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With the rise in narco activity, feminicidios, armed robberies, the disappearing of people, and State violence as daily occurrences, how can we begin to make sense of such an overwhelming amount of loss? Utilizing the graphic novel to its fullest extent, Augusto Mora’s Los fantasmas de mi ciudad (The Ghosts of My City) is a visually stunning (re)interpretation of the violence that plagues the urban cityscapes of contemporary Mexico. Forming part of a long literary tradition of fantastic stories based in Mexico’s most populated areas, Mora’s graphic novel follows the story of a teenage medium, Viridiana San Juan, and her friends as they attempt to record video evidence of the tormented souls that haunt their city, all the while navigating the violent reality that surrounds them daily. Through her desire to tell the stories of the souls that haunt her visions, Mora constructs a simultaneous and compelling critique of the historical, social, and political practice that has filled Mexico’s urban areas with ghosts and the nonchalant attitude that has made violence a normal part of everyday life. By making the unseen victims of violence become visible, the subjectivities of the city’s millions and millions of ghosts can be recognized and their narratives reclaimed.

This comment piece, prompted by the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the terrible toll of lives of Gazan people following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, argues that the field of cultural studies has its origins in a notion of post-war peacetime and that this has created a vocabulary deficit in regard to war, genocide and state violence. Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall have confronted patterns of violence in regard to the urban environment and the policing of Black youth as well as the escalation in day-to-day authoritarianism and the rise of the right. There is a strong case to be made however for the field of cultural studies to more fully draw on political philosophy including Middle East scholarship to engage more directly with the politics of occupation, settler colonialism, neo-nationalism and the far right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lived experiences with urban heat are often rendered invisible, shrouded under the cloak of neoliberal resilience discourse and sanitised heat mapping and messaging. This is particularly tragic for disadvantaged at‐risk populations in white, settler colonial contexts where heat tolerance is worn as a badge of honour. Here, drawing upon semi‐structured interviews and focus group discussions in Perth, Western Australia, and with feminist emphasis on the embodied, the everyday, and bodily difference, we illustrate how corporeal thermal insecurities among rough sleepers, people with disabilities, and across intersectional disenfranchisement immobilise and dehumanise. By employing the logic of structures of violence to thermal suffering, we reveal how housing and energy precarity exacerbate entrenched racism and normalised discrimination. Our aim is to expand current debates on heat action plans (HAPs) and cool refuges by examining what “better weathering” could mean in practice, via the materialities of heated urban bodies (HUBs) and to demonstrate how such counter‐hegemonic heat mapping serves as a corporeal critique of the neoliberal resilient subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Succar and Porfiri (Nature Cities 1(3):216–224, 2024) reported sublinear scaling for firearm ownership in the United States. Their analysis hinted at a causal role of prevalence of homicides and firearm accessibility on firearm ownership, supporting self-protection as a driver of firearm ownership. In this study, we propose a microscopic, individual-level model to explain these macroscopic, city-level findings. In the model, individuals dwell in a city and buy a gun if they experience a violent interaction and know a dealer. We examine the model from a network science perspective and show the emergence of sublinear scaling with an exponent matching empirical observations. Beyond scaling, the model provides accurate predictions of city rankings in terms of firearm ownership, underscoring the explanatory power of the self-protection theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates police officers' perceptions on the influence of images in the tasks of crime prevention and repression, its evidentiary function in criminal justice and the methods of dissemination of cases of police violence and urban insecurity on the media and social media in Argentina. The design of the study is qualitative. The sources of the data come from interviews with agents of Policía Federal Argentina and of Policía de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, during 2023. The analytical strategy used was theoretical sampling and constant comparison. The main findings of the article explain the role of the image on the government of security and in the construction of the police news from three different categories of the analysis: the image as tool of police work, as product to "sell" on the media and social media and as evidence before justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the representation and theorisation of the city in Teju Cole’s novels – Every Day Is for the Thief (2007), Open City (2011), and Tremor (2023). It argues that