Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview

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Violence, fear, and development inLatin America: a critical overviewDavid Howard, Mo Hume & Ulrich Oslender

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Violence, fear, and developmentin Latin America: a critical overview

David Howard, Mo Hume, and Ulrich Oslender

This introduction presents the core concepts that shape this special issue on the impact of

violence and the processes of development in Central and South America. The understanding

of development is considered in terms broader than the economic context alone, in order to

assess wider social and political aspects. With a similarly expansive scope, forms of violence

are addressed that range from direct physical harm and bodily attack to the often more

subtle aggression of racialised abuse or the pressures on community-centred production

from dominant market forces. In these contexts, violence, economic initiatives, and political

allegiances form unintended and often dangerous networks of consequence for development

matters. All the articles in this volume exemplify further the spatial environments of violence

and diverse ‘landscapes of fear’ that shape our existence and help to define our actions,

territories, and understanding of what happens around us.

KEY WORDS: Rights; Civil Society; Gender and Diversity; Conflict and Reconstruction; Governance andPublic Policy; Latin America and the Caribbean

Introduction: meanings of violence and development

There are many ways in which violence and development are intertwined. And there is nothing

innocent or objective about the idea of development itself. In fact, ‘development’ – understood

for the most part as modern (economic) development – is one of the most contentious terms in

the social sciences. Orthodox views perceive the process as a sustainable increase in the

economic wealth of countries or regions for the well-being of their inhabitants, particularly

an increase in living standards through higher per capita income and better education and

health services. There have, of course, always been debates about how to achieve such an

increase in living standards. Yet with the discursive binary construction of the world into

developed and developing (or less developed) countries after the end of World War II, the

stage was set for ferocious debates, many of which exposed the inherently violent process in

which ‘development’ was conceived and enacted. And to the fore came the many ‘uns’ of devel-

opment: underdevelopment, unequal development, and uneven development.

This issue of Development in Practice addresses the impact of violence or aggressive action on

the process of development in Central and South America. The understanding of development is

ISSN 0961-4524 Print/ISSN 1364-9213 Online 060713-12 # 2007 Oxfam GB 713

Routledge Publishing DOI: 10.1080/09614520701628071

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 6, November 2007

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here considered in terms broader than the economic context alone, in order to assess wider social,

cultural, and political aspects. Five articles consider violence that ranges from direct physical

harm and bodily attack to the often more subtle aggression of racialised abuse, or the pressures

on community-centred production to conform to the ‘rules of the market’.

The critique of economic development was particularly strong in Latin America, which

saw the emergence of Dependency Theory as an influential, complex body of theoretical

concepts with structuralist and Marxist roots that explained Latin America’s historical and

continued underdevelopment in terms of a structural logic inherent in the development of

global capitalism. (See also the Review Essay by Carlos Mallorquın, in this issue.) As

argued by Andre Gunder Frank (1969a), one of its principal exponents, the metropolis (or

the core) creates and exploits peripheral satellites, from which it expropriates economic

surplus for its own economic development. The satellites thus remain underdeveloped for

lack of access to their own surplus and as a consequence of the exploitative contradictions

that the metropolis introduces and maintains in the satellite’s domestic structure. Such an

appropriation of surplus value from the periphery was always a violent process, and

Frank (1969b) would continue to outline the structural logic that underlies such a ‘develop-

ment of underdevelopment’.1 The insights of dependency theory, originally ‘developed’ in

Latin America, have also been used to speak to the specificities of Africa and to explain

the violent global processes that underlie the constitution of unequal development there

(Amin 1976).

Of course, dependency theory has been challenged for its excessively structuralist explana-

tory approach to uneven development. The borders between centre and periphery are certainly

less spatially stable than suggested. Globalisation has also meant that there is a periphery in the

centre (think about the thousands of homeless in Los Angeles), as well as a centre in the per-

iphery (think about el norte in Bogota, the ‘nice’ part of town, where the rich live). Moreover,

the post-modern angst in the 1980s about saying anything ‘essential’ at all and its unease over

such dramatically determined statements of the dependency school certainly contributed to the

latter’s loss of influence. Yet it is hard not to agree with its principal insights into the highly

structured unevenness of global economic development and its underlying capitalist logic in

the production of space (Smith 1991).

