed organizational policies, procedures, and routines intended to contain risky situations. Findings reveal that the tools provided to police to do their job both frame and constrain operational capabilities, potentially escalating danger for police, suspects, and the community in a mangle of risk. •Defines a new concept ‘the mangle of risk’ as a complex phenomenon that results from the interplay between social and material factors in extreme work contexts.•Empirically demonstrates ways human and nonhuman agency becomes constitutively entangled in police practice•Evaluates the complex interrelatedness between history, policy and tools with real-world implications.•Sociomateriality and the mangle of risk, offer insightful analytic approaches to the study of extreme contexts.•Studies actual organizations and real people's practices within them, addressing previous criticisms of sociomaterial studies.