Cole’s writing articulates a new grammar of city-ness premised on historicised relationality and comparative thinking, thus challenging paradigms of urban representation that universalise the Western city. In particular, I propose that Cole’s novels offer a rewriting of Lagos and New York as specifically textual constructions, in which histories of modernity and colonisation get crystallised into their social geographies and cultural infrastructures. By close reading these texts and by drawing from the insights of postcolonial and literary urban studies, I analyse the formal devices – from variations in perspective to restricted focalisation – that Cole employs to textualise the city and its political histories. Through form, Cole’s novels raise crucial questions, both ethical and narrative, about representability, language, and historical violence in urban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth violence is a national public health concern in USA, especially in resource-constrained urban communities. Between 2018 and 2021, the Healthy Communities for Youth (HCFY) program addressed youth violence prevention in select economically marginalized urban communities, with the HCFY program reducing the likelihood of youth-involved violent crime. Leveraging costs from program expense reports, this study analyzes the costs of the HCFY program in order to inform policymaking and the program's future ongoing implementation. Total HCFY program costs were $821,000 ($290,100 annually including program start-up costs) over the 34-month project period. Operationalization costs contributed the largest share (64.8%), with 45% attributable to intervention coordinators. In the intervention community, the program costs $100 per capita, $1100 per youth-involved crime case, and $8100 per youth-involved violent crime case. Findings were sensitive to the number of youth-involved crime or violent crime cases and costs of high-level program leadership and self-evaluation analysts, with the per youth-involved violent crime case cost ranging between $700 and $1600 over the program period. Analysis of HCFY program costs is an important step in determining the affordability of a community-level program to prevent youth violence in resource-limited urban communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis in recent decades on weak state capacity as an explanation of civil war detracts from an important fact: some of the deadliest and most protracted rebellions since WWII arose not where the state was weak, but rather in areas of significant state power. This study challenges the predominance-of-peripheral-conflict paradigm by disentangling rebel formation from civil war onset and emphasizing the urban origins of numerous rebel groups. Quantitative analyses show that three group types—military-, social interest-, and political party-based groups—are far more likely to form in large cities, especially the capital, and far less likely to form in the rural countryside. Case studies then illustrate the constraints and opportunities nascent rebel groups of each type face. This study advances the field's understanding of a surprisingly large number of violent rebellions that current mainstream approaches and the emphasis on weak states and conflict opportunities cannot effectively explain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban scholars have long engaged with the role of culture in cities. Tracing this debate, this article outlines the evolutions of culture as an object of study in inquiries on the urban and wishes to trouble two persisting trends in this literature. The first is a geographical and theoretical Eurocentric vision of culture, often framing cities beyond the West as exceptions or needing validation through a comparison with a Western case or theoretical model; the second is an economistic vision of culture under neoliberalism, neglecting the political and ideological dimensions of culture. As a step in overcoming these limitations, this article builds around the notion of 're-learning', to re-insert memory, informality and conflicting heritage into the debate on culture in cities. Drawing on an ethnography of the street 'Avenida 26' in Bogotá, Colombia, the article shows that informal cultural practices in the middle of segregation and urban violence can hardly be grasped through the current framing of culture in cities. Yet, they invite an opening up of such a framing to include different ways to cohabit and navigate space through everyday minor engagements. These multifaceted cultural realities urge us to 're-learn' culture in cities anywhere and advance theorisation on culture that takes non-Western urban spaces seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands the concept of contested neighborhood boundaries to account for spatial variation in violence across urban neighborhoods. We argue that contested boundaries—defined as spaces in which one group holds a narrow majority in close proximity to a large minority group—will contain the highest levels of intergroup violence. Conversely, levels of intragroup violence will be comparatively low in these areas, as contested spatial boundaries will give rise to more clearly defined group boundaries, increasing solidarity and placing downward pressure on intragroup conflict. We assess this bifurcated perspective by appending geocoded data on over 13,000 violent crimes to 359 Census block groups in St. Louis, MO for the period spanning 2010 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Introduction: For a Relational Turn, Part Two" from Oxford German Studies discusses the urgent need for a shift towards relational imaginaries to address the negative impacts of the Cartesian concept of the autonomous human. It explores how relationality in art and literature can inform politics and sciences, challenging techno-rationalist visions. The text delves into various literary works and films that highlight different aspects of relationality, emphasizing the importance of interconnectedness and shared agency in addressing contemporary challenges. [Extracted from the article]

