Social movements in the face of criminal power

Marcelo Lopes de Souza

City, 2009, vol. 13, issue 1, 26-52

Abstract: In the context of contemporary capitalism, emancipative social movements must resist intimidation not only through official repression by the state apparatus (through police’s brutality and sometimes through military interventions); the illegal, criminal side of capitalism also threatens emancipative struggle. Within this framework, the real and potential role of the 'hyperprecariat’ (i.e., the workers who depend on—and often were expelled to—the informal sector in semi‐peripheral countries, and who work and live under very vulnerable conditions) is a key one. Criminal attempts to co‐opt, to silence, to neutralize the social force of emancipative social movements have been already a daily experience in several cities and countries. The main trouble for emancipative urban movements is that the 'enemies’ they have to face inside segregated spaces, and who belong to the 'hyperprecariat’, do not seem to be—strictly in terms of social class—'enemies’ at all. 'Micro‐level warlords’ such as drug traffickers operating in the sphere of retail sales recruit their 'soldiers’ (and are themselves recruited) among poor, young people in the shanty towns. Nevertheless, these armed young people frequently intimidate and repress urban activists. Considering this problem, emancipative social movements have to learn to be a countervailing power not only regarding the state apparatus and the legal side of capitalist economy, but also in relation to ordinary criminal forces—which are usually totally adapted to capitalist values, 'logic’ and patterns of behaviour. The aim of this paper is to discuss the 'new’ challenges for social movements in the context of what I termed a 'phobopolis’ -- a city whose inhabitants experience a very complex situation of diffuse violence and widespread fear -- and considering the role of the 'hyperprecariat in guns’. The present paper analyses examples primarily from Brazil (Sections 1 and 2), but also from Argentina and South Africa (first part of Section 3), before elaborating the theoretical contributions (in the last part of Section 3).

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/13604810902770788

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