Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security / Edition 1

by Enrique Desmond Arias

Overview

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. Employing participant observation and interview research in three favelas (shantytowns) in Rio de Janeiro over a nine-year period, Arias closely considers the social interactions and criminal networks that are at the heart of the challenges to democratic governance in urban Brazil.

Much of the violence is the result of highly organized, politically connected drug dealers feeding off of the global cocaine market. Rising crime prompts repressive police tactics, and corruption runs deep in state structures. The rich move to walled communities, and the poor are caught between the criminals and often corrupt officials. Arias argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption. The challenge, he suggests, is to build new social networks committed to controlling violence locally. Arias also offers comparative insights that apply this analysis to other cities in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807857748
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/30/2006
Edition description:	1
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Enrique Desmond Arias is assistant professor of government at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro provides new insights based on original research on criminal and community networks in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. As cities in Brazil confront organized gangs of drug dealers who are better funded and better armed than the state—and protected by their connections—the urban poor are trapped in multiple layers of vulnerability, as Arias so richly demonstrates.—Janice E. Perlman, President of The Mega-Cities Project and author of the forthcoming Marginality from Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: 1969-2005



Arias spent years shuttling between three different favela communities in Rio at considerable personal risk. As a result, his book is wonderfully rich in insight, observation, and detail, and it goes right to the institutional heart of the problem. I have no doubt that it will be required reading for anyone interested in violence in Brazil and the rest of Latin America.—Robert Gay, Connecticut College

Editorial Reviews

A refreshing antidote to the earnest but misleading dichotomies of much official discourse. . . . Arias adds a distinctive voice . . . in terms of his subject matter, theoretical perspective, and methods.—Journal of Latin American Studies



A path-breaking book that will change the way we understand Rio de Janeiro and other cities plagued by the territorial control of violent criminal networks.—The Americas



Arias is to be applauded for his courageous and sustained research in very difficult locations, and for his evident humanity and concern for the residents of the favelas.—British Journal of Criminology



This book is a major contribution to the scholarly discussion on urban violence in Latin America.—Latin Americanist



Accessibly written and tightly argued, this book should reorient social science and policy debates on its topic, and will find wide adoption across a range of courses.—CHOICE



A remarkably-researched political ethnography of social violence in the hyper-violent drug-infested world of Brazilian favelas. . . . Intrepid and sophisticated.—Qualitative Sociology

From the Publisher