Vadios, mendigos, mitras: prácticas clasificatorias de la policía en Lisboa

Abstract

Classificatory practices produced in the everyday life interactions among policemen, as much as in the cognitive and communicational dimension, as in the power and domination dimension distinguish a fun- damental aspect of the police work. From a reflection on different discursive materials related to the police work in the city of Lisbon, this article proposes an historical and ethnographic approach of a category that, in spite of reducing himself to a simple term («Mitra»), in our days, reveals an agility and a performing power in the adaptation on dissimilar historical contexts. The examination of this stereotype, crystallised in discourses that reflect professional practices, is the point of this article trough enlightening some representations about the complex and conflicting urban reality, prevailing upon the construction of that same reality.