The period of the late 1980s and 1990s witnessed a renewed critical interest in development

debates (although these had, of course, never stopped). The emerging global concern over the

critical state of the environment – unchecked deforestation; pollution of air, soil, and water

ways; increasing desertification, etc. – was linked to human activity and a blind belief in

economic development at the expense of global ecosystems. In other words, nature fell

victim to the violence of development. From an ecofeminist perspective, such a violation of

nature was compared to the violation of women within a patriarchal reductionist model of

modern science and development (Shiva 1989). Such violence against the environment was

to be stalled by a new perception in the development process. And so the notion of ‘sustainable

development’ was born in the 1987 Brundtland Report, which aimed to promote economic

activity and growth, while preserving the environment. This attempt to reconcile two old

enemies – growth and environment – while drawing on economism and developmentalism

seemed to be contradictory (Redclift 1989). Yet, as Ulrich Oslender’s article shows, in the

case of Colombia’s black communities living in the Pacific coast region, the global concern

over environmental destruction found its expression for a short period in the early 1990s in

the promotion of sustainable development projects that empowered local communities to

protect their tropical rainforest and its biodiversity. Certainly in this region, the protection of

the environment and regional growth seemed to be compatible and a real option (see also

Oslender 2004).

714 Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 6, November 2007


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Others, however, have criticised ‘Mrs Brundtland’s disenchanted cosmos’ and the fact that

sustainable development is still based on the capitalisation of nature, expressed through

global views on nature and environment by those who rule, instead of through local respect

for surrounding landscapes (Visvanathan 1991). And Sachs (1992) argues in his widely read

Development Dictionary that notions of ecology are merely reduced to higher efficiency,

while a development framework is still accepted as the norm. Visvanathan (1991: 384) calls

for an ‘explosion of imaginations’ as a form of resistance to this dominant economism and

essentially violent development framework: a call echoed by Peet and Watts (1996: 263–8)

in their edited collection on ‘liberation ecologies’, which envisages ‘environmental imagin-

aries’ as primary sites of contestation, which are then articulated by social movements that

contest normative visions and the ‘imperialism of the imaginary’.

In many ways, the very notion of development has been radically called into question, as

the concept has been linked to neo-colonial intentions of the Global North to intervene in

and keep control of the countries in the Global South. For Escobar (1995: 159), dominant

development discourse portrays the so-called ‘third world’ as a space devoid of knowledge,

a ‘chronic pathological condition’, so that the Western scientist ‘like a good doctor, has the

moral obligation to intervene in order to cure the diseased (social) body’. This intervention

is always a violent one: one that ruptures the cultural fabric, penetrates the colonised body,

and inserts a homogeneous developmental reasoning, often extirpating resistant cultural

difference. To break this cycle of violent developmentalism, Escobar (1995) calls for an era

of ‘post-development’ as a necessary step for national projects of decolonisation and for the

affirmation of truly emancipatory political projects of self-affirmation.

Most recently, a powerful critique of development has (re-)emerged which links global

processes of capital accumulation to the violent uprooting and displacement of millions of

rural populations throughout the world. David Howard’s contribution to this issue highlights

the overt and more subtle relationships between state violence and everyday discrimination

against Haitian-origin migrants and settlers in the Dominican Republic. Various theoretical

approaches – ranging from Marxism to post-structuralism and post-colonialism – have

argued that contemporary trends towards the displacement and de-territorialisation of local

populations form part of a wider strategy of globalisation and a global economy of expropria-

tion. For Harvey (2003:137–82), for example, the contemporary moment of ‘new imperialism’

is characterised by new cycles of primitive accumulation, what he refers to as ‘accumulation by

dispossession’. Drawing on Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, he convincingly shows how the

organic relation between expanded reproduction and violent processes of dispossession has

shaped the historical geography of capitalism. According to Harvey (p.148), one strategy

for capital to overcome, or at least temporarily to ameliorate the constant crisis of over-

accumulation (a condition where capital surplus lies idle with no profitable outlets in sight),

is to seize hold of common assets and turn them into profitable use:

The escalating depletion of the global environmental commons (land, air, water) . . . the

corporatization and privatization of hitherto public assets . . . the reversion of common

property rights won through years of hard class struggle to the private domain . . . indicate

a new wave of ‘enclosing the commons’ . . . [these are] policies of dispossession pursued in

the name of neo-liberal orthodoxy.

