Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T07:27:59.402Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Uses and Forms of Violence among the Urban Poor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2014

JAVIER AUYERO ,
AGUSTÍN BURBANO DE LARA  and
MARÍA FERNANDA BERTI
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on 30 months of collaborative fieldwork in a poor neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this paper scrutinises the multiple uses of violence among residents and the concatenations between private and public forms of physical aggression. Much of the violence reported here resembles that which has been dissected by students of street violence in the United States – that is, it is the product of interpersonal retaliation and remains encapsulated in dyadic exchanges. However, by casting a wider net to include other forms of aggression (not only criminal but also sexual, domestic and intimate) that take place inside and outside the home, and that intensely shape the course of poor people's daily lives, the paper argues that diverse forms of violence among the urban poor (a) serve more than just retaliatory purposes, and (b) link with one another beyond dyadic relationships.

Spanish abstract

Basado en 30 meses de trabajo de campo colaborativo en un barrio pobre de Buenos Aires, Argentina, este artículo estudia los múltiples usos de la violencia entre sus residentes y las concatenaciones entre formas públicas y privadas de agresión física. Mucha de la violencia reportada aquí recuerda a aquélla que ha sido analizada por estudiosos de la violencia callejera en los Estados Unidos, es decir como el producto de revanchas interpersonales y que queda encapsulada en intercambios binarios. Sin embargo, al desarrollar una red más amplia para incluir otras formas de agresión (no sólo criminal, sino también sexual, doméstica e íntima) que se da dentro y fuera del hogar, y que configura intensamente el devenir de las vidas diarias de los pobres, el material señala que las diversas formas de violencia entre los pobres urbanos (a) funciona más allá de las meras revanchas y (b) se vinculan entre sí en un marco mayor a las relaciones binarias.

Portuguese abstract

Baseado em 30 meses de trabalho de campo colaborativo em um bairro pobre de Buenos Aires, Argentina, este artigo escrutina os múltiplos usos de violência entre moradores e as relações entre formas públicas e privadas de violência física. Grande parte da violência reportada pelo artigo assemelha-se àquela que já foi dissecada por estudantes de violência de rua nos Estados Unidos, ou seja, ela é o produto de retaliação interpessoal e permanece encapsulada em trocas bilaterais. No entanto, aplicando uma abordagem mais ampla e que inclui outras formas de agressão (não apenas criminal, mas também sexual, doméstica e íntima) que ocorrem dentro e fora do lar e moldam intensamente a dinâmica da vida diária de pessoas pobres, este artigo argumenta que as diversas formas de violência entre a população pobre urbana têm (a) propósitos que vão além da simples retaliação e (b) interconexões que vão além de relações dicotômicas.

Keywords

violencepovertycrimeBuenos AiresviolenciapobrezacrimenBuenos AiresviolênciapobrezacrimeBuenos Aires
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 443 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Koonings, Kees, ‘Armed Actors, Violence and Democracy in Latin America in the 1990s’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 20: 4 (2001), pp. 401–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koonings, Kees and Kruijt, Dirk (eds.), Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America (London: Zed Books, 2007)Google Scholar; and Rodgers, Dennis, Beall, Jo and Kanbur, Ravi (eds.), Latin American Urban Development into the Twenty First Century: Towards a Renewed Perspective on the City (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Imbusch, Peter, Misse, Michel and Carrión, Fernando, ‘Violence Research in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Literature Review’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 5: 1 (2011), pp. 87–154Google Scholar; Arias, Desmond and Daniel, Goldstein (eds.), Violent Democracies in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Pearce, Jenny, ‘Perverse State Formation and Securitized Democracy in Latin America’, Democratization, 17: 2 (2010), pp. 286–386CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Gareth A. and Rodgers, Dennis (eds.), Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caldeira, Teresa, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sao Paulo (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Hume, Mo, The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)Google Scholar; Wilding, Polly, ‘“New Violence”: Silencing Women's Experiences in the Favelas of Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 42 (2010), pp. 719–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Koonings, ‘Armed Actors, Violence and Democracy’, p. 403.

5 Imbusch, Misse and Carrión, ‘Violence Research in Latin America and the Caribbean’, p. 95.

6 Gay, Robert, Lucia: Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Brinks, Daniel, The Judicial Response to Police Violence in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Derechos humanos en Argentina: informe 2009 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2009)Google Scholar; Imbusch, Misse and Carrión, ‘Violence Research in Latin America and the Caribbean’.

