Resumen

SILVA, Luiz Antonio Machado da. Reconstruct police or society? Violence, democracy and public order in contemporary Rio de Janeiro. Etnográfica [online]. 2011, vol.15, n.1, pp.67-82. ISSN 0873-6561.

The article starts from the hypothesis that “urban violence” is at the center of a grammar that deals with certain diffuse forms of autonomous social organization of violence perceived as endangering personal and patrimonial integrity. Influenced by such a language, public debate on social regulation and control shrinks to the question of maintaining the public order through avoiding interclass contacts and structural political conflicts. The article suggests that this demand for group and personal isolation imply, as a consequence, delegating police institutions to decide on how, when and who menace the pacific prosecution of everyday activities. Therefore, the generalized public demand for police “reconstruction from the beginning” will not be met if societal approach does not change from the language of “urban violence” back to the democratic language of rights, so that police practices can be object of attention and control. Above all, it is ‘society’ - an historical modality of social relations - which needs to be ‘reconstructed’.

Palabras clave : Rio de Janeiro; urban violence; drug dealing; public order; sociability; social segregation.

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