And this ‘neo-liberal orthodoxy’ is, of course, global capitalist development.

This point has been similarly argued by the critical collective Retort, based in the San

Francisco Bay Area (2005). They observe a new global round of primitive accumulation and

enclosure as capital is on the move again, this time in the form of what they refer to as ‘military

neo-liberalism’. To them, a process of ‘endless enclosure’ has been at the very heart of capitalist

Development in Practice, Volume 17, Number 6, November 2007 715

Violence, fear, and development in Latin America

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modernity (Retort 2005:193). Although it is rather unlikely that they had the Colombian Pacific

coast in mind (as analysed by Oslender in his contribution), it is with chilling accuracy that their

description of the global processes of enclosure and attack on the commons describes the

current de-territorialisation trends in this region:

The great work of the past half-millennium was the cutting off of the world’s natural and

human resources from common use. Land, water, the fruits of the forest, the spaces of

custom and communal negotiation, the mineral substrate, the life of rivers and oceans,

the very airwaves – capitalism has depended, and still depends, on more and more of

these shared properties being shared no longer, whatever the violence or absurdity

involved in converting the stuff of humanity into this or that item for sale. (Retort

2005:193–4)

Also drawing on Marx and his analysis of processes of primitive accumulation, Hardt and Negri

(2000: 326) argue in their influential book Empire that ‘traditional cultures and social organiz-

ations are destroyed in capital’s tireless march through the world to create the networks and

pathways of a single cultural and economic system of production and circulation’. This is

clearly outlined in Dina Khorasanee’s contribution to this issue, in which she assesses the

struggles of the piquetero movement in Argentina through the experiences of a community

organisation aiming to create a ‘new sociability’ that might survive in parallel to the dominant

capitalist system. For Hardt and Negri, de-territorialisation lies at the core of the imperial

apparatus. And ‘development’ is the mantra of this violent system. One effect is the massive

forced displacement of local populations worldwide, as the result of socio-economic and

cultural processes towards the consolidation of a global capitalist modernity (Escobar 2003).

These are only some of the multiple violences that are inherent in the notion of ‘develop-

ment’. Marxist analysis may have fallen out of fashion, but the cruel awakening to the

violent everyday realities for millions of people throughout the world prompts a renewed

engagement with some of Marx’s key insights. It is too easy to forget in the midst of all the

mindless talk of the ‘war on terror’ that much of the political and economic violence that we

observe today is perpetrated in the name of the seemingly progressive idea of ‘development’.

Yet, as we began by saying, there is nothing innocent about ‘development’. Quite the contrary.

Development and violence are structurally intertwined. Or, as Oslender puts it in his contri-

bution, there is always ‘violence in development’.

Violence in the Latin American context

The subject of violence is foremost in the minds of citizens. Few in the region have

remained unaffected by what is widely recognised as a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted

problem; nearly everyone has a story to tell, often in graphic terms. Survey after survey

consistently underscores the gravity and prevalence of the concern. (Buvinic et al. 1999:1)

In recent years, violence and crime have ‘acquired alarming proportions and dimensions in many

countries’ of Latin America (Concha-Eastman 2001: 37). Increasingly, the problem of violence is

regarded as one of the most serious obstacles to development in the region, while fear and mistrust

not only hamper social capital but undermine democratic governance. Violence in this context is

seen as ‘inconsistent’ with democracy, as a result of both the pervasiveness of the phenomenon

and the incapacity of democratically elected governments to address it in an effective manner.

Responses from across the region have been varied, and few states have followed coherent

programmes to prevent violence. At best, policies have been inconsistent, and at worst states

have ‘failed’ in their mandate to guarantee citizen security (Koonings and Kruijt 2004).



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Given this background, it is perhaps unsurprising that there has been a great increase in

research on violence in Latin America over recent years. The study of violence has been

approached from a range of disciplinary perspectives and policy perspectives, yet knowledge

remains characterised by a certain ‘disciplinary fragmentation’, and the policy framework of

violence tends to be condensed within sectoral concerns (Moser and McIlwaine 2004).

