Categorizational Asymmetries in Context: Producing and Resisting Policeable Scenes

This article examines categorizational asymmetries observable in the attempted production and negotiation of a “policeable” scene. The case described in the article—an encounter between a police officer and a black male student treated as “out of place”—demonstrates how members accomplish, negotiate, and resist categorial “statuses” and associated rules of application. In dialog with insights from ethnomethodology and critical praxeological analysis, the analysis describes practices through which categorizations and devices relating to legitimate presence are produced, implied, and resisted in situ, and how available relevancies of racial categorization can remain implicit. In attending to the officer's resources of description and categorization which shift the contexture of the scene, and the potential suspects efforts to resists such categorizations, the analysis respecifies Goffman's (1983) remarks relating to how actors can come to “give official imprint to reality.” The article contributes to studies of policing encounters in highlighting categorization practices and category relevancies as constituent members in producing and contesting “policeable” scenes and moves the analytic attention from assumedly asymmetrical category pairs to the practice that produce and manage asymmetries‐in‐action.