This paper analyzes the emotions described in narratives of victimization among Rio de Janeiro's middle classes. It explores the so-called 'contextualist' trend (Lutz & Abu-Lughod 1990) in the anthropology of emotions as a means to understanding violence, focusing on the micropolitical dimension of emotion discourses on victimization. The data analyzed is derived from eight in-depth interviews with married couples who have been through the experience of having their residences assaulted while both of them were at home. The analysis focuses on the recurrence of two emotions in the interviewees' depictions of their feelings towards their assailants: sympathy and contempt. The emergence of these two emotions, whose relations to hierarchy have already been well documented by social scientists, is interpreted as an attempt to re-establish the hierarchies perceived to have been overturned by the assaults.
Emotion; Micropolitics of Emotion; Urban Violence; Contempt; Sympathy