Tessa Diphoorn

Utrecht University, Cultural Anthropology, Assistant Professor

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Dr. Tessa Diphoorn is an assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Previously, she worked for jthe Centre for Urban Studies and the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies where she conducted comparative research about public-private assemblages in Kenya, Israel, and Jamaica. Before that she completed her PhD research on private security officers in Durban, South Africa in October 2014 at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Between October 2011-June 2013, she was a Marie Curie Sustainable Peacebuilding (SPBuild) fellow at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey.
Address: Padualaan 14
PO BOX 80140
3508 TC Utrecht
The Netherlands

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Papers by Tessa Diphoorn

Securitizing Capital: A Processual-Relational Approach to Pluralised Security

by Tessa Diphoorn and Erella Grassiani

ENTANGLEMENTS OF PRIVATE SECURITY AND COMMUNITY POLICING IN SOUTH AFRICA AND SWAZILAND Downloaded from

by Helene Kyed and Tessa Diphoorn

Security in Africa is seldom a public good provided by the state, but is frequently something you... more Security in Africa is seldom a public good provided by the state, but is frequently something you pay for or acquire by turning to various non-state or community actors. The privatization of security in African cities is reflected in the rapid growth of the private security industry, which is matched by the widespread involvement of civilian actors in neighbourhood watches and self-organized policing groups. Much of the scholarly debate on 'plural policing' and 'security assemblages' has focused on what the privatization of security means for the state, highlighting how the pub-lic–private divide is increasingly blurred as state police services interact with either private or community security actors. This article adds a novel perspective by exploring the entanglements between private security companies and civilian community policing groups in urban areas of South Africa and Swaziland. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how these actors engage with each other in different, often informal, ways and across socio-spatial boundaries. The result is the simultaneous com-munalization of private security and privatization of community policing. However, these are not straightforward processes. Sets of actors slip in and out of commercial and community logics of security, but also frequently articulate their distinctions as part of positioning themselves in a competitive security landscape, thereby raising questions about the objectives and motivations that drive many security performances. FOR MOST CITIZENS IN URBAN AFRICA, private security companies (PSCs) and civilian self-help or community policing groups constitute the most significant everyday providers of security. This challenges the idea of the state as the only legitimate provider of security and the welfare-state

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Introduction: Security (introduction to special issue of Etnofoor on Security)

by Tessa Diphoorn and Erella Grassiani

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The ‘Bravo Mike Syndrome': private security culture and racial profiling in South Africa

This article analyses how issues of race influence the occupational culture of the armed response... more This article analyses how issues of race influence the occupational culture of the armed response sector, a particular part of the private security industry, in Durban, South Africa. In addition to analysing the racial hierarchy of the industry, this article examines the ‘Bravo Mike Syndrome' – Bravo Mike meaning black male in NATO phonetic alphabet code. The ‘Bravo Mike Syndrome' refers to the racialised imaginaries of criminals and the subsequent policing practices performed by armed response officers to protect clients from this racially constructed dangerous ‘Other’. However, as the majority of armed response officers are ‘Bravo Mikes’ themselves, there is a constant element of friction in their performances. Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article thus analyses how racialised understandings of crime influence, and are reproduced by, private policing practices, thereby contributing to studies on private security occupational cultures and racial profiling.

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Twilight Policing: Private Security Practices in South Africa

The British Journal of Criminology

Many studies have emphasized the pluralization of policing and the interactions between security ... more Many studies have emphasized the pluralization of policing and the interactions between security providers. However, such studies generally employ a top–down and structural approach, emphasizing the organizational ties between policing bodies. This article employs an ethnographic approach to security and focuses on localized policing performances that materialize from the interactions between security providers. Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Durban, South Africa, this article introduces the concept of twilight policing, which refers to punitive, disciplinary and exclusionary policing practices that simultaneously undermine and support the state, resulting in actions that are neither public nor private, but ‘twilight’. This article calls for a shift from a plural and organizational approach to policing towards a ‘twilight’ and performative one.

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“It’s All About the Body”: The Bodily Capital of Armed Response Officers in South Africa

Medical Anthropology

In this article, I analyze the role of bodily capital in the daily policing practices of armed re... more In this article, I analyze the role of bodily capital in the daily policing practices of armed response officers, a specific type of private security officers, in Durban, South Africa. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the masculinized bodily capital of armed response officers is a key source of their sovereign power; it plays a central role in how they acquire and exert authority. Furthermore, I argue that an analysis of bodily capital should not solely analyze the actual flesh of the body, but must include particular equipment (such as bulletproof vests and firearms) that is experienced as a part of the body.

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Typologies of partnership policing: case studies from urban South Africa

co-author with Julie Berg

In the contemporary pluralised landscape of policing, partnerships between public and private pol... more In the contemporary pluralised landscape of policing, partnerships between public and private policing bodies are often the norm, rather than the exception. This is particularly the case for South Africa, where partnering between the state police and private security industry has a long history. Through focusing on different types of partnerships between the state police and the private security industry in urban South Africa, this article shows that the generally applied ‘junior-partner’ model does not reflect the complexity and diversity of public–private policing partnerships. Through an analysis of unstructured and structured interactions between private security officers and police officers in different operational settings in three South African cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban), this article shows how various forms of partnering – ranging from competitive and collaborative – simultaneously take place due to a range of different factors, such as the nature of information-sharing, personal perceptions and networks. This article thereby emphasises the diversity of partnering in contemporary urban South Africa that often maintains and challenges the ‘junior-partner’ model.

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The Emotionality of Participation: Various Modes of Participation in Ethnographic Fieldwork on Private Policing in Durban, South Africa

The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

This article explores methodological issues as a prominent subject in ethnographic fieldwork cond... more This article explores methodological issues as a prominent subject in ethnographic fieldwork conducted on a specific group of private security officers, namely armed response officers, in Durban, South Africa. Through analyzing several experiences from the field, I highlight the dialectic between our emotions and participation in the field and its imperative role in our analysis of the research setting. In this paper I explore three different modes of participation, namely active participation, reluctant participation, and passive participation. As a heuristic device, such a typology allows us to analyze our position, as a participant, in relation to other research participants. This exemplifies the importance of the emotionality of field experiences in researching violence (and the perpetrators of violence).