Jennifer Wood

Nodal Governance, Democracy, and the New ‘Denizens’

We begin this paper by reviewing some recent transformations in governance. We then propose three new concepts that we believe assist us in coming to terms with these transformations and the political statuses that have emerged as part of them. These concepts are ‘nodal governance’, ‘denizens’, and ‘communal space’. Following this we will explore the normative implications of nodal governance as it has taken shape to date, with an emphasis on the ‘governance disparity’ that is paralleling the ‘wealth disparity’ across the globe. In response to this disparity, we will end with an outline of a normative vision and practical programme aimed at deepening democracy in poor areas of South Africa, Argentina, and elsewhere. We will argue that the main virtue of nodal governance, namely, the emphasis on local capacity and knowledge can be retrieved, reaffirmed, and reinstitutionalized in ways that enhance the self-direction of poor communities while strengthening their ‘collective capital’.

Building the capacity of police change agents: The nexus policing project

This paper argues that police members from all ranks possess potential to challenge the beliefs and meanings that inform their daily practices, and are able to alter their routines when innovative practice and new ideas assist them in responding to new dilemmas. The paper suggests that both scholars and practitioners pay insufficient attention to nurturing rank-and-file police as change agents and to building their capacity as knowledge workers and ideas generators in forging change. In response to this gap, the paper discusses the Nexus Policing Project in Victoria, Australia, which is based on a police–university partnership aimed at realising new ways of seeing and doing in the field of policing. The participatory action research method is utilised as a way of overcoming the traditional gap between research and practice. The paper discusses some of the challenges associated with this kind of collaborative endeavour.

Cultural Change in the Governance of Security

Issues of cultural change typically plague advocates of policing reform. Scholars often argue that due to their defining capacity to exercise coercion, the police possess occupational sensibilities that tend to undermine new ways of thinking and acting introduced in reform programmes. A notable exception to this pessimism is found in the work of Janet Chan, who argues that cultural transformation can and does take place through iterative changes at the levels of “field” (structures) and “habitus” (practical dispositions) of the police. Extending the work of Brogden and Shearing, this article argues that further optimism can be reached by explicitly acknowledging the plural nature of security governance. Not only do different “nodes” of governance possess different ways of thinking and acting, they also take on the sensibilities of other nodes to maintain or improve their position in the security field. The normative possibilities raised by this explanatory line of inquiry will be examined.