This chapter deals about the history of the Brazilian police and its dark history. Caldeira writes about the many bad things that the police did. To illustrate the police violence I give some numbers: ‘in 1991 the military police killed 1140 people in the state São Paulo during “confrontations with criminals”; in 1992, that number was 1470. This includes 111 prisoners massacred inside the Casa de Dentação, São Paulo’s largest prison.’ 87.5 percent of these killings occurred in the city of São Paulo and its metropolitan region. To compare: in 1992 the Los Angeles police killed 25 civillians in confrontation, New York police killed 24 civilians. Respectively 2.1 percent of the number of deaths in LA and 1.2 percent of the deaths in NY. [For my projects the extensive details Caldeira gives about this subject are not so interesting. JvB]
Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p138-157.
Showing posts with label comparison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comparison. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Mike Davis: The fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space
Mike Davis has in his book Planet of Slums (2006) a passage that summerises the problematics I want to work with. He writes:
‘It is important to grasp that we are dealing here with a fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space, involving a drastic diminution of the intersections between the lives of the rich and the poor, which transcends traditional social segregation and urban fragmentation. Some Brazilian writers have recently talked about “the return to the medieval city,” but the implications of the middle-class secession [Dutch: afscheiding, JvB] from public space – as well as from any vestige [Dutch: spoor, JvB] of a shared civic life with the poor – are more radical. Rodgers, following Anthony Giddes, conceptualizes the core process as a “disembedding” of elite activities from local territorial contexts, a quasi-utopian attempt to disengage from a suffocating matrix of poverty and social violence.’[1]
Davis refers here to an article by Dennis Rodgers called “Disembedding” the City: Crime, Insecurity and Spatial Organization in Managua. This article, about Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua can be used as a comparable situation with São Paulo.
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2006, p119.
‘It is important to grasp that we are dealing here with a fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space, involving a drastic diminution of the intersections between the lives of the rich and the poor, which transcends traditional social segregation and urban fragmentation. Some Brazilian writers have recently talked about “the return to the medieval city,” but the implications of the middle-class secession [Dutch: afscheiding, JvB] from public space – as well as from any vestige [Dutch: spoor, JvB] of a shared civic life with the poor – are more radical. Rodgers, following Anthony Giddes, conceptualizes the core process as a “disembedding” of elite activities from local territorial contexts, a quasi-utopian attempt to disengage from a suffocating matrix of poverty and social violence.’[1]
Davis refers here to an article by Dennis Rodgers called “Disembedding” the City: Crime, Insecurity and Spatial Organization in Managua. This article, about Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua can be used as a comparable situation with São Paulo.
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2006, p119.
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