About me:
I joined the research group Cultural Geography at the Institute of Geography in October 2023 as a temporary replacement for Dr. Malve Jacobsen.
I also lead the research project ‘Policing as a practice of categorisation – Reciprocal ascriptions in the control of public spaces’ at the department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (https://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/policing-als-kategorisierungspraxis/). I have worked on policing, state bureaucracies, cybercrime, the anthropology of fraud, transregional connections and collaborative research methods. I authored the book ‘Stateness: Police work in Ghana’, recently co-edited ‘Policing race, ethnicity and culture’ and co-edited ‘Police in Africa: the Street Level View’. Based on fieldwork in Ghana, Kenya, India, Niger and Germany, I have published in journals such as Africa, Ethnography, Journal of Modern African Studies and Social Anthropology.
For more Information, see https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb07-ifeas-eng/dr-jan-beek/.
Contact:
Institute of Geography
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
Johann-Joachim-Becher-Weg 21
55099 Mainz
Room: 02-175
Publications (selection):
Beek, J., Bierschenk, T., Kolloch, A. & Meyer, B. (2022): Policing Race, Ethnicity and Culture: Ethnographic Perspectives across Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Achenbach, R., Beek, J., Njenga Karugia, J., Mageza-Barthel, R. & Schulze-Engler, F. (2020): Afrasian Transformations: Transregional perspectives on development cooperation, social mobility and cultural change. Leiden: Brill.
Beek, J. & Bierschenk, T. (2020): Bureaucratic Practices and Cultural Difference. Special issue in Sociologus 70 (1).
Beek, J., Kilian, C. & Krings, M. (2019): The Anthropology of Defrauding and Faking. Special section in Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale 27 (3).
Beek, J., Göpfert, M., Owen, O. & Steinberg, J. (2017): Police in Africa: The Street Level View. London: Hurst.
Beek, J. (2016): Cybercrime, police work and storytelling in West Africa. Africa 86 (2): 305-323.
Beek, J. (2016): Producing Stateness: Police Work in Ghana. Leiden: Brill.
Beek, J. & Göpfert, M. (2015): Travelling police: the potential for change in the wake of police reform in West Africa. Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale 23 (4): 465–479.
Beek, J. & Göpfert, M. (2013): Police violence in West Africa: perpetrators’ and ethnographers’ dilemmas. Ethnography 14 (4): 477–500.
