ABSTRACT

The article examines Swedish police students’ and officers’ situational use of irony as a resource for engaging in workplace resistance. Through irony, managerial discourses and policies are destabilized, giving voice to an alternative reality. The resistance towards the police’s official discourses reinforces a gap between the management and officers in the ranks, strengthening in-group autonomy and norms among the rank and file, but also disrupting organizational control. Irony was restricted to, but also opened up for, ‘safe spaces’, suggesting that counter-hegemonic discourses among police employees are constrained by contextual factors such as their socio-political environment and organizational culture. Irony also helped to promote social harmony and sustain ‘conflict- free venues and encounters’, and the double nature of irony should be seen as a powerful resource for expressing criticism while avoiding sanctions. The article suggests that ironically expressed resistance towards institutional conditions is enabled and created by the very same conditions.

摘要

这篇文章研究了瑞典警察学生和军官对讽刺的情境使用，以此作为进行工作场所抵抗的资源。通过讽刺，管理的话语和政策变得不稳定，从而为另类现实发出了声音。对警察官方话语的抵制加剧了管理层与军官之间的差距，加强了军官内部的团体自主权和规范，但也破坏了组织控制。具有讽刺意味的是，“安全空间”受到限制，但也被允许使用，这表明警察雇员之间的反霸权话语受到诸如社会政治环境和组织文化等背景因素的限制。具有讽刺意味的是，它还有助于促进社会和谐并维持“无冲突的场所和相遇”，反讽的双重性质应被视为表达批评而避免制裁的有力资源。文章认为，讽刺性表达的对制度条件的抵抗是由同样的条件促成和创造的。