Economic perspectives have addressed matters such as the costs of crime, violence as an

obstacle to investment, and the associated consequences of civil unrest for economic life

(Cruz et al. 1998). From a social development perspective, the concern has been to address

matters such as citizen security, community development, and public health (for example,

Arriagada and Godoy 2000, Briceno Leon 2005, and Concha-Eastman 2001). Within this

latter approach, there remains a highly public understanding of violence, with issues of

gender-based violence being sidelined within broader debates on public security (Shrader

2000; Hume 2004). The following review of the literature does not pretend to be exhaustive,

rather seeks to bring together some of the diverse approaches to the study of violence and

development in order to present a more holistic appreciation of this ‘multi-dimensional,

multi-faceted problem’ (Buvinic et al. 1999:1).

Defining crime and violence

Writing in 1969, political philosopher Hannah Arendt reiterated the sentiments of Georges Sorel:

‘“The problem of violence still remains very obscure” is as true today as it was then’ (1969:35).

Arendt (1969: 5) warns also of the ‘all-pervading unpredictability, which we encounter the

moment we approach the realm of violence’. Despite considerable additional work on the

subject, both their concerns resonate in much contemporary work on violence. Caldeira (2001)

emphasises the importance of analysing the ‘talk’ of crime, which she identifies as contagious,

fragmentary, and repetitive. Narratives of crime in this sense create an illusion of order in a

violent world, but also serve to magnify fear and insecurity. The difficult task of defining violence

on a conceptual level is mirrored in the sometimes confusing and contradictory narratives of

violence voiced by individuals and groups in relation to their own life experiences. Violence is

marked with an ‘implicit subjectivity’, and not all societies recognise the same acts as violent

(Torres-Rivas 1999). The articles contributed to this issue of Development in Practice illustrate

that narratives of violence reveal deeper societal prejudices, such as those based on gender,

class, and racial grounds. How violence is defined has very practical implications for policy and

legal matters. It also has implications for social reactions to violence.

Certain types of violence provoke less indignation than would be expected. One finds that

there is more indignation about the rise in violent crime against property than about the rise

in crime against life, committed mostly by young men from the poorest neighbourhoods.

This lack of indignation may be the result of various factors: it may indicate the existence of

a normalisation or acceptance of interpersonal violence when it is committed against those

who are thought to be ‘certain types of people’, or in order to resolve certain types of conflict

such as that arising from drug trafficking (Cardia 2001: 153).

Likewise, violence is noted for its ‘peculiar temporality’, and meanings change across time

and space. This is particularly true in the changing political context of Latin America, where

historic categorisations of economic, political, and social violence are becoming increasingly

blurred (see Moser and McIlwaine 2004). Pearce (1998: 589) argues that the type of violence

that plagues Latin America today is ‘of a more social and multifaceted kind than the polarised

and political violence characteristic of the 1980s’. Other authors, however, have contended that

contemporary forms of violence are also political, since they result from political choices, such

as policies that have exacerbated inequalities and the continued failure of governments to



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address existing structural problems (see, for example, Hume’s article in this issue, which

addresses the state response in El Salvador to the growing phenomenon of youth gangs).

Violence is now clearly recognised as a development issue, due to its negative effects on

human welfare, economic growth, and social development. High levels of violence have

been associated with the growth in the political economy of crime, particularly illegal drugs.

In the context of counterinsurgency, such as Central America experienced during the 1970s

and 1980s and remains the case in parts of present-day Colombia, the mere construction of a

health or community centre can attract unwelcome attention from warring factions, on the

grounds that these projects prove the community’s alliance with a rival force. In these instances,

violence, economic development initiatives, and political allegiances form unintended and

dangerous ‘networks of consequence’. A further key issue of interest to policy makers has

been the economic cost of violence. Figures from 1997 demonstrate that violence cost the

region approximately 14.2 per cent of its GDP. In some countries, such as El Salvador and

Colombia, the cost of violence reached almost one quarter of the annual GDP, thus removing

resources from other key areas for public developmental spending, such as education and health

care (see Table 1).

The indirect effects of violent environments on service provision are immense. Public

services that are already inadequate are further stretched to deal with injuries and fatalities

from armed violence. This has particularly negative consequences for poor members of

society, whose access to such provisions is already limited. As a result, private investment in

security is sizeable. Although no detailed investigation into the costs of private security has

been undertaken to date, it was estimated by Cruz et al. in 1998 that citizens in El Salvador

spent around US$ 7,207,000 per annum on security. Gated communities and private security

forces have extended throughout the region, reinforcing historic inequalities and social

segregation.

