![]() Similarly, Ericson notes the tendency for police patrol officers to develop indicators of abnormality: these include ‘1) individuals out of place, 2) individuals in particular places, 3) individuals of particular types regardless of place, and 4) unusual circumstances regarding property’ (1982: 86). For example, in Cop It Sweet, Jenny Brockie’s documentary of police in Redfern, Sydney, a ‘sus’ car was a red Laser car driven by an Aborigine (Chan 1997: 78). Social studies of police have shown that when law enforcement officers go around their beat, they look for things that are ‘sus’ or out of order. Purity is violated when an object is out of place: Suspiciousness is similarly based on the assumption of a particular moral order. According to Douglas, our conception of purity presupposes the existence of a moral order which classifies and locates objects or actions in a preferred manner. Mary Douglas’s (1966) analysis of purity and danger provides a useful way of conceptualising suspiciousness. The scare had managed to hose down an extremely negative wave of public opinion against the Indonesian government: The perception that something is suspicious is a cultural construction. On the day of the ‘attack’, both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister called the powder a ‘biological agent’ the PM told reporters that ‘sending the powder to the embassy was an act of “murderous criminality”’ (Moore 2006). As a result, the news of a bio-terror attack dominated media headlines the following day. Despite receiving this advice, the government did not inform the media that the substance posed no threat. Using documents obtained under freedom of information, the journalist found that the white powder in a letter to the Indonesian embassy turned out to contain ‘a commonly occurring bacteria’ (Moore 2006). A recent media investigation of ‘Australia’s biggest biological terror scare’ in 2005 is an excellent illustration of the political capital that suspicious packages could carry. Even when suspicious packages turned out to be harmless, citizens continued to live in fear and anxiety because no attempts were made to calm them or allay their anxiety. Nevertheless, the consequences of these incidents were non-trivial: the incident that shut down Atlanta Airport for two hours disrupted at least 120 flights (Fox News 2006). Most of the incidents turned out to be hoaxes or unintended errors. Since 2001 there have been numerous instances of buildings being evacuated and airports being shut down as a result of the discovery of ‘suspicious packages’ (for example CNN 2005 The Age 2005 USA Today 2006 Fox News 2006). Though only four letters containing anthrax (Bacillus Anthracis) were actually recovered, the event cast a lasting shadow of suspicion over mail packages: The performance artists mentioned earlier may have tapped into a deep vein of anxiety felt by the public, but real life is actually more dramatic than art. ![]() The anthrax scare of 2001 no doubt added to the paranoia against suspicious packages. Packages and bags are now routinely scanned in airports and often opened and searched for hazardous substances. The 9/11 attacks, however, marked a quantum leap in the escalation of security procedures worldwide. The ‘war on drugs’ which began in the late 1960s also contributed to our suspicion against mail packages and travel baggage these were often randomly checked for illegal substances. Concerns about unattended packages or bags in public places were kept alive by bombing incidents in the 1960s to 1990s. So when did we start regarding packages as suspicious? The history of the ‘suspicious package’ is probably at least 50 years old. In the more relaxed era of the late 1950s, ‘brown paper packages tied up with strings’ were regarded as among Rodger and Hammerstein’s ‘favourite things’. Even the ‘plain brown envelopes’ that contain embarrassing or politically sensitive information are welcomed objects that promise the unveiling of secrets or solving of mysteries. Goods purchased by phone or through the internet are sent wrapped in protective papers and their arrival usually eagerly anticipated by the shoppers. Gifts are typically covered in opaque papers that disguise their content, perhaps so that the recipients are suitably surprised and delighted. In fact, there is something both mysterious and promising about wrapped packages in Western cultures. ![]() Paper-wrapped packages have not always been objects of suspicion.
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