In the Global South, the urban poor are heavily policed and bear the brunt of police violence. Evidence suggests that the urban poor also support punitive policing. Why do those individuals most affected by police violence also appear to support increased police presence in their neighborhoods? Combining extensive fieldwork with a public opinion survey in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, this paper develops a theory that the urban poor support punitive policing because it reduces other forms of violence they are routinely exposed to in public spaces. Our argument contrasts with the prevalent hypothesis that support for punitive policing amongst the urban poor originates in conservative views of security provision. Because Uruguay is a least likely case for this argument, our results are highly informative. The results demonstrate the deeply unequal distribution of the lived experience of authoritarian coercive practices in an otherwise democratic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police are omnipresent in Nigerian cities. The existence and actions of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) in cities such as Lagos, Ibadan, and Abuja are intended like elsewhere in the urban world to deter, reduce, and solve crime. This is true of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the NPF, created to combat armed robberies, car-snatchings, kidnappings, and cattle rustling. Its methods of seeking greater public security, however, raises questions about the fairness and efficacy of urban policing in Nigeria. Its reported police predation and violence during its stops, searches, detentions, and custody of urban denizens exacerbate socio-spatial injustices in Nigerian cities. We draw on the concept of the right to the city and qualitative data, including key informant interviews with Nigerian police, lawyers, and common city residents, including self-identified victims of SARS brutality, to describe how SARS helps us understand the context and characteristics of urban policing in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community violence and crime are significant public health problems with serious and lasting effects on young people, families, and communities. This violence and crime have significant ripple effects, affecting not just those who are directly physically injured, but also those who witness violent episodes, those who have friends or loved ones killed or injured, and those who must everyday navigate streets that they know have been frequent sites of serious violence and crime. The current study presents evidence of the impact that a data-driven, collective impact approach — the Communities that Care prevention system — can have on violence and crime outcomes within a large urban, high-burden community. Established as one of the national Youth Violence Prevention Centers (YVPC) funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention is among the first to implement the CTC approach in a large, urban community. The current study's findings show reductions in violence (i.e., aggravated assaults and robberies) in the Bronzeville community, compared to similar communities in Chicago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how home is produced by women under conditions of violence. It contends why domestic violence (DV) is not a disruption, but a 'condition of possibility' in the production of the ideal home. Drawing on cultural aphorisms the paper highlights the role of gender norms in simultaneously idealizing the mother and normalizing DV in Sri Lanka. The veneration of the mother in all ethno-religious communities, the paper argues, is conditioned upon a woman's capacity for nurture and her absorption of violence through the embodiment of feminine virtues: selflessness, forbearance, and long-suffering. The paper contributes to discussions of home and domestic violence in three ways. First, it illuminates cross-cultural meanings of home and the gendered labour that produces it. Second, it describes how women dwell with DV by embodying gender norms through acts of care and repair. Finally, the paper aims to underscore the materiality of gender norms in creating a 'moral-economy of care'; that is, the ways by which cultural truisms – in postulating a triumvirate of woman-home-suffering – emotionally tethers woman to home compelling her to produce it under conditions of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies selective homicide, a modality of urban violence and its related forms in the district of Buenaventura between 2000. and 2015. The methodology was mixed, based on aggregated databases of the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH, for its acronym in Spanish) and the