Abstract policing, Covid-19 and the ‘rural idyll’ in Scotland

Abstract

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on rural ‘policing’ (broadly defined to include a range of institutions involved in order maintenance) remains relatively under-discussed and under-theorised. The pandemic created particular challenges for these services in rural areas, particularly in the context of increasingly abstract forms of policing following the creation of Police Scotland and other forms of service provision, and the interaction of these with rurally-contingent inequalities. These were especially felt in rural areas, as were concerns about tourism as a possible (social and epidemiological) threat to rural life. Drawing on qualitative data from two projects, we use a novel interdisciplinary synthesis of theories of ‘abstract policing’ and the ‘rural idyll’ to show how the pandemic acted as a flashpoint for a range of concerns about policing and social order in rurality.