The Genesis of Urban Violence in Venezuela: A conceptual framework

• In Event: Moving Forward? State Efficiency, Social Mobility, and Violence in Latin America (1970-2010)

Abstract

Over the past three decades Venezuela has experienced increasing rates of intentional homicides higher than in most countries. This research focuses on why this trend started, instead of how it increased overtime. The aim of the paper is threefold. First, it develops an interdisciplinary conceptual framework–with a qualified emphasis on the explanatory power of politico-economic theories–that attempts to examine the scales of Venezuelan urban growth, which in turn facilitates identifying the variables causing the genesis of increased violence in these spaces during the 1970s and 1980s. Second, it
argues that the differentiation of social, or criminal, violence and political violence are not useful analytical categories when focusing on the urban space, because the apparent form of violence is a function of increased population in a dense space. Third, it not only reviews the literature on the subject, but provides theoretical and empirical evidence to show that commonly named culprits of urban violence–including but not limited to poverty, inequality, or high firearm availability–are not causal factors of the genesis of urban violence. Therefore, this research’s conceptual framework identified two competing variables as more probable causal variables of urban violence in Venezuela: the urban strain and social disorganization created by either the (under)development of social capital, or a context of high rent windfalls; both in relation to increased urban growth. Lastly, the conceptual framework explains the use of mixed methods, and the choice of the above mentioned time period to accommodate for a lag of causal mechanisms.

Author

• Daniel Leon