7 Moser, Caroline and McIlwaine, Cathy, Encounters with Violence in Latin America (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004)Google Scholar. For Rio de Janeiro, see Gay, Lucia; Perlman, Janice, Favela (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Wilding, ‘“New Violence”’; Penglase, Ben, ‘The Owner of the Hill: Masculinity and Drug-Trafficking in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 15: 2 (2010), pp. 317–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Managua, see Rodgers, Dennis, ‘Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs, Mano Dura, and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America’, Development and Change, 40: 5 (2009), pp. 949–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Medellín, see Baird, Adam, ‘The Violent Gang and the Construction of Masculinity amongst Socially Excluded Young Men’, Safer Communities, 11: 4 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Guatemala, see O'Neill, Kevin and Thomas, Kedron (eds.), Securing the City: Neoliberalism, Space, and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Rodgers, Beall and Kanbur (eds.), Latin American Urban Development, p. 15.

9 Observatorio de la Deuda Social Argentina, El problema de la inseguridad en la Argentina: factores que influyen en la delincuencia y disparan el sentimiento de inseguridad o miedo a ser víctima de un delito (Buenos Aires: Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, 2011)Google Scholar.

10 Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal, Hechos delictuosos registrados: 2008 (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia, Seguridad y Derechos Humanos, 2008)Google Scholar.

11 Sebastián Lalaurette, ‘Creció 50% el abuso sexual de menores’, La Nación, 24 Feb. 2008. On the diverse forms of violence experienced by the Argentine poor, see Bonaldi, Pablo and del Cueto, Carla, ‘Fragmentación y violencia en dos barrios de Moreno’, in Grimson, Alejandro, Curto, Cecilia Ferraudi and Segura, Ramiro (eds.), La vida política en los barrios populares de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2009), pp. 103–28Google Scholar. On fear of crime and perceptions of inseguridad, see Kessler, Gabriel, El sentimiento de inseguridad (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2009)Google Scholar. It is important to note, however, that although in the last three decades there has been a significant rise in crime, the overall crime rates in Argentina remain comparatively low: see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Global Study on Homicide: Trends, Contexts, Data (Vienna: UNODC, 2011)Google Scholar.

12 Goffman, Erving, Where the Action Is (New York: Allen Lane, 1969)Google Scholar.

13 The Conurbano is the area, comprised of 24 districts, that surrounds the city of Buenos Aires.

14 Torresi, Leonardo, ‘Ingeniero Budge, una de las zonas más temibles del país’, Clarín, 29 Nov. 1998Google Scholar.

15 Jacobs, Bruce, ‘A Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 41: 3 (2004), pp. 295–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mullins, Christopher, Wright, Richard and Jacobs, Bruce, ‘Gender, Street Life and Criminal Retaliation’, Criminology, 42: 4 (2004), pp. 911–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacobs, Bruce and Wright, Richard, Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Papachristos, Andrew, ‘Murder by Structure: Dominance Relations and the Social Structure of Gang Homicide’, American Journal of Sociology, 115: 1 (2009), pp. 74–128CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

16 Rodgers, ‘Slum Wars of the 21st Century’; Portes, Alejandro and Roberts, Bryan R., ‘The Free-Market City: Latin American Urbanization in the Years of the Neoliberal Experiment’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 40: 1 (2005), pp. 43–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Auyero, Javier, ‘Visible Fists, Clandestine Kicks, and Invisible Elbows: Three Forms of Regulating Neoliberal Poverty’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 8 (2010), pp. 5–26Google Scholar; Segura, Ramiro, ‘Si vas a venir a una villa, loco, entrá de otra forma: distancias sociales, límites espaciales, y efectos de lugar en un barrio segregado del Gran Buenos Aires’, in Grimson, Alejandro, Curto, Cecilia Ferraudi and Segura, Ramiro (eds.), La vida política en los barrios populares de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2009), pp. 41–62Google Scholar; Bonaldi and del Cueto, ‘Fragmentación y violencia’; Portes and Roberts, ‘The Free-Market City’.

