No abstract

No abstract

This article contrasts how stray bullets are spoken about by residents of a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with how they are depicted in the media and by residents of wealthier neighborhoods. In order to examine the role that stray bullets play in cultural constructions of violence and insecurity, it uses the theory of fetishism to analyze the implications of speaking of bullets as if they were alive. It argues that representations of urban violence are often centered upon concerns with transgression and often contain elements which resist fixation, thereby producing greater anxiety and fear. Analyzing how residents of Rio talk about stray bullets reveals that collective understandings of violence often contain elements which resist naturalization, producing a state of both security and insecurity, or a state of (in)security. [Keywords: Violence, Brazil, favela, fetishism]

This article reexamines ethnographic research I conducted on violence and insecurity in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It examines how the ethnographic strategies I chose-both methodologically and representationally-were shaped by different forms of violence. Contrasting a spectacular incident of violence, where a drug-dealer shot a person and a neighborhood dog, with more banal and everyday forms of violence, I ask how my ethnographic approach shaped my anthropology, or analysis, of violence. I argue that my focus on more spectacular types of violence was shaped by three factors: my own methodological and political positioning, the relationship between some forms of violence and narration, and the trope of the everyday state of emergency. These factors, though, tend to obscure ethnographic attention to more banal forms of violence. I argue that a deeper understanding of violence can be produced by paying equal attention to more banal forms of deprivation, but that this analysis requires a different ethnographic approach.

The term “favelas,” which originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, refers to an underserved and unofficial urban neighborhood. Favelas are often characterized by exclusion from a formal urban infrastructure, social marginalization, unofficial landownership, and a distinctive self‐built architectural form. Since the 1980s, favelas have been associated with drug dealing and are often subjected to violent and arbitrary policing.