documentary prepared with local, regional, and national press. The results show the prevalence of selective homicide against members of organizations and social leaders, retaliation between armed groups, and organized crime related to illicit crops and common crime. Between 2002 and 2005, it was more intense, and massacres and disappearances were higher between 2006 and 2010. By way of conclusion, selective killing is linked to illegal activities, political interests, and the actions of armed groups of different kinds, as expressions of power towards individuals with social identities and their organizations seen as adversaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can attention to spatial dynamics improve our understanding of where, how, and why conflict-related violence (CRV) concentrates within postwar cities such as Mitrovica? Like many other postwar cities, Mitrovica – one of Kosovo's largest cities – remains affected by violence connected to the preceding war. This violence is not equally distributed across the city but rather concentrates to certain flashpoints while other sites are comparatively calm(er). To date, however, research on postwar cities has not fully explained such patterns, partly due to limitations in microlevel data. In this article we rely on novel georeferenced data on CRV, in combination with in-depth fieldwork, to map CRV in Mitrovica and explore the causes for its spatial clustering. Using this approach, we show that CRV concentrates at Mitrovica's Main Bridge and explore this concentration using relational space as an analytical lens. The analysis contributes new insights into patterns of violence in Mitrovica, demonstrates the value of combining systematic data on the patterns of CRV with in-depth exploration into its underlying dynamics, and contributes to existing research on Mitrovica as well as on postwar cities and postwar violence more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn Ethiopia, urbanization and urban violence are recent phenomena dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. In the country’s long history, politics and urban violence have been bedfellows and reliable means of change, devolution, and reform. Since 1916, Ethiopia has essentially experienced more violence in its urban’s than in its rural areas due to recurrent episodes of political instability at the national level. Ironically, Ethiopian leaders were amateurs who were unable to draw lessons from their past deeds. Nevertheless, Ethiopian historiography has devoted little attention to the magnitude of political issues-related urban violence in Ethiopia. As a result, the paper attempted to analyse two goals. First, it tries to analyse the historical events of Ethiopian urban violence from 1916–1991, and secondly, it tries to explain the tradition of Ethiopian leaders to learn from past deeds. To document this extraordinary theme, the paper grey on both primary sources and published secondary literature that have been available to the writer to date. The collected data was systematically verified, analyzed, and interpreted through qualitative data analysis.

This study examines Colombian author Gloria Susana Esquivel’s novel Animales del fin del mundo (2017). Narrated in first-person in the past tense, the novel follows seven-year-old Inés as she navigates an austere home life while also attempting to understand the urban violence that punctuates her affluent neighborhood amidst Colombia’s decades-long internal armed conflict. Caught in familial strife, yet unable to escape her home, Inés must keep to herself, often inventing imaginary friends and games to play in the absence of others. This study analyzes her invention of alter egos serving during child’s play as vehicles of self-discovery allowing her to play, converse, and find herself both literally and figuratively. Her relationship with child’s play, however, is complicated when Inés meets María, the housekeeper’s granddaughter. Though Inés initially idolizes María, admiration slowly turns to jealousy and rivalry, with their child’s play feeding Inés’s exploration of prejudice, greed, and pride. This study thus explores how Inés comes into her own voice as she begins to articulate expressions of class struggle and socioeconomic disparity between her and María through animal symbology, allowing Esquivel to push the boundaries of conventional notions of childhood innocence and female docility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversing physical disinvestment, e.g., by remediating abandoned buildings and vacant lots, is an evidence-based strategy to reduce urban firearm violence. However, adoption of this strategy has been inconsistent across US cities. Our community-academic partnership sought to support adoption in Toledo, OH, USA, by generating locally relevant analyses on physical disinvestment and firearm violence. We used a spatial case–control design with matching. Physical disinvestment measures were derived from a citywide parcel foot audit conducted by the Lucas County Land Bank in summer 2021. Firearm violence outcomes were incident-level shootings data from the Toledo Police Department from October 2021 through February 2023. Shooting locations were matched to controls 1:4 on poverty rate, roadway characteristics, and zoning type. Exposures were calculated by aggregating parcels within 5-min walking buffers of each case and control point. We tested multiple