Violent crime is an action seemingly sanctioned in part by material inequalities, although

simplistic causal linkages between unemployment, poverty, and violence fail to reveal the

intricacies of such relationships. Political, rather than economic, deprivation is clearly a

driving force behind aggressive encounters. Powerlessness is a common, but not unique,

explanatory factor for the use of violence. Moser and Winton (2002: vi) state that ‘[u]nderlying

[the definition of violence] is recognition that violence involves the exercise of power that is

invariably used to legitimate the use of force for specific gains.’ Cruz et al. (1998) associate

the proliferation of youth gangs in El Salvador to a search for social power that has been

lost, or, indeed, never held. Others explore the complex and indirect links between violence

and social exclusion (for example, Ramos 1998; Savenije and Andrade-Eekhoff 2003).

Table 1: Economic costs of social violence in six Latin American countries (expressed as a percentageof the 1997 Gross Domestic Product)

Brazil Colombia El Salvador Mexico Peru Venezuela

Health losses 1.9 5.0 4.3 1.3 1.5 0.3

Material losses 3.6 8.4 5.1 4.9 2.0 9.0

Intangibles 3.4 6.9 11.5 3.3 1.0 2.2

Transfers 1.6 4.4 4.0 2.8 0.6 0.3

Total 10.5 24.7 24.9 12.3 5.1 11.8

Source: J. Londono (1998) ‘Epidemiolgıa economica de la violencia urbana’, mimeograph, cited in

Buvinic et al. 1999: 20.



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The relationship between power and violence is far from simple and, as Savenije and Andrade-

Eekhoff point out, is not unidirectional. Instead, theremay exist a whole range of subtle social rules

that enforce the will of the powerful without the explicit use of force. The two may be closely

entwined, but they are different. Indeed, Arendt (1969) distinguishes power from violence,

seeing them as opposites. In her view, violence occurs when power is missing, because having

real power does not, or should not, necessitate the exercise of violence. The distinction is important

and helps to explain why individuals use violence to rebel against their perceived lack of social,

economic, and/or political power with the use of force. Contrasting concepts of power have

since been developed, most influentially perhaps by Foucauldian theories, and many would

argue that power directly creates violence; but Arendt here wishes to suggest more generally

that a feeling of powerlessness can generate aggressive and violent attitudes. Violence may be a

factor that can be regarded as both cause and consequence of social exclusion and powerlessness,

although this does not suggest that there is an inevitable or linear relationship between the two, nor

does it propose that those people who live in situations of exclusion necessarily turn to violence.

Violence and democracy in Latin America

The intensification of insecurity, unexpectedly for many, has coincided with the region’s

transition towards democracy. Violence in the democratic era is characterised by its ‘ubiquity’

(Torres-Rivas 1999: 287). Continued inequality, impunity, and violence have contributed to the

erosion of democratic expectations, undermining citizens’ confidence in the democratic

process. Pinheiro (1996) has suggested that the type of democracy to be found in the region

is ‘without citizenship’. In a sense, violence has gone through its own process of ‘democratisa-

tion’, increasingly viewed as a ‘normal’ option for citizens ‘with which to pursue interests,

attain power, or resolve conflicts’ (Koonings and Kruijt 1999b: 11). Contemporary violence

is characterised by its arbitrariness. The victims of current violence are now anonymous:

anyone and everyone is at risk. Such processes undermine democratic projects, to such a

degree that Rotker suggests that current levels of violence attest to an ‘undeclared civil war’

in major Latin American cities:

This undeclared civil war clearly engages elements of fear and rage, but it is no longer a

question of planting bombs or hiding in the mountains to take up arms against a dictator or

corrupt government. It deals instead with a violence that resists a whole system, creating it

in a more profound way, at the heart of its social relations. As it makes victims of us all,

this undeclared civil war obliterates spaces of difference and differentiation, making all of

us experience injustice, insecurity and inequality. (Rotker 2001b: 18)

