Abstract:
Policemen leaving their training institutions in order to start practical policework in the community, perceive this change in activity often as breaking off with the legal and cultural rules they have learned so far. Yet, this change from one system of knowledge to another is not treated as a specific topic in their training, but only considered as a 'necessary evil' or fought against as pathological. Considerations from sociology of science, however, - under the concept of 'application- research' ('Verwendungsforschung')- dealing with the relations between 'theory and practice ', offer new starting points to discuss such problems.