Ordinary rationales of regulation and their effect on calling the police
Why do people call the police ? I look at the use of this channel as one option among possible modes for regulating behavior, all of which, from the most formal to the most informal, are considered from an ethnomethodological perspective. Analysis of a series of interviews shows that two interrelated key elements need to be considered to understand why someone decides to call the police : an individual’s feeling of agency – i.e., of having some control over one’s own actions and the outside world – and conditions that make such a call possible, which are based on the belief that that caller and the responder share a common world.