Paper short abstract:

In Argentina, stories about the “street corner policeman” activate a nostalgic and mythic look about the police. Which are the values idealized in that story? This paper analyzes the connections between past, memory and emotion (nostalgia) that underlie the construction of institutional stories.

Paper long abstract:

Memoirs have an important role in the vast literature written by and about policemen. Displaying personal and professional experiences, they intend to narrate the police labor in terms of a series of institutionally valued topics. Stories about the "street corner policeman" stand out among them, showing the policemen of old times and their close and trusty relation with community. Nowadays, when Argentinean police have a serious problem of discredit, referring to the "street corner policeman" activates a nostalgic and mythic look about the past that tries to impose an idealized understanding of police attitude.

This paper intends to analyze the connections between past, memory and emotion that underlie the construction of institutional stories, proposing that nostalgia is an inherent tool to the construction of the past and the sense of an interrupted flow of time. Thus, examining the "street corner policeman" story will imply both analyzing the very values that police institution convert into moral imperatives and rescuing the role that emotions play in the defining and reproduction of institutional traditions.