Memorialization of the Thin Blue Line: An Investigation of the Winnipeg Police Museum

• In Event: 109 - Student Forum Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Student Forum Roundtable Session. Table 01.

Abstract

Museums have been the focus of sociological research; however police museums have been excluded from sociological research efforts thus far. Understanding the desired public image and internal representation of the Winnipeg police service’s function is the research goal of this paper. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor will provide the theoretical framework for this paper’s analysis of the Winnipeg police museum. Data for this paper was collected and analyzed in accordance with a participate-in-order-to-write ethnographic field note methodology. The two major findings of this paper were: first, the ‘thin blue line’ motif of the Winnipeg police museum. Second, that the Winnipeg police museum communicates an uninviting and inaccessible message to its visitors.

Author

• Ryan Daniel Catte, University of Manitoba