18 Auyero, Javier, de Lara, Agustín Burbano and Berti, María Fernanda, ‘Violence and the State at the Urban Margins’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (forthcoming, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horacio Verbitsky, ‘¿Seguriqué?’, Página/12, 6 Mar. 2011; Matias Dewey, ‘Fragile States, Robust Structures: Illegal Police Protection in Buenos Aires’, GIGA Working Paper no. 169 (2011); Sain, Marcelo, ‘El fracaso del control de las drogas ilegales en Argentina’, Nueva Sociedad, 222 (2009), pp. 132–46Google Scholar; Isla, Alejandro and Miguez, Daniel (eds.), En los márgenes de la ley (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2003)Google Scholar. See also Müller, Markus-Michael, ‘Addressing an Ambivalent Relationship: Policing and the Urban Poor in Mexico City’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 44: 2 (2012), pp. 319–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Sain, ‘El fracaso del control’.

20 For the United States, see Bourgois, Philippe, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Reding, Nick, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009)Google Scholar. For Argentina, see Alarcón, Cristian, Si me querés, quereme transa (Buenos Aires: Norma, 2009)Google Scholar.

21 Bourgois, In Search of Respect; Alarcón, Cristian, Cuando me muera quiero que me toquen cumbia: vidas de pibes chorros (Buenos Aires: Norma, 2003)Google Scholar; Alarcón, Si me querés, quereme transa; Venkatesh, Sudhir, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets (New York: Penguin, 2008)Google Scholar; Papachristos, ‘Murder by Structure’.

22 Tilly, Charles, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain’, in Mark Traugott (ed.), Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995).

23 In his classic study of the US ghetto, Ulf Hannerz uses the notion of repertoire to describe individuals' beliefs, values and modes of action – ‘items of culture which are somehow stored’ in them. See Hannerz, Ulf, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 191Google Scholar. We are here using the notion in a more restricted sense to focus attention on the deployment of violence as a repertoire of action.

24 Shaw, Clifford and McKay, Henry, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1942)Google Scholar; Kornhauser, Ruth R., Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

25 Sampson, Robert and Groves, Byron, ‘Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory’, American Journal of Sociology, 94: 4 (1989), pp. 774–802CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sampson, Robert, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Villarreal, Andrés, ‘Political Competition and Violence in Mexico: Hierarchical Social Control in Local Patronage Structures’, American Sociological Review, 67: 4 (2002), pp. 477–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Sampson and Groves, ‘Community Structure and Crime’; Sampson, Robert, Raudenbush, Stephen W. and Earls, Felton, ‘Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy’, Science, 277 (1997), pp. 918–24CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Villarreal, ‘Political Competition and Violence in Mexico’.

28 Turpin, Jennifer and Kurtz, Lester, The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Muggah, Robert, Researching the Urban Dilemma: Urbanization, Poverty and Violence (Canada: IDRC, 2012)Google Scholar.

29 Jacobs, ‘A Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation’; Mullins, Wright and Jacobs, ‘Gender, Street Life and Criminal Retaliation’; Jacobs and Wright, Street Justice.

30 Ibid., p. 5; see also Jacobs, ‘A Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation’.

31 Mullins, Wright and Jacobs, ‘Gender, Street Life and Criminal Retaliation’, p. 911.

32 Papachristos, ‘Murder by Structure’, p. 80.

33 Black, Donald, ‘Crime as Social Control’, American Sociological Review, 48 (1983), pp. 34–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacobs and Wright, Street Justice.

34 Kotlowitz, Alex, There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (New York: Anchor Books, 1991)Google Scholar; Bourgois, In Search of Respect; Anderson, Elijah, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999)Google Scholar; Alarcón, Cuando me muera and Si me querés; LeBlanc, Adrian, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (New York: Scribner, 2004)Google Scholar; Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day; Jones, Nikki, Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Harding, David, Living the Drama: Community, Conflict, and Culture among Inner-City Boys (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Papachristos, ‘Murder by Structure’, p. 81.

36 Wacquant, Loïc, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (London: Polity, 2007)Google Scholar. For two paradigmatic examples from Latin America, see, on ‘the traido’ in Nicaragua, Rocha, J. L., ‘El traido: clave de la continuidad de las pandillas’, Envío, 280 (2005), pp. 35–41Google Scholar; and on the Brazilian briga, Linger, Daniel, ‘Essential Outlines of Crime and Madness: Man-Fights in São Luís’, Cultural Anthropology, 5: 1 (1990), pp. 62–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Bourgois, In Search of Respect.

