Julian Go
Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and author of Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US. His work explores the history of civil police forces and the colonial roots of police militarization.
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May 13, 2025 • 21min
[TEASER] The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go
Julian Go, a Sociology Professor at the University of Chicago and author of "Policing Empires," discusses the profound impacts of colonial violence on today’s policing practices. He introduces the idea of the ‘imperial boomerang,’ revealing how tactics from colonized regions resurface in core societies through police militarization. Go delves into historical roots, connecting colonial repression to modern events like the George Floyd protests, showing how the evolution of policing reflects a troubling legacy of control over marginalized populations.
Dec 12, 2023 • 54min
Julian Go, "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, properly demilitarizing the police requires a deeper understanding of its historical development, causes, and social logics. Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US (Oxford UP, 2023) offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States to aid that effort. Julian Go tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing in the nineteenth century into the present, and that it is an effect of the "imperial boomerang." Policing Empires thereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought imperial practices home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.Jeffrey Lamson is a PhD student in world history at Northeastern University. His research focuses on the history of police technology, its relationship to the history of police reform, and its place at the intersection of U.S. domestic policing and global counterinsurgency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
