Tag Archives: Ben Penglase

Tip of the Cap

Surreptitious Creativities behind Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela

We would like to welcome Ben Penglase in this latest edition of our monthly feature, Tip of the Cap.

My book, Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela, examines the social production of insecurity in a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, paying particular attention to how multiple, overlapping forms of urban violence impact the residents of a neighborhood that I call Caxambu.   I try to show how the neighborhood is experienced as a profoundly contradictory space. On the one hand, it is a place of social intimacy, pride, and creativity, reflecting the deep social ties that bind many of its residents and the years of work that they’ve put into building their homes, streets and alleys. Yet at the same time it is often a space of social marginalization and unpredictably lethal violence, reflecting how drug-trafficking and policing conspire to disorganize daily life.

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Interrogations

Interrogations: Heath Cabot and William Garriot on Policing and Contemporary Governance

Palgrave MacMillan (2013)

Policing and Contemporary Governance: the anthropology of police in practice. William Garriott, editor (Palgrave MacMillan 2013).

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to introduce yet another in our series of new features: Interrogations, an interview series with authors and other people of potential interest to our readers.  The term ‘interrogation’ comes  the Latin inter “between” and rogare “question”.  It thus originally meant something like “to question between” (as opposed, for example, to examiner “to test, try, torture”).  Our plans for the series, which will edited by Kristen Drybread & Johanna Romer, are aimed at exploring this sense of the term.
We are happy to present to you the first in this series,  a conversation between Heath Cabot & William Garriott focused on Garriott’s edited volume Policing and Contemporary Governance: The Anthropology of Police in Practice (2013).
 

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Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond

Pacifying Rio’s Favelas: innovation, adaptation or continuity?

Photo: SEASDH - Secretaria de Assistência Social e Direitos Humanos, Rio de Janeiro

Photo: SEASDH – Secretaria de Assistência Social e Direitos Humanos, Rio de Janeiro

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome Ben Penglase with the latest entry in our developing forum, Security in Brazil: World Cup 2014 and Beyond.

Brazil’s favela “pacification” policy, implemented by the state government of Rio de Janeiro beginning in 2008, is the most recent example of efforts by the Brazilian authorities to produce security. Coming before Brazil hosts the 2014 World Cup this June, and before Rio hosts the Olympics in 2016, and tackling that most visible and now internationally-renowned symbol of urban chaos – the city’s hillside favelas – the policy has attracted widespread attention. The Rio authorities have lost no opportunity to dramatize the supposed “take-over” of favelas by the army and police – often planting the Brazilian flag in neighborhoods “rescued” from drug traffickers – and the UPP (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, or Police Pacifying Unit) policy has become symbolic of a wider attempt by Brazilian authorities to create a safe urban landscape. Yet events in the past two years have called the UPP’s success into question. Shoot-outs between drug-dealers and police in several favelas where UPP units are in place, and a massive protest by residents of the favelas of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo after the suspicious death of Douglas “DG” Pereira, have brought media attention to those who question the policy’s effectiveness.

In the midst of all this visibility and scrutiny of the UPP policy, several fundamental assumptions about the “pacification” policy often go unexamined. Drawing upon my own history of observing changes and continuities in policing in Brazil, and especially in Rio, for over twenty years, I would like to problematize these guiding assumptions which have often framed depictions of the pacification policy by both the media and Rio’s policy-makers. Continue reading →

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