This thesis examines how informal mediation is practiced in Brazil’s
urban periphery communities, which are often associated with high levels of
violence and insecurity. Based on ethnographic data from low-income
neighborhoods in Florianópolis, my analysis of local people’s interventions
offers insight into the way that non-state, unarmed actors exercise mediative
agency in the midst of everyday violence and insecurity. While a growing body
of research shows that state and non-state actors are guided by diverse
conceptions, intentions and approaches when they attempt to mediate public
and private conflict amongst residents, less attention has been paid to the
symbiotic relationship between, or the social impact of, conflict intervention and
the reproduction of violence. This thesis argues that interveners use their
interactions with antagonists in a particular territory in order to cultivate nondominant
power, which serves to obstruct and interrupt the way that violence
reproduces and transmits into residents’ lives. As such, it suggests that
mediators can enable social change because they have a very particular
relationship with the different and interdependent types of violence present in
the periphery. Interveners develop and deploy a repertoire of social mediative
tactics in order to contend with the complexity of local tensions and the erosion
of democratic citizenship that these tensions produce. Defining mediative
practices as a source of power invites discussion into community mediation’s
strategic potential in the project of urban peacebuilding and violence reduction,
positing new directions for applied practices in Brazil and beyond. / Marie Curie Sustainable Peacebuilding Fellowship
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/14403 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Ordway, Jared Lodric |
| Contributors | Macaulay, Fiona, Pearce, Jenny V. |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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