disinvestment measures, including a composite index. Models were logistic regressions that adjusted for the matching variables and for potential spatial autocorrelation. Our sample included N = 281 shooting locations and N = 1124 matched controls. A 1-unit increase in the disinvestment score, equal to approximately 1 additional disrepair condition for the average parcel within the walking buffer, was associated with 1.68 times (95% CI: 1.36, 2.07) higher odds of shooting incidence. Across all other measures, greater disinvestment was associated with higher odds of shooting incidence. Our finding of a strong association between physical disinvestment and firearm violence in Toledo can inform local action. Community-academic partnership could help increase adoption of violence prevention strategies focused on reversing physical disinvestment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging men has been established as central in addressing intimate partner violence. Yet few studies on intimate partner violence explored men's perspectives on what constitutes sexual violence in relationships only. To explore how men conceptualize sexual violence, we engaged a qualitative approach to unpack men's narratives of sexual IPV. The study was conducted in Mwanza, Tanzania using in-depth interviews with 30 married men. Men shared a broad spectrum of unacceptable behaviors that clearly or potentially connote sexual violence. Some of the acts were deemed to constitute sexual violence when directed to both men and women, while some were perceived as sexual violence when directed to women or men only. Threatened manhood underpinned men's conceptualization of sexual violence against them by their partners. Although a large part of men's narratives of sexual violence towards women seemed to challenge the common sexual scripts existing in patriarchal societies, some of their accounts indicated the persistence of traditional presumptions of masculine sexual entitlement. Our findings uncover additional dimensions of sexual violence that go beyond what is included in the current global frameworks, underscoring the critical need of giving people a voice in their local contexts in defining what sexual intimate partner violence entails for them. This may increase the likelihood of interventions becoming more acceptable and effective when targeting sexual violence, thereby contributing to reduced levels of sexual intimate partner violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores why the provinces of Ontario and Quebec devised contrasting policies in response to similar incidents of urban violence in the mid-2000s. In both settings, municipal police departments launched aggressive campaigns against so-called "youth gangs." However, Ontario went one step further and created a new "youth policy" to expand out-of-school programs for children and adolescents. By examining the origins of the policies in each province, the paper concludes that Black political actors in Ontario were leading champions of the youth policy, whereas, in Quebec, police chiefs took the driver's seat and advocated for a disciplinary strategy against "street gangs." The contrasts in policy and Black political participation exemplify the distinct racial politics of the provinces. Race-conscious policy in Ontario grows out of a tradition of Black radicalism and multi-racial coalitions. In Quebec, minority nationalism turns race into a proxy for clashes over ethnicity and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This special issue departs from the premise that the sensible dimensions of urban (in)security shape lived and embodied experiences of the city in ways that reflect and affect social and spatial forms of control, belonging, and inequality. As visceral as they may seem, we also contend that these sensorial registers of (in)security are far from given: they are learned and taught, whether consciously, or otherwise. Drawing on ideas of enskilment and apprenticeship, the articles that make up this thematic collection engage the sensorial attunement of urban dwellers to how risk and safety look and feel in a diverse set of cities. Rather than an end, this approach is a means to deepen our understanding of how processual, everyday geographies of inequality are reproduced in practices and imaginaries of urban security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lyari, one of the oldest settlements in Karachi, has been the site of conflict between political parties, criminal gangs, and law enforcement agencies since the early 2000s. Between 2008 and 2013, much of Lyari was controlled by the People’s Aman Committee (PAC), a body created as a means of ending a long-standing conflict between two gang factions. It was common knowledge among residents that this organization was patronized by certain branches of the state and could provide access to public goods, thus blurring the line between formality and informality. For some, this organization was viewed positively as decreasing the distance between citizens and the state and also as a means of imparting quick “justice.” For others, the informal nature of the PAC legitimized the power of violent actors and strengthened their desire for formal state rule. This paper argues that the opacity introduced by organizations such as the PAC is a deliberate strategy used by the state to bolster its authority, particularly among marginalized populations.