38 Rodgers, Dennis, ‘Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38: 2 (2006), pp. 267–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Between Good and Ghetto; Zubillaga, Verónica, ‘“Gaining Respect”: The Logic of Violence among Young Men in the Barrios of Caracas, Venezuela’, in Jones, and Rodgers, (eds.), Youth Violence in Latin America, pp. 83–104Google Scholar; Penglase, ‘The Owner of the Hill’.

39 Gould, Roger, Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

40 Keohane, Robert, ‘Reciprocity in International Relations’, International Organization, 40: 1 (1986), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Jackman, Mary, ‘Violence in Social Life’, Annual Review of Sociology, 28 (2002), p. 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Tolan, Patrick, Gorman-Smith, Deborah and Henry, David, ‘Family Violence’, Annual Review of Psychology, 57 (2006), pp. 557–83CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Kurst-Swanger, Karel and Petcosky, Jacqueline (eds.), Violence in the Home: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelles, Richard, ‘Family Violence’, Annual Review of Sociology, 11 (1985), pp. 347–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Jones, Between Good and Ghetto; Harding, Living the Drama; Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day; McCart, Michael, Smith, Daniel, Saunders, Benjamin, Kilpatrick, Dean, Resnick, Heidi and Ruggiero, Kenneth, ‘Do Urban Adolescents Become Desensitized to Community Violence? Data from National Survey’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 77: 3 (2007), pp. 434–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bourgois, In Search of Respect.

44 See, for example, Bourgois, In Search of Respect; LeBlanc, Random Family; Kotlowitz, There are No Children Here.

45 Tolan, Gorman-Smith and Henry, ‘Family Violence’, p. 558.

46 Collins, Randall, Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 8.

48 Ibid., p. 7.

49 Jackman, ‘Violence in Social Life’; Anderson, Code of the Street.

50 Jackman, ‘Violence in Social Life’, p. 404.

51 Ibid.

52 Anderson, Code of the Street.

53 Moser and McIlwaine, Encounters with Violence.

54 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe (eds.), Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004)Google Scholar.

55 Bourgois, Philippe, ‘Recognizing Invisible Violence: A Thirty-Year Ethnographic Retrospective’, in Rylko-Bauer, Barbara, Whiteford, Linda and Farmer, Paul (eds.), Global Health in Times of Violence (Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press, 2009), pp. 18–40Google Scholar; Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, ‘Peace-Time Crimes’, Social Identities, 3: 3 (1996), pp. 471–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Small Wars and Invisible Genocides’, Social Science and Medicine, 43: 5 (1997), pp. 889–900.

56 Bourgois, ‘Recognizing Invisible Violence’, p. 18.

57 Kelly, Liz, Surviving Sexual Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1988)Google Scholar.

58 Hume, The Politics of Violence; Wilding, Polly, Negotiating Boundaries: Gender, Violence, and Transformation in Brazil (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)Google Scholar.

59 Hume, The Politics of Violence, p. 4.

60 The notion of repertoire brings together different levels of analysis ranging from large-scale changes such as the development of capitalism (with the subsequent proletarianisation of work) and the process of state-making (with the parallel growth of the state's bulk, complexity, and penetration of its coercive and extractive power) to patterns of citizen–state interaction. Tilly's model exhorts us to conceptually hold together macro-structures and micro-processes by looking closely at the ways in which big changes indirectly shape collective action by affecting the interests, opportunities, organisations and identities of ordinary people. See Tilly, Charles, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Contentious French; and ‘Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain’.

61 Tilly, ‘Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain’, p. 26.

62 Ibid.

63 Auyero, Javier, Poor People's Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 In order to identify residential patterns, sources of employment, levels of education and the most common problems identified by the population under investigation, we conducted 100 short interviews, each of which lasted between 30 minutes and an hour. We recruited the respondents via snowball sampling. For insightful accounts of the history and workings of the street fair and the surrounding neighbourhood, see Sebastián Hacher, Sangre salada (Buenos Aires: Marea Editorial, 2011); and Girón, Nacho, La Salada: radiografía de la feria más polémica de Latinoamérica (Buenos Aires: Ediciones B, 2011)Google Scholar.

