Cambio de foco: la provincia como variable de análisis y comprensión del crimen

• In Event: Cutting Through the Fog: New Perspectives on Crime, Violence and Insecurity in Latin America

Abstract

While crime and violence rates are decreasing in most of the world, in Latin-America these phenomena are growing and spreading. However, there is little evidence that scholars and policymakers are responding adequately to this challenge. There is a tendency to continue to rely on the hegemonic narratives about citizen security which remain geared at focusing on the same set of variables and technical recommendations that in the recent past have proven to be ineffective. In this context, the paper has a double goal. First, it identifies a series of limitations of the predominant narratives, both theoretical and political, that are revealed when elaborating a genealogy of academic discourse on citizen security. Second, the paper aims to overcome those limitations by proposing an analysis of violence and insecurity that incorporates into the problem the ‘parallel activities’ that give both a symbolic and real meaning to the materialization of the offense. There are several such activities, many legal, without which crime would lose its raison d'être. Crime and violence should be understood in the context of societal tolerance and of their use and efficacy as means to achieve social and political goals. Taking into account the legitimation of violence and crime as ‘useful’ means, this work shows that they are not the core problem. Rather, they are the logical consequence of a main preceding problem: the collapse of legality as a main value and effective principle underpinning social interactions. Examples from Mexico and Argentina are given to illustrate this theoretical proposition.

Author

• Marcelo A Moriconi Bezerra, Lisbon University Institute