The study focuses on lynching in Bahia (Brazil) through police narratives published in the local press (A Tarde), from 1997 to 2001. Due to the characteristics of empirical evidence an attempt was made to reconstruct the popular action through the scene concept, inspired in the theories of social dramaturgy (Goffman, 1999) and the hermeneutic phenomenological theory by Ricouer (1996). The scenes reaffirm the possibilities of unfolding acts of lynching as a popular reaction, a practice against crime and criminals. However, that reaction is presented in the press texts as a practice against the "dangerous classes" that is represented by society as popular segments, contributing to reproduce real or symbolic exclusions.
lynching; criminality; violence