65 Emerson, Robert, Fretz, Rachel and Shaw, Linda, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Becker, Howard, ‘Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation’, American Sociological Review, 23 (1958), pp. 652–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sociological Work: Methods and Substance (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1970); Katz, Jack, ‘A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork’, in Poor People's Lawyers in Transition (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982), pp. 197–218Google Scholar; ‘From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography (Part I)’, Ethnography, 2: 4 (2001), pp. 443–73; and ‘From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography (Part II)’, Ethnography, 3: 1 (2002), pp. 73–90.

67 Our study was approved by the University of Texas at Austin IRB (protocol no. 2011-05-0126). Research participants (students, parents and school authorities) were fully aware of Berti's dual role as teacher and researcher.

68 Tolan, Gorman-Smith and Henry, ‘Family Violence’; Gelles, ‘Family Violence’. See, for a description of continuities between private and public violence, Brush, Lisa, Poverty, Battered Women, and Work in U. S. Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Auyero, Javier, ‘Born amid Bullets’, Contexts, 12: 1 (2013), pp. 24–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 See, for a full description, Auyero, Javier and Berti, María Fernanda, La violencia en los márgenes (Buenos Aires: Katz Editores, 2013)Google Scholar.

71 See Sain, ‘El fracaso del control’.

72 See Javier Auyero, ‘Deseos urgentes’, Página/12, 19 Mar. 2012.

73 Hacher, Sangre salada; Girón, La Salada.

74 Hume, The Politics of Violence.

75 Arendt, Hannah, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970)Google Scholar.

76 Katz, Jack, Seductions of Crime (New York: Basic Books, 1988)Google Scholar.

77 Thieves, so the folk narrative goes, do not make deals with the police and are united in their collective hatred of cops. Transas, on the contrary, make all sorts of illicit arrangements with the police (‘arreglan con la gorra’). Although the ‘thief versus dealer’ symbolic opposition organises the moral universe of street crime, in real life the boundaries between these two roles are less clear-cut: see Alarcón, Cuando me muera and Si me querés. As our fieldwork taught us, people can be one or another at different points in time, and families may have members involved in both types of shady street entrepreneurship. See also Venkatesh, Sudhir, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

78 This is quite common in the province of Buenos Aires, where 68 per cent of inmates in state jails are awaiting trial or final sentencing. See Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, ‘Denuncia incumplimiento, propone medidas, solicita audiencia pública’, 2010, available at www.cels.org.ar/common/documentos/denuncia%20incumplimiento%20%20solicita%20audiencia%20%20publica%20final.pdf (last checked May 2014).

79 Brennan, Robert, Molnar, Beth and Earls, Feltron, ‘Refining the Measurement of Exposure to Violence (ETV) in Urban Youth’, Journal of Community Psychology, 35: 3 (2007), pp. 603–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Reinarman, Craig and Levine, Harry G. (eds.), Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Parker, Robert N. and Auerhahn, Kathleen, ‘Alcohol, Drugs, and Violence’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998), pp. 291–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Goldstein, Paul J., ‘The Drugs/Violence Nexus: A Tripartite Conceptual Framework’, Journal of Drug Issues, 14 (1985), pp. 493–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Goldstein, Paul J., Brownstein, Henry H., Ryan, Patrick J. and Bellucci, Patricia, ‘Crack and Homicide in New York City: A Case Study in Epidemiology of Violence’, in Reinarman, and Levine, (eds.), Crack in America, pp. 113–30Google Scholar.

82 Ousey, Graham and Lee, Matthew, ‘Examining the Conditional Nature of the Illicit Drug Market-Homicide Relationship: A Partial Test of the Theory of Contingent Causation’, Criminology, 40: 1 (2002), pp. 74–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Goldstein, ‘The Drugs/Violence Nexus’, p. 496.

84 Ousey and Lee, ‘Examining the Conditional Nature’, p. 75.

85 Reinarman and Levine (eds.), Crack in America; Ousey and Lee, ‘Examining the Conditional Nature’; Bourgois, In Search of Respect; Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day; Reding, Methland.

86 Lancaster, Roger, Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press)Google Scholar.

87 Bourgois, In Search of Respect.

88 Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), p. 74Google Scholar.

89 Davis, Natalie, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past and Present, 59 (1973), pp. 51–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 2006)Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common (New York: New Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Scott, James, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Steinberg, Marc, Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.