Social accumulation of violence in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil: some reflections

Abstract

In this article the performance of violence in Río de Janeiro, and in general in Brazil, is analyzed considering a long-term social process that is characterized as a "social accumulation of violence”. This process even being more visible in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, it extends through the main Brazilian cities. The core of this spiral of violence is the solution of conflicts appealing immediately to the firearms. Two different dimensions feedback the core of the social accumulation of violence, namely, the accumulation of sales network, with retail price, of illicit products on the basis of the criminal subjection in the poorest areas of the city and the rise of offer of “political merchandise” that led to a accumulation of certain “connections” between different illegal and informal markets and, then, to the overlapping of diverse kind of illegal merchandise with political merchandise.