It is rare for violence to be regarded merely as the simple act that causes harm to an individual or

group (Feldman 2000). The notion of violence changes considerably according to historical

conditions and place. This conceptual fuzziness has major implications for policy response

where visibility is a key predicator of response (Moser and Winton 2002). The visibility of

certain types of violence affects popular perceptions of the phenomenon and associated

levels of fear and insecurity (see Howard’s contribution on racial violence and Hume’s on

gang violence). Awareness influences popular assumptions about threat and insecurity, which

may not correspond to the real situation (Arriagada and Godoy 2000). Popular understandings

of violence, therefore, contribute to perceptions of the wider problem of violence, and responses

to it. A major problem in the development of appropriate policy frameworks to tackle crime and

violence is the lack of adequate data-collection mechanisms. State registers for crime and

violence are limited and generally more accurate for some crimes, such as murder, than for

others. Few disaggregated data exist on crime figures (see also Oslender, this issue, on the



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lack of credible statistics on forced displacement in Colombia), and key dimensions of violence,

such as age and gender, are often ignored. This has negative implications for policy response.

Cruz et al. (1998) maintain that different state records can present contradictory views of the

scale of violence, and that certain areas and certain crimes are better recorded than others.

Under-reporting of crimes is a major problem in the region and is linked to two main issues.

First, there is the perceived inadequacy of the institutions of public security, which have failed

to address growing problems of crime in an effective manner. Second, and closely linked, is citi-

zens’ mistrust of state bodies and broader lack of confidence in the rule of law. Impunity remains

widespread in many countries throughout the region, and the effective rule of law cannot be guar-

anteed. Guatemala is a case in point. As well as widespread impunity for a whole range of crimes,

there has been a growing problem of femicide in the country over recent years, yet these crimes

are often seen by governments to have little political or economic bearing. Police and security

forces have consistently failed to investigate incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice.

In many countries, the state monopoly in force has been eroded, and police forces rely on

‘helpers’ or ‘extensions’ to carry out their tasks, which can be either legal or illegal. Illegal

‘helpers’ include localised militias and vigilante and paramilitary groups, sometimes linked

to the protection of elite interests. An extreme example of this phenomenon can be seen in

Colombia, where paramilitary groups have terrorised communities and spread terror throughout

the country (see Oslender in this issue). Other examples can be seen throughout the region. In

Guatemala, there have been noted cases of communities taking ‘justice’ into their own hands

and lynching suspected criminals. This ‘understandable savagery’ can be seen as a measure

by excluded communities to assert autonomy in the face of decades of repression and violence

from a multitude of actors (Snodgrass Godoy 2004: 626). In El Salvador, ‘death squads’ have

emerged in response to youth gangs, as illustrated by Ramos (1998) and Hume in this issue.

Violence, in these situations, has become both something to fear and a tool with which to

address problems. Mistrust and fear have nourished a situation of ‘hypervigilancia’, where

citizens have become prisoners of their own fear. High levels of fear erode social capital and

associational life (McIlwaine 1999; Cardia 2001). For many residents of communities where

negotiating high levels of violence is a central element of everyday life, such fear is an under-

standable reaction to the context in which they live.

Developing fear

People experience real fear. The response depends on the individual; nonetheless, it is society

that constructs the notions of risk, threat, and danger, and generates standardised modes of

response, updating both – notions and modes of response – according to the historical

period (Reguillo 2001). In such fearful situations, where so many factors combine to undermine

social cohesion and equality, the causes and effects of violence become blurred, as their mani-

festations are embedded in social practices and codes of behaviour. Fear is now as much a threat

to democracy as violence itself, whether due to threatened paramilitary or guerrilla aggression,

racialised discrimination, gang rivalries, or socio-economic constraints, as the contributions to

this issue illustrate. Excluded groups may employ violence as an instrument for recognition or

inclusion; however, the effect can be that society excludes them even further, thus creating a

vicious circle, whereby violence indeed ‘nourishes’ and reproduces itself in other forms

(Ramos 1998). The boundaries between different types of violence – social, political, and

economic – become blurred, as does society’s capacity to define them. Although violence

may ‘pay’ in the short term, the consequences for the longer term are devastating. As Arendt

cautions, ‘[t]he practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable

change is to a more violent world’ (1969: 80).



