Doctoral Dissertation Research: Policing the favela: New Brazilian security practices in transnational and local context

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

Brown University doctoral candidate Stephanie Savell, supervised by Dr. Catherine Lutz, will undertake research on the transnational circulation of security expertise, state authority, and citizenship. International and domestic security operations are often treated as distinct but frequently military institutions and overseas deployments may affect domestic policing. The researcher's goal is to discover if and why it matters for policing and for the urban poor that security knowledge and practices circulate internationally, and that the distinct boundaries between police and military are fading. The research will focus on a Brazilian policing model that employs techniques refined while leading the United Nations' peacekeeping force in Haiti. Data collection will be carried out in a Rio de Janeiro shanty town or favela where police forces are active. She will employ a mix of social science research methods including interviews, life histories, and participant observation, to understand how residents, police and military forces, and policymakers operate, experience, and assess this policing model. This research is important because it takes a novel ethnographic approach to studying security, which is more often studied with other social science methods. Ethnography can shed light on what security means in everyday lives, highlighting the surprises and contradictions of lived experiences of policing policy. This is an urgent task in an era when many governments are eager to implement policies to diminish crime-related urban violence. Moreover, this study will further our theoretical understandings of state sovereignty, the interlinking of security and human rights, militarized policing, and the consequences of this increasingly common type of state authority for marginalized city residents. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.