Death of a Traveller
A Counter Investigation
Format:Paperback
Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Published:14th May '21
£15.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£50.00(9781509547401)
It is a simple story. A 37-year-old man belonging to the Traveller community is shot dead by a special unit of the French police on the family farm where he was hiding since he failed to return to prison after temporary release. The officers claim self-defense. The relatives, present at the scene, contest that claim. A case is opened, and it concludes with a dismissal that is upheld on appeal. Dismayed by these decisions, the family continues the struggle for truth and justice.
Giving each account of the event the same credit, Didier Fassin conducts a counter-investigation, based on the re-examination of all the available details and on the interviews of its protagonists. A critical reflection on the work of police forces, the functioning of the justice system, and the conditions that make such tragedies possible and seldom punished, Death of a Traveller is also an attempt to restore to these marginalized communities what they are usually denied: respectability.
“Fassin, a sociologist and anthropologist, aims to supplement the approaches of activists and of the justice system in confronting police violence, and scrutinizes the evidence with an emphasis on its socioeconomic context. To do otherwise, he argues, impedes both truth and human dignity.”
The New Yorker
“In seeking to do justice to yet another young life, another racialized suspect, snuffed out in the name of public order, Fassin provides a stunning indictment of a new moral economy: a culture of institutional duplicity that allows police to get away with murder.”
Jean Comaroff, Harvard University
“How can an account of a controversial killing do justice to it sociologically and according to the laws of the land, and at the same time politically and humanely? This is the multifaceted conundrum addressed by this beautifully written and meticulously crafted book. A riveting must-read for all those concerned by the broader meaning of death at the hands of the police, in France and in other countries.”
Dame Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge
ISBN: 9781509547418
Dimensions: 213mm x 137mm x 13mm
Weight: 227g
160 pages