Paper short abstract:

This paper will address some questions concerning the possibility of grasping structural violence through our senses, by comparing two cities - Guatemala City and Milan - connected by a personal experience and the exploration of a peculiar research interest, i.e. violence and urban space.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will address the possibility of grasping structural violence through our senses. It will do so by comparing two cities - Guatemala City and Milan - connected by a personal experience and the exploration of a peculiar research interest. The personal experience is related to my last two fieldworks, the research interest is about violence and urban space. While moving around some marginalized areas of Guatemala City meant to deal with a sense of insecurity directly connected to high levels of "social violence", in the neighbourhood of social housing of Milan where I have been carrying out my research since 2017, I have always felt "safe". However, both cities showed specific forms of structural violence that influence the organization of their urban fabric. Many questions arise from this consideration: along the continuum of violence, does everyday experience of social violence prevent ethnographers from understanding other violent dynamics essential to interpret contemporary cities? Is structural violence interpretable through the ethnographic practice, or do ethnographers always need to refer to non-ethnographic dimensions in order to understand any violent manifestation? My hypothesis concerns the opportunity of a multi-scalar approach that considers ethnography and its affective realm as an essential tool to investigate dwellers' experiences of violence and insecurity within urban spaces.