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Session 5: Urban Violence. Thursday 9th May – Saturday 11th May 2013
Prague, Czech Republic

The Account of Violence: Numbers, Statements and Omissions in Marginalised Brazilian Communities
Natalia De’Carli and Mariano Perez Humanes

Grupo de Investigación OUT_Arquías.
University of Seville, Spain

The issue of public space in transformation by its different shades from which the experience of fear determines, generate a series of interpretations and confrontations about the way of interpreting which takes a place to be considered safe. By addressing the relationship—not always direct—between violence and perception of insecurity and the representation of regulatory indices that classify a city or urban area as more or less violent you can see a contradiction between the mediatised official numbers and everyday experience of exposure to violence. There are a heap of theories, ideas and methods of analysis and interpretations when it comes to violence, crime and its perception in marginalised areas of Brazil. In this regard we would like to question about the disparity between institutional statistics capable of framing/measure and advertise a city or urban area in the ranking of safe city; and, on the other hand, the stigmata, the mystifications and disparities between institutional data and the perception of insecurity present in the speeches of the neighbours. To understand these processes we delved into the representation of a stigmatised area by their violence, drug trafficking and crime, characterized (institutionally) as one of the most violent areas of the city of Recife, Brazil, target area of a recent public safety plan of government, which states already report positive results.

Thus, through discourses and representations from neighbours and confrontation with crime rates we have been able to build an overview of arguments check for omissions and hidden fears in the minds of this marginalised area.

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