A textual interpretation of police organization: The dark side of technology

Abstract

A recent trend among police scholars has been to multiply qualitative research approaches with regard to the study of police organizations. One such method, sometimes called textual interpretation, is hermeneutics. We apply this method to an essay written in the late 1930s about the increasingly technological nature of social organizations under the title The failure of technology: Perfection without purpose. Our intent, by way of studying this important essay, is to interpret what it has to say about the nature of organizations ‐ in this case, police organizations ‐ and the social problems these organizations are created to address. We first discuss the hermeneutic tradition in general and its application to the social sciences in particular. We then apply this approach to knowing to the failure of technology with an eye to the essay's implications for the increasing technical nature of police organizations. Finally, we discuss how police organizations might begin to respond to this increase in technics....