The advent of the 1988's Constitution, as a result of an intense social mobilization for the end of the military dictatorship, the amnesty, the "Diretas Já" and the construction of a "democratic State ruled by law", symbolized the restoration of political and juridical conditions for the opposition against social inequalities at the limits of the institutional blocks that were then shaped. In it, a comprehensive set of social rights were introduced in the construction of "Social Welfare", among which lies the right to "security" and, from it, the right to "public security". However, almost three decades after the promulgation of the Constitution until today, what has been seen was the contingency or suppression of social rights pertaining to labor relations and the guarantees of subsistence worthy of the subaltern classes and, at the same time, an excessive strengthening of the apparatuses of repression linked, precisely, to the juridical notion of "public security". In the diction of liberal conceptions of state and law, the root of this excess would lie in the increase of "urban criminality" and, eventually, in failures in the own institutions, healing in their own interior. In contrast, there is a set of research developed since the mid-1930s to indicate that the functioning of state repressive agencies is embedded in structural processes of domination and that, therefore, excessive repression would not emanate merely from the supposed increase of "criminality" or of institutional failures, but of socioeconomic dynamics embedded in the objective foundations of society. Inspired by the clues derived from such analytical accumulation and based on empirical research developed in the south of São Paulo, I investigate the subjective processes and objectives constituting the agencies of "public security" and their structural connections with the ordering of the productive relations incident in the place. To such scope, bibliographical reviews pertinent to the indicated analytical points, ethnographic observation in the meetings of the Community Safety Councils (Consegs) and interviews with its participants and with other residents of the territory were articulated. Finally, I seek to derive an indicative analysis of some of the specific macroprocesses that determine the punitive expansion in contemporary Brazil.

O número crescente de países governados por figuras de extrema-direita suscitou a retomada do debate sobre o fascismo e a possibilidade de sua reedição histórica. Neste ensaio, procura-se deslocar o eixo de análise às relações sociais cotidianas, suas formas urbanas e, em particular, à denominada forma de vida em condomínio