Exercising Non-Dominant Mediative Power Violence Interruption in the Periphery Communities of Florianópolis, Brazil

Abstract

This thesis examines how informal mediation is practiced in Brazil’s urban periphery communities, which are often associated with high levels of violence and insecurity. Based on ethnographic data from low-income neighborhoods in Florianópolis, my analysis of local people’s interventions offers insight into the way that non-state, unarmed actors exercise mediative agency in the midst of everyday violence and insecurity. While a growing body of research shows that state and non-state actors are guided by diverse conceptions, intentions and approaches when they attempt to mediate public and private conflict amongst residents, less attention has been paid to the symbiotic relationship between, or the social impact of, conflict intervention and the reproduction of violence. This thesis argues that interveners use their interactions with antagonists in a particular territory in order to cultivate nondominant power, which serves to obstruct and interrupt the way that violence reproduces and transmits into residents’ lives. As such, it suggests that mediators can enable social change because they have a very particular relationship with the different and interdependent types of violence present in the periphery. Interveners develop and deploy a repertoire of social mediative tactics in order to contend with the complexity of local tensions and the erosion of democratic citizenship that these tensions produce. Defining mediative practices as a source of power invites discussion into community mediation’s strategic potential in the project of urban peacebuilding and violence reduction, positing new directions for applied practices in Brazil and beyond.