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Before the Body Count: Homicide Statistics and Everyday Security in Latin America

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Willis, Graham Denyer 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pHomicide statistics are a widely accepted metric of security and democracy. This article argues for a focus on how bodies come or do not come to be counted – of what happens before states enumerate. The experience of São Paulo relates that how many people die and how many do not is connected to the governance of an organised crime group known as the PCC. The punishment practices of the PCC and groups like it throughout Latin America reshape the lived paradigm of governance over life and death, albeit in concealed ways. Statistics are produced by and are productive of a de jure state, different from the state de facto. The acceptance of state-made homicide figures, whether for analysis, visualisation or political claims, is consequential for the future of lived security and social science knowledge production.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

homicide, governance, statistics, organised crime, police, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Latin America

Journal Title

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0022-216X
1469-767X

Volume Title

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Sponsorship
The author would like to thank the Drugs, Security and Democracy program of the Social Science Research Council/ Open Society Foundations for support in carrying out associated research and the Social Science and Humanities of Canada for Post-Doctoral Fellowship support during the writing of this article.