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Accepted Paper:
Sensing (in)security through atmospheres: exploring the connection between religion, security, and the senses in Rio de Janeiro's North zone
Jolien van Veen
(Utrecht University)
Following a new materialist perspective to critical security studies, this paper draws on the notion of atmospheres to better understand how everyday experiences of (in)security manifest in people's bodies and are mediated through religious objects, sounds, and images.
Paper Abstract:
Brazil’s urban environments are home to a number of informal securitizing actors including drug trafficking organizations and paramilitary groups who operate as de facto authorities. These non-state or para-state actors draw on a combination of coercive methods, popular cultural practices, and religious references to consolidate and legitimize their power and authority in a particular neighborhood. In this contribution, I draw on the notion of atmospheres (cf. Anderson 2009; Adey 2014) to better understand the relationship between the spiritual world and the everyday politics of security provision in Rio de Janeiro. Atmospheres, because of their fleeting and temporary nature, are well-suited to analyze the uncertainties and unpredictabilities experienced by my research participants in their everyday lives. The notion also allows for a better understanding of the different ways in which these uncertainties and unpredictabilities are mediated through religious objects, sounds, and images and manifest in people’s bodies. Moreover, atmospheres are not just ‘out there’ but can be carefully curated through the right disposition of people and things. My research is based on 10 months of fieldwork in a cluster of neighborhoods located in the North of Rio de Janeiro which is effectively controlled by armed actors of the Pure Third Command. By placing my research within a broader context of “political exhaustion” (Willis 2023) in Rio’s urban peripheries, I argue that the atmospheric and the sensorial also shape people’s experiences of the suburban environment as a place that can be (re)made beyond the power of state and non-state armed actors.