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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Matthew RichmondORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
Research on security and governance in marginalised urban spaces in Latin America has pointed to complex cycles of conflict and negotiation between state and non-state actors. However, many questions remain about the dynamics of such arrangements and how they may be affected by top-down policing reforms. Presenting fieldwork conducted in Tuiuti, a ‘pacified’ favela in Rio de Janeiro, this article proposes that ‘assemblage thinking’ can shed light on these issues. Despite rhetoric of reclaiming territory for the state, I argue that Tuiuti’s UPP (Police Pacification Unit) did not produce a new state-led security regime, but rather overlaid and fused with previous security practices enacted by traffickers. This gave rise to a ‘dual security assemblage’ characterised by the co-production of security through an emergent division of policing functions. The consequences for Tuiuti’s residents were thus not enhanced social control at the hands of police, but rather greater uncertainty about the rules they were expected to observe and whom was responsible for enforcing them. By identifying the broader power inequalities surrounding this local security assemblage and the ways in which they constrained its (trans)formation, I reject the claim that assemblage thinking offers a depoliticised or merely descriptive view of the social world.
Author(s): Richmond M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Geoforum
Year: 2019
Volume: 104
Pages: 71-80
Print publication date: 01/08/2019
Online publication date: 20/06/2019
Acceptance date: 14/06/2019
Date deposited: 08/02/2024
ISSN (print): 0016-7185
ISSN (electronic): 1872-9398
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.06.011
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.06.011
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