IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

353

Organized Crime Groups, Narcotraffick, Illegal Markets and Homicides in Latin America

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC29 Deviance and Social Control (host committee)

Language: Spanish and English

Session Type: Oral

Organized crime groups acquired greater importance to Latin American society analysis in the last decades. In sociological terms, the interest in the study of organized crime can be summarized three perspectives: 1) it is a phenomenon whose operations articulate macro and micro social structures, ranging from families’ private spaces to international relations; 2) it allows us to examine how actions and social relations operate in infrapolitic and infraeconomic spaces, but with powerful interference in the everyday life of formal social organizations; 3) given its current characteristics, the study of organized crime groups makes it possible to discuss its relations with democratic political systems. There is a current hypothesis that the continuity of illegal operations carried out by the organized crime groups compromise the survival of democracies. There is, however, the contrary view, according to which some operations are so intertwined and rooted in those systems that they are part of their functionality. One of the major social consequences of organized crime practices is the use of homicides as a social control tool. Killings are used as a ‘regular’ practice, which are ‘regulated’ by its internal norms. As a consequence, a huge transformation in the homicide rates among the states which are related to the organized crime groups commands. The proposed session aims to gather theoretical & empirical studies related to themes such as the dynamics of organized crime in Latin America, the illegal markets in which those groups operates and the fluctuation of the homicide rates in the last decades.