Accepting the Unacceptable: The Legitimation of Extrajudicial Violence in Medellín, Colombia

• In Event: 3551 - Urban Politics and Violence

Abstract

What constitutes violence’s legitimacy, and for who? I aim to provide fresh insight into this classic sociological puzzle with an analysis—based on four years of ethnographic observations—of how violence patterned relations among armed men, residents, and police officials in a zone of Medellín, Colombia. I found that residents routinely appealed to police and were not cynical of their authority, but legitimized local armed men’s use of extrajudicial violence as a solution for certain security-related problems. This local dynamic remains unaccounted for by the predominant Weberian-inspired theories of urban violence, in which citizens’ acceptance of extrajudicial violence is understood as a cultural adaptation to social exclusion and state incapacity or corruption. Drawing from social psychological theories of legitimation, I contend that violence’s legitimacy is often in tension with official discourses of public security and conferred situationally through everyday practices that reflect shared cultural assumptions. I show that community practices of endorsement and authorization legitimized the armed men’s violence to the extent that it was viewed to prevent or repair interruptions to local social order. Yet when the armed men failed to maintain security in the zone, residents willingly called the police. In addition to offering rare in situ data on extrajudicial violence, this case suggests a novel framework to ameliorate tensions between structure and culture in theories of urban violence.

Author

• Jon Gordon, New York University