Territories of uncertainty in contemporary Brazil: neighborhood sociability and urban violence

Abstract:

This article has as its analytical focus the relationship between violence and sociabilities, in order to understand how the populations living in neighborhoods considered violent and non-violent exercise their daily urban sociabilities of public coexistence. The study that underlies the article has an empirical focus on the Brazilian city of Aracaju (which ranked first in 2016 in the ranking of lethal violence in Brazil) and uses mixed methodology anchored in census data and field research. To investigate the forms of face-to-face interaction in settings vulnerable to violence, this article outlines a survey of statistical data on lethal violence associated with two ethnographic surveys on sociability in public spaces. The incursions were carried out in two neighborhoods that have low and high numbers of intentional violent deaths: the neighborhoods Treze de Julho and Santa Maria.

Keywords:
Cities; Violence; Urban Space; Sociability; Neighborhood