Polly Wilding

Gendered meanings and everyday experiences of violence in urban Brazil

Violent acts are not random, but are infused with meaning: those intended by the perpetrators and those ascribed by others. This article explores how dominant gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro attempt to manipulate the meanings of violence to maintain their control of territory, presenting themselves as protectors of the community. Gangs impose violent punishment on residents who have breached their rules and behavioural norms. The messages they send out regarding the (un)acceptability of violence against women is highly ambiguous, however, which reduces womens options and increases levels of insecurity. Despite the ambiguity and unpredictability of gang rule, residents refrain from challenging gang control, preferring to moderate their own daily routines as a means to feel secure in the face of high levels of insecurity.

Crossing disciplinary, empirical and theoretical boundaries on gender and violence

Responding to the four interventions on gendered violence, this commentary asks why feminist geographers should be working on the issue of gendered violence, arguing that the discipline offers a particular language to problematize the discursive crossroads that violence occupies, thus making sense of the legal, moral and ideological boundaries that govern how violence is understood and responded to. It concludes with a call to not only continue working within our (sub)disciplines but to work together to ask a range of tricky questions that need addressing if we are to claim those spaces where disciplinary, empirical and theoretical boundaries can be pushed and identify when violence can act as catalyst for effective action and organizing.

Introduction – Everyday Experiences of Violence

‘[G]ender operates throughout all forms of violence’ (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004:22). The logical implication of this quote from Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois is that to study violence without considering gender is to ignore the power relations within which violence operates. Violence is inseparable from the social context in which it takes place and thus is shaped by gendered social relations. Nevertheless, certain forms of violence are more readily considered as ‘gendered’ than others. While there is a general consensus about the existence and importance of domestic violence as a phenomenon, and various other forms of gender-based violence have been identified, it is less common to think of all forms of violence as gendered.

The Boundaries of Acceptability

Violent acts are rarely random, but are infused with meanings, and these meanings influence how others react. As I have already established, one of the primary motivators for systematic and organised violence is the potential for sending out messages to the wider community. This goal is not specific to group violence, but individuals who engage in regular acts of violence also do this with the aim of disseminating meanings and messages. Depending on how these messages are received contributes to how others respond to the violence – whether it is met with tacit tolerance or resistance, condemnation or approval, inaction or action. Numerous factors contribute to these reactions, such as the severity and purpose of the violence, but ultimately it is whether it is considered to be an acceptable or proportionate response to the triggers that provoked it which determines how people respond. If we are asking which acts of violence are acceptable, it is necessary to bear in mind who is determining its acceptability.

Projects Tackling Violence

This chapter offers a detailed exploration of two particular projects, exploring how transformative approaches to youth work in particular aim to question moral codes that legitimate violence. In order to contextualise the minimal inclusion of a gender perspective in these projects, I firstly set up the discussion by outlining the gender gap that maintains an ideological and practical separation between the large number of projects that deal with young people, on themes of urban violence, and the relatively few interventions that deal with gender-based violence. I argue for the two respective areas of activism to be brought together to bridge the ‘gender gap’ that currently exists. This discussion paves the way for the final section of this chapter which explores how the two transformative projects covered here work with young women and girls. Without disregarding the positive gains for female participants, I critique the tendency to treat them as secondary actors and as assets when seeking to achieve goals related to male actors.

Public/Private Boundaries

This chapter explores the idea of a boundary between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ and how this perceived distinction plays out in the context of high levels of violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It explores how, when discussing community issues, residents apply different terms and moral codes to different forms of violence. It also draws on the existing literature on violence, to relate interviewee perceptions to broader modes of thinking about violence, questioning the assumptions made about different forms of violence in the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres. In particular, I argue that different forms of violence should not be considered in isolation from one another, as the links and lines of influence between different forms of violence will go unrecognised.