Notes about an appropriation: how São Paulo’s Police Force viewed a Brazilian Army’s ethnography

Abstract

This article aims to show a case of
my Brazilian Army’s ethnography and its appropria-
tion by the São Paulo’s Police Force. Unexpectedly,
I was invited to attend to a presentation of cadets
about their own life in the military academy, when
it was said that my ethnography was used as a kind
of “instruction’s manual” on their values, moral and
institutional behavior. Such reading of my ethnog-
raphy lead to a reflection on the nature of these two
State’s Institutions – Police and Army –, based on
the fact that both had different interpretations: pos-
itive in the first case, negative on the second. Never-
theless, in one hand, they seem to realize themselves
as institutions of the same kind, with common vales
and organizational systems. In other hand, the re-
lations that they establish with the “encompassing
world” shows us that they can’t just be classified as
deploy of the State’s “monopoly on the legitimate
use of physical force”.