Militarized everyday lives, logics and responses among children and youth in a violent community in urban Brazil

This article draws on interviews with 40 participants (12–25 years) to examine how drug trafficking and armed violence militarizes the everyday lives of young residents in a deprived community in urban Brazil. The overall aim is to explore whether, and how, children and youth who are not involved in the drug trade are influenced by, engage with, and respond to militarist rationalities and manifestations. In addition, it frames militarization as resting upon and reinforcing structural inequalities.

Adivasis, Preferential Policy and the State in Odisha

The Indian state has ratified preferential policies enshrined in the Indian Constitution by ensuring a reserved quota for geographically isolated and underprivileged communities such as adivasis, thereby attempting to integrate them within mainstream society. Computing the data available on the impact of a preferential policy on the adivasis of Odisha, this article argues that although the policy has been relatively useful in securing employment, adivasis of the state remain underrepresented in aggregate numbers and in different groups of services. The article also indicates the existence of a regional disparity even among the adivasis of Odisha with regard to their representation in elite government employment. The real problem is not the preferential policy per se but its poor implementation, abject poverty, bureaucratic apathy and the lack of political will to implement preferential policies effectively. In fact, the practice of preferential policies has sporadically led to violent community conflicts in Odisha and impacted the changing relationship between policy and politics.

“He is Not a Samoan” (1927)

This chapter examines the ongoing fallout from the rise of the Mau in Sāmoa and New Zealand. One major development was the founding of the Mau newspaper, the Samoa Guardian in 1927 and how this publication was intended to be mouthpiece for the movement and combat the extensive conservative press coverage that supported the government. It also focuses upon the debates in the New Zealand parliament that entwined the Sāmoan present with the Māori past, especially as it connected the non-violent community of Parihaka with the Sāmoan Mau. It also outlines the main parliamentary actors, especially Labour Leader Harry Holland and Sir Māui Pōmare, both who impacted this history in considerable ways. These debates articulated many ideas about British Empire, its past and how it could operate in the new conditions of the 1920s. The discussion also centered on the history of exile and how it had been used in numerous contexts. The chapter also delves into the little known but highly significant confidential parliamentary inquiry – the Joint Samoan Petition Inquiry Committee – which held in camera hearings where Ta’isi was virtually the sole witness. This inquiry preceded a Royal Commission to be held in Sāmoa and the chapter shows how the petition inquiry was a ploy to keep Ta’isi and his legal team out of Sāmoa so they could have little influence on the more public royal commission that was orchestrated by General Richardson.

Regimes of Violence and theTrias Violentiae

In common-sense usage, violence is usually conceptualized as intentional physical harm. This makes violence identifiable, locatable, and it facilitates the governing of those identified as committing infractions upon the non-violent community. In this article it is illustrated how this conception of violence legitimates the state by blocking the state’s own foundational violence from critical scrutiny. It argues that the liberal state rests on the differentiation between active and reactive violence, whereby the latter is seen as the legitimate violence of the people against violent infractions committed by private individuals. The concept of a ‘regime of violence’ describes the relation between various forms of violence, i.e. their selective and differential articulation and negation. Regimes of violence constitute a way of governing conduct in the medium of violence. The current regime of violence consists of what is called a trias violentiae, which is a specific conception of the relations and translations between private violence, state violence and structural violence.