This paper analyses the new meanings of violence in Brazil. It argues that they emerge due to changes in the nature of Brazilian society. These are included in the context of more widespread transformations that associate processes of globalization and fragmentation. The text also discusses new angles of analysis that lead to thinking about violence through a relationship between exclusion/inclusion seen, not as excluding and dichotomic forms but as categories which belong to the same dynamic process, in which social actors can alternatively experiment forms of inclusion/exclusion originating from fragmented, differentiated, plural social processes.
urban violence; social inclusion; social exclusion; social change