How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experiences of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. Through this comparative ethnographic project, we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional ones, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip,” to more vulnerable ones, such as whispering—are main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods. Our findings suggest that strategies are context dependent and most likely vary according to numerous factors, including the history of civic organizing, policing practices, and the type of armed actor with whom they cohabitate in their neighborhood.

This document is an introduction to a special issue of the journal "Families in Society: Journal of Contemporary Social Services" focused on building healthy relationships to end violence. The document highlights the importance of social relationships in addressing violence and emphasizes the need for innovative, effective, and culturally relevant solutions. The special issue includes research on various aspects of healthy relationships and violence prevention, such as language concerning intimate partner violence, theories of relational health, interventions centered on relationships, and the protective effects of communication in weakening the relation between violence exposure and mental health symptoms. The document concludes by calling for further research and development of interventions that promote healthy relationships. [Extracted from the article]

How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experiences of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. Through this comparative ethnographic project, we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional ones, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip,” to more vulnerable ones, such as whispering—are main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods. Our findings suggest that strategies are context dependent and most likely vary according to numerous factors, including the history of civic organizing, policing practices, and the type of armed actor with whom they cohabitate in their neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban firearm violence (UFV) is associated with inequities rooted in structural racism and socioeconomic disparities. Social vulnerability index (SVI) is a composite measure that encompasses both. We sought to understand the relationship between SVI and the incidence of UFV in Chicago using geospatial analysis for the first time. Firearm assaults in Chicago 2001-2019 were obtained from the Trace. Locations of incidents were geocoded using ArcGIS and overlaid with census tract vector files. These data were linked to 2018 SVI measures obtained from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Shooting rates were calculated by tabulating the total number of shootings per capita in each census tract. We used Poisson regression with robust error variance to estimate the incident rate of UFV in different levels of social vulnerability and Local Moran's I to evaluate spatial autocorrelation. In total, 642 census tracts were analyzed. The median shooting rate was 2.6 per 1000 people (interquartile 0.77, 7.0). When compared to those census tracts with very low SVI, census tracts with low SVI had a 1.7-time increased incident rate of shootings (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.74, 95% CI 1.08, 2.81), tracts with moderate SVI had a 3.1-time increased incident rate (IRR 3.07, 95% CI 2.31, 4.10), and tracts with high SVI had a 7-time increased incident rate (IRR 7.03, 95% CI 5.45, 9.07). In Chicago, social vulnerability has a significant association with rates of firearm violence, providing a focus point for policy intervention to address high rates of interpersonal violence in similar cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at street-level strategies employed by the police in their everyday interactions with khwaja sira sex workers using the lens of peripheralization. The findings of this study, based on 35 in-depth interviews with street-based khwaja sira sex workers in Lahore, suggest three important strategies of police repression. These include territorialization; securitization and manipulation of violence across urban centers and peripheries. The paper argues that police repression of khwaja sira sex workers serves to disconnect them from urban centers, key social ties and safety nets, and socio-economic resources critical for their respectful survival in the city. The result is the peripheralization of khwaja sira individuals and their communities, increased dependence on precarious/traditional forms of khwaja sira livelihoods including sex work, and production of difference and marginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to propose an analytical organization of how studies on the “fear of crime” are structured in academic production, especially in Latin America. The theme has already been the subject of important literature reviews, but the way authors construct fear as an object of research will be the key element for the new framework presented in this study. This research was performed by a methodological strategy called snowball sampling. Its major result refers to the use of emotion as the analytical resource that can structure studies in disparate contexts under the same organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletin de Antropologia is the property of Universidad de Antioquia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Urban