Power relations and social control in violent areas

This paper discusses the interaction dynamics of people who live in areas with high levels of crime rates and presence of organized/non-organized groups related to violent or criminal actions. The focus is on how such groups establish power relations, as well as the types of social control they exert over the population. In the first part, social interaction dynamics in various sociability levels are taken into consideration, such as the relationship between neighbors and outsiders, youth gangs and drug dealers. In the second part, we focus on the social contact with power groups involved in violent and criminal actions. The role of social networks, daily sociability practices in public and private spaces and feelings of fear and insecurity is analyzed in order to understand how strategies of coping with social control exerted by power groups are elaborated and enacted by the population. The paper presents some of the results of a research that took place in five Brazilian cities, in 2009, based on 30 focus groups with inhabitants of violent neighborhoods. The project targeted areas that received special attention by the National Program of Public Security with Citizenship (Pronasci) and was coordinated by the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP), financed by the Ministry of Justice/Public Security Office.