The Laughter Behind: Curriculum of Place, the Hypermasculine Imperative, and the Critical Education of a Southern Cop

The author's doctoral dissertation which uses a critical autoethnographical research modality to examine his experiences as a Southern, rural police officer and how those experiences affected his appreciation for issues of social justice and equity. The author attempts to determine how he became a socially progressive police chief in a profession that typically creates ultra-conservative chief police executives. Using stories and illustrative vignettes, the author posits that the hypermasculine imperative, or extreme forms of masculine behavior, and its concomitant expressions of institutional power, are determinative in how society, and its enforcement arm, the police, treat the oppressed and disempowered.