The Social Dynamics of Violence and Respect: State, Crime and Church in a Brazilian Favela

Abstract Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a large favela of Belo Horizonte, this study argues that there are three logics at play when it comes to regulating violence in poor Brazilian urban areas: that of crime, that of the state, and that of religion. These three logics act as normative regimes which, connected by the shared notion of ‘respect’, form symbolical relationships among themselves alternating between dissonance and coordination. This everyday interaction produces a normative triangle that determines which lives are more and which are less valuable and, therefore, the likeliest target of violence.