Violence at the Urban Margins

In the Americas, the middle and upper-middle classes and their concerns dominate debates around public safety. However, even a cursory count of the victims reveals that the people suffering the most from violence live, and die, at the margins of urban societies. While those at the low end of the social order live in danger, the discourse about violence and risk belongs to more advantaged others prone to view violence as evidence of a cultural or racial defect, rather than see a...
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In the Americas, the middle and upper-middle classes and their concerns dominate debates around public safety. However, even a cursory count of the victims reveals that the people suffering the most from violence live, and die, at the margins of urban societies. While those at the low end of the social order live in danger, the discourse about violence and risk belongs to more advantaged others prone to view violence as evidence of a cultural or racial defect, rather than see a relationship to economic and political marginalization. As a result, the experience of interpersonal violence among the urban poor is constantly muted and denied. This volume of essays brings forth the everyday fear and trauma of living in relegated territories. It features cutting-edge ethnographic research on the role of violence in the lives of the urban poor in South, Central, and North America, and sheds light on the suffering that violence produces and perpetuates, as well as the individual and collective responses that violence generates, among those living at the urban margins.