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All the articles in this issue exemplify the spatial or grounded environments of violence; the

diverse ‘landscapes of fear’ shape our existence and help to define our actions, territories, and

understanding of what happens around us. The idea of a perfect social order, bereft of overt or

underlying aggressive tensions, is a utopia that is unlikely to be met. A pessimistic or realist

voice might add that the myth of this paradisiacal existence ‘depended on force – the stringent

application of rules to regulate human behaviour’ (Tuan 1979: 145–6). Force and violence in its

various forms are inherent in society, developed through political conflict and social and economic

tensions. The contributors to this issue collectively point to the different scales and levels of

emotions that enshrine and layer fear. Concerns over personal, communal or societal well-being

may be those of immediate alarm – intense, raw, or more diffuse anxiety – or more anticipated.

Development practitioners and planners have long recognised the implications of violence

and fear in everyday lives. Researchers have perhaps more recently registered the real

implications of these physically and emotionally brutal landscapes in the academic literature

on development. The ‘cultural turn’ in development thinking and practice has been evident

since the 1990s, and was partly formalised for global consumption by the United Nations’

declaration of the World Decade for Cultural Development between 1988 and 1997 (Hettne

2002). Cultures of everyday violence, whether waged in domestic or state arenas, and while

not acceptable or desirable as norms, nevertheless form the working environments for many

development initiatives. In the context of development thinking, Radcliffe (2006:16) describes

culture as ‘the material products, patterns of social relations, and structures of feelings produced

by multiple actors, who are differentially positioned in power relations, political economies, and

social reproduction’. While existing at the perceptual margins of the UN initiative on ‘culture’

per se, violence and fear inevitably become incorporated as societal factors that could not be

effectively addressed in previous economically driven indicators and factors of development

policy. Varied working definitions have maintained a broad net of applicability, but have

removed the notion of culture as a monolithic and deterministic block of human traits.

A significant contribution that became standardised in many development texts during

the past two decades has been the recognition that cultural identities were neither static nor

singular. The following papers illustrate the foundational role that violence and fear continue

to play in the formation of daily lives and the cultural context for development in many

societies. The examples of violence given by contributors to this issue illustrate the intricacies

of each situation. While claims can be made for generic theories to understand why such

incidences occur, the interplay of state apparatus, military, market, and personal forces might

best be seen through the real and imaginative geographies of each place to reflect ‘the fractured

histories of violence, predation, and dispossession – as material fact, as lived experience, and as

resonant memory – that erupt so vividly time and time again in our own present’ (Gregory and

Pred 2007: 2).

Note

1. See also Furtado (1965) and Cardoso and Faletto (1979) for detailed studies in the Latin American

context. Dependency theory built on the insights of the Argentinean economist Raul Prebisch (1950).

Appointed Director of the Economic Commission for Latin America in 1948, he formulated what

came to be known as the ‘Prebisch thesis’. This stipulated that the global system is not a uniform

market place but divided structurally between rich and poor economies, a centre of industrialised

nations and a periphery of primary producers. Through this system, all of the benefits of technology

and international trade would accrue to the centre. This structuralist approach to economics was taken

up by dependency theorists, who regarded the economic development of the periphery within such an

unequal world system as a near-impossible task.



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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Deborah Eade for her great help and encouragement in producing this special

issue. All authors would also like to thank Judith Adler Hellman for her energetic, insightful and extremely

helpful contributions as a discussant at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, held

in San Juan in 2006, at which the papers in this issue were first presented.

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Arendt, H. (1969) On Violence, San Diego: Harvest/HBJ.Arriagada, I. and L. Godoy (2000) ‘Prevention or repression? The false dilemma of citizen security’,

CEPAL Review 70.

Briceno Leon, R. (2005) ‘Urban violence and public health in Latin America: a sociological explanatory

framework’, Cad. Saude Publica 21(6): 1629–48.

Buvinic, M., A. Morrison, and M. Shifter (1999) Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Frame-

work for Action,Washington,DC: Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank, SustainableDevelopmentDepartment.

Caldeira, T. P. R. (2001) City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo, Berkeley, CA:

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Cardia, N. (2001) ‘The impact of exposure to violence in Sao Paolo: accepting violence or continuing

horror?’, in S. Rotker (ed.) (2001a).

