A01=Erika Mary Robb Larkins
anthropology
Author_Erika Mary Robb Larkins
big skulls
brazil
california series in public anthropology
Category=JBFK
Category=JHMC
commodification of the favela
crime
displays of force
displays of wealth
drugs
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographic examination
favela tourism
favelas
forms of violence
global brand
gold jewelry
high-powered guns
inequality
marginalization
market economy
media
modern brazil
money
narcotics
police
political economy
poverty
prejudice
representation
rio de janeiro
rocinha
south america
spectacular violence
traffickers
violence
war on drugs
Product details
- ISBN 9780520282773
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2015
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Rio de Janeiro's favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called big skulls. Images of these spectacles circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, masking everyday forms of violence, prejudice, and inequality. The Spectacular Favela offers a rich ethnographic examination of the political economy of spectacular violence in Rocinha, Rio's largest favela. Based on more than two years of residence in the community, the book explores how entangled forms of violence shape everyday life and how that violence is, in turn, connected to the market economy. Erika Robb Larkins shows how favela violence is produced as a marketable global brand. While this violence is projected in disembodied form through media, the favela is also sold as an embodied experience through the popular practice of favela tourism.
The commodification of the favela becomes a form of violence itself; favela violence is transformed into a commercially viable byproduct of a profit driven war on drugs, which serves to keep the poor marginalized. This book tells the story of how traffickers, police, cameras, tourists, and even anthropologists come together to create what the author calls the spectacular favela.
Erika Robb Larkins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
