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Making the City, Making a Constituency: Milícias-Created Enclaves and Urbanization in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil /

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Making the City, Making a Constituency: Milícias-Created Enclaves and Urbanization in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil // Priscila Coli Rocha.
Author:	Coli Rocha, Priscila,
Description:	1 electronic resource (182 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International87-04A.
Subject:	Urban planning. -
Online resource:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=32236607
ISBN:	9798293892778

Making the City, Making a Constituency: Milícias-Created Enclaves and Urbanization in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil /
Coli Rocha, Priscila,

Making the City, Making a Constituency: Milícias-Created Enclaves and Urbanization in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil /Priscila Coli Rocha. - 1 electronic resource (182 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: A.

The involvement of criminal organizations in city-making is increasing across many parts of the world. While the global scale of illicit markets-ranging from drug trafficking to arms smuggling- is well documented, the mechanisms through which criminal organizations engage with processes of urbanization, and the specific objectives they pursue through it, remain insufficiently understood. This dissertation addresses this gap by examining how city-making supports to the operations of criminal organizations, and, in turn, how these organizations actively shape processes of urbanization.This dissertation focuses on a previously unexamined type of criminal organization in Brazil which I term "territory-making milícias," a special subcategory of the better known milícias. For territory-making milícias, city-making is not only an activity among many in a broader criminal portfolio. Rather, the act of creating and managing land subdivisions, often illegally and on geologically unstable ground, is what bring them into existence. Key findings indicate their goal is to leverage city-making to create electoral constituencies. It also reveals how these groups through the strategic settlement of precarious areas, positioning themselves as indispensable housing providers despite creating the very conditions of vulnerability.Over time, they consolidate their territory by transforming these subdivisions into enclaves delimited by the construction of physical barriers. These enclaves are central to the governance strategy of territory-making milícias. They function as disciplinary apparatuses-mechanisms that regulate behavior both within and beyond their boundaries. This governance structure operates not through constant displays of overt violence, as seen with many other criminal organizations, but through what I call veiled violence: a mode of control that is invisible, latent, and only activated when boundaries are breached. In this way, territory-making milícias govern through spatial and sensory cues of order and security rather than through spectacle and force.Building on prior work, this dissertation contributes to scholarship in three significant ways. First, it expands literature on urbanization in the Global South by demonstrating how criminal organizations become active agents of urbanization, not just passive exploiters of existing urban conditions, but key players in shaping the built environment. Second, it advances the literature on criminal governance by demonstrating how city-making is not a byproduct of territorial control but rather a strategic mechanism for political and economic accumulation, functioning through the continuous production and reconfiguration of criminal territories. Third, it contributes to Brazilian milícia scholarship in two ways. First, it identifies a previously unstudied milícia type and detailing its city-making practices and mode of governance, which have been obscured by homogenizing categorizations in earlier analyses. Second, beyond analyzing criminal strategies, the dissertation examines community resistance that endures under conditions of veiled violence. This resistance, rooted in an integrated approach to preservation that combines environmental stewardship, cultural heritage, and local history, challenges the tendency to frame cultural movements as the only viable form of opposition in milícia-controlled areas.This dissertation draws on 29 months of fieldwork in a single neighborhood located within the Baixada Fluminense, on the metropolitan periphery of Rio de Janeiro State. This area offers a particularly compelling case for studying city-making through territory-making milícias, as it has been significantly urbanized by these criminal organizations since the 1990s and remains in flux. Methodologically, the research demonstrates the value of granular ethnographic approaches for studying criminal organizations and ongoing urban transformations, while addressing the challenges such fieldwork entails. Although grounded in the specific context of Rio de Janeiro, the frameworks developed here are applicable to other cities where criminal groups increasingly shape urbanization processes. The findings carry significant implications for housing, urban planning, and security policy, suggesting that effective responses must address the spatial strategies through which such groups consolidate power and reproduce urban inequalities. Ultimately, this research calls for more transversal understandings of criminal governance-ones that fully account for its urban dimensions and adaptive capacities in contemporary city-making.

English

ISBN: 9798293892778Subjects--Topical Terms:

2122922
Urban planning.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Brazil

Making the City, Making a Constituency: Milícias-Created Enclaves and Urbanization in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil /
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