Paper short abstract:

Some vulnerable young people involved in crime, interiorized the warrior ethos or violent social practices by killing each other with increasing cruelty always justified by the warfare. This altered completely not only the local balance of power but the sociability between neighbours in such areas.

Paper long abstract:

I will present findings about the turf war in Rio de Janeiro regarding its rules and dynamics, its links with local politics and transnational business, as well as the actor's subjective meanings part of the ethnographic data gathered over years. My approach has been to interact with as many actors as possible during long periods of time using multiple sources of data to adjoin the clues and contradictions provided by the various agents interviewed or observed. I followed the precepts developed by Gluckman and Buroway on the extended case method, adapting it to the violent social contexts in the favelas of Rio. I therefore emphasized conflicts and diversity within the group, situation or network studied and expanded my analysis with statistical and historical material. The result was an historical reconstitution with findings collected over several years. In 1980, I found a new neighbourhood organization of which there had been no record prior: drug-dealing gangs engaged in turf wars. In them, a kind of male identity was the crux of the matter to understand the subjective meanings and emotions, the habitus or ethos not revealed on the surface of everyday experience or in general and objective data. Some vulnerable young people, who plunged in violence and crime, interiorized the warrior ethos or violent social practices, becoming their own executioners by killing each other with increasing cruelty always justified by the warfare. This altered completely not only the local balance of power but the sociability between neighbours in such areas.