violence refers to any form of violence occurring in cities and suburbs. It may involve delinquent acts such as theft, physical assault, harassment, vandalism, etc. This article aims to provide a scientific explanation for the violent behavior and practices of young people. The observations and analyses conducted in this case study will seek, through an ethnographic approach, to go beyond the collected data in order to identify this new reality currently experienced in cities, especially in overcrowded neighborhoods, and to determine the factors contributing to the spread of this urban violence phenomenon in our towns and villages. Urban violence is a complex phenomenon that can have serious and lasting consequences on the affected individuals, families, and communities, in addition to being influenced by a variety of factors, including social inequalities, economic factors, and peer group dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that the state of war that permeates Brazilian urban sociability is not a mere analogy, but a movement proper to the bourgeois democratic system. Based on Agamben’s theoretical proposal, it seeks to reveal the violent model of maintaining the friend-enemy dichotomy, and how this is shown in Brazilian urban conflicts, especially in the case of Rio de Janeiro. Finally, the resurgence of violence through social and open fascism is presented, which tends to intensify urban warfare. From this, a critique of the Brazilian left is established, which has shown itself to be incapable of giving answers to this typical phenomenon.

Based on the fieldwork done with two support groups for people who had contact with a “violent death”, this article examines the different dimensions and characteristics of these individuals’ lives that shapes what we call grief. Mobilizing a pragmatic and pragmatist approach, I argue that there are different (non-linear) phases/scopes characterized by a collective work on personal remembrance and on intimate sensations, whose objective is to encourage people in mourning to conceive future possibilities in their lives. The process goes from the breaking with past habits caused by the extreme event to the investigation of new potential for action which aims to build new stable habits. I show how the transformation of sensations and the engagement in collective activities contribute to this indefinite period as a “life ordeal”, characterized as mourning by the groups and individuals studied.

The book "Urban Violence: Security, Imaginary, Atmosphere" by Pavoni and Tulumello challenges traditional approaches to understanding urban violence by examining the interconnectedness of violence and the urban environment. The authors argue that violence and the city are co-constituted through their ontic relationality, and they propose a new materialist epistemology for researching urban violence. The book explores concepts such as atmospheres, imaginaries, and extensions, and offers insights into the aesthetic and affective politics of the city, as well as the commodification and securitization of violence. It also discusses the potential for a new politics of urban violence that prioritizes care over security. Overall, the book provides a critical and interdisciplinary perspective on urban violence and offers new possibilities for urban and criminological thought. [Extracted from the article]

The main objective of this paper is to propose an analytical organization of how studies on the "fear of crime" are structured in academic production, with emphasis on the Latin American one. The theme has already been the subject of important literature reviews, but, in this work, the way authors construct fear as an object of research will be the key element of this new framework. The research was done through a methodological strategy called snowball sampling. Its major result is the use of emotion as the analytical resource capable of structuring the works of disparate contexts in the same organization.

Copyright of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais is the property of Centro de Estudos Sociais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais is the property of Centro de Estudos Sociais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The impact of urban violence on society has been the subject of several studies, but the consequences of fear for habits of cultural consumption are missing in cultural economics research. This article investigates whether the fear of urban violence explains individuals' choice between different options of cultural participation with a particular focus on the activities of watching movies and listening to music. Based on individual data from a survey conducted in 2019 with 1211 residents from a conglomeration of sixteen favelas (slums) located in the Maré neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), this study employs Simultaneous Bivariate Ordered Probit Models to verify the association between individuals' fear of violence and their choice of consuming culture in private or public spaces. Controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and territorial variables, the findings indicate that consuming culture in private spaces is a substitute for public spaces when individuals are more afraid of violence. The results presented in this work provide evidence for the design and implementation of policies targeting territories impacted by high levels of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]