Cardoso, F. H. and E. Faletto (1979) Dependency and Development in Latin America, Berkeley, CA:


Concha-Eastman, A. (2001) ‘Urban violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: dimensions,

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Escobar, A. (2003) ‘Displacement, development, and modernity in the Colombian Pacific’, International

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Feldman, A. (2000) ‘The prosthetics and aesthetics of terror’, in V. Das, A. Kleinman, M. Ramphele and

P. Reynolds (eds.) Violence and Subjectivity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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Brazil, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Frank, A. G. (1969b) Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on the development of

underdevelopment and immediate enemy, London: Monthly Review Press.

Furtado, C. (1965) Diagnosis of the Brazilian Crisis, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Gregory, D. and A. Pred (2007) ‘Introduction’, in D. Gregory and A. Pred (eds.) (2007) Violent

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Hettne, B. (2002) ‘Current trends and future options in development studies’, in V. Desai and R. B. Potter

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Hume, Mo (2004) ‘“It’s as if you don’t know because you don’t do anything about it”: gender and

violence in El Salvador’, Environment and Urbanisation 16(2): 63–72.

Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt (1999a) Societies of Fear: the Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in

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Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt (1999b) ‘Introduction: violence and fear in Latin America’, in Koos

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Koonings, Kees and Dirk, Kruijt (eds.) (2004) Armed Actors: Organised Violence and State Failure in

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McIlwaine, C. (1999) ‘Geography and development: violence and crime as development issues’, Progress

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Moser, C. O. N. and C. McIlwaine (2004) Encounters With Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor

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Further reading

The following references are useful starting points to pursue some of the issues raised here.

The list is not comprehensive, but corresponds to the works and authors that have collectively

influenced the contributors to this issue.

On violence and development

Arendt, H. (1969) On Violence, San Diego: Harvest/HBJ.

A classic text which analyses the link between violence and power, suggesting that the

former is often utilised as an attempted substitute for waning authority.



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Bar On, B. A. (2002) The Subject of Violence: Arendtean Exercises in Understanding, Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield.

A detailed and progressive assessment of Arendt’s earlier text.

Bradby, H. (ed.) (1996) Defining Violence, London: Avebury.

An edited volume which illustrates and assesses the various forms in which violence is manifested.

Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

The author challenges ‘top–down’ strategies to ‘deliver’ development and provides a fundamental

argument for a place-based and grassroots development agenda.

Gregory, D. and A. Pred (eds.) (2007) Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence,

London: Routledge.

A recent and important collection of essays that introduce the imaginative and real geographies through

which violent acts evolve.

Schmidt, B. E. and I. W. Schroder (eds.) (2001) Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, London:

Routledge.

Wide-ranging essays which cover key aspects of confrontational and violent encounters.

Stanko, E. A. (1990) Everyday Violence: How Women and Men Experience Sexual and Physical Danger,

London: Pandora Press.

A highly influential text which shaped understanding of the way in which forms of violence are sexua-

lised and gendered.

Stanko, E. A. (ed.) (2003) The Meanings of Violence, London: Routledge.

One of the most informative contemporary collections of the literature on violence.

In the context of Latin America

Cardoso, F. H. and E. Faletto (1979) Dependency and Development in Latin America, Berkeley, CA:


An important text which advances the pioneering work undertaken on dependency theory in the Latin

American context.

Frank, A. G. (1969) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and

Brazil, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Frank, A. G. (1969) Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on the Development of

Underdevelopment and Immediate Enemy, London: Monthly Review Press.

Both of Frank’s seminal texts shaped the way in which ideas of ‘the centre’ and ‘the periphery’ have

dominated the world economy and continue to refute the logic of equality as a possible outcome of

global market forces.

Green, L. (1999) Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala, New York, NY: Columbia

University Press.

Drawing on detailed empirical and eyewitness accounts, the author provides a close understanding of

violence against indigenous peoples in Central America.

Kruijt, D. and K. Koonings (eds.) (1999) Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and

Terror in Latin America, New York, NY: St Martin’s Press.

An important and pioneering collection of case studies which cover key aspects of violence and crime in

the region.

Moser, C. O. N. and C. McIlwaine (2004) Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor

Perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala, London: Routledge.

Comprehensive comparative analysis which unpicks the causes and effects of violence in two of the

societies most often associated with everyday and endemic violence in the Americas.

Rotker, S. (ed.) (2001) Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

University Press.

A parallel and similarly incisive text to accompany the two preceding references. The collected

essays provide a detailed assessment of how violence impinges on the rights of full citizenship.



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Documents

Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview