Rethinking Role Residual: Retired Police Officers and the Inertia of Habitus

Abstract

In this paper, we bring conceptual clarity to the literature on “role residual.” Based on the extant literature and our own research involving police retirees, we first delineate three empirical variants of role residual: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. We then make the case that a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon requires a theoretical framework capable of conceptualizing role residual in a way that is consistent with a broader theory of practice. To that end, we use Bourdieu's work to argue that role residual comprises states of being or behavior that occur at the intersection of (a) schemas and dispositions inscribed in the habitus as a result of one's prior role‐specific orientation to the field, and (b) a configuration of proximate conditions in the present that is sufficiently similar to what one would have experienced while in one's prior role.

Understanding the Shift: A Grounded Theory Examination of Police Retirement as Role Exit

“…Scholars have studied why officers retire from the police service as well as their mental and physical well-being after returning to civilian life for quite some time (Brandl and Smith 2012;Pole et al 2006;Ramey et al 2009;Violanti 1992;Parnaby and Weston 2020); yet, few have examined how officers leave the service after the decision to retire has been made. Understanding how officers leave allows us to round-out our understanding of police retirement by seeing it, not strictly in terms of a crucial decision being made at a specific point in the life course, but also in terms of it being a complex social process in and of itself that allows us to see how occupationally specific roles, identities, and long-standing claims to power and status are socially transformed or dissolved (see Trice 1993;Ashforth 2001).…”