Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon ethnographical works carried out at the Violence Studies Laboratory (Brazil), this communication discusses the place of anthropology in public debates about justice. The presentation intends to put into perspective the juridical approach focused on the notions of rights and victim.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of my communication is to present a set of theoretical, political, and ethical concerns that have recurrently emerged from the ethnographic works developed at the Violence Research Laboratory (LEVIS) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina since 1996. After introducing the basic elements of our research trajectory in the field of violence, without any pretension to exemplarity, I will critically reflect on some specific theoretical and methodological issues, with particular reference to the importance of the notion of "moral economy" for our current research. This will be a preliminary exercise of systematization focusing on the role that anthropology can play in the social agenda concerning justice production in Brazil. My anthropological reflection will question the notion of moral economy and its relevance in analyzing social movements and public policies in the field of violence, justice, and human rights. Specifically, I will highlight how theory, politics, and ethics intersect in our work, in order to discuss the fundamentals that have guided our research throughout three interrelated and complementary analytical areas : 1) the production and moral character of violence; 2) law and the judicialization of social relations; and 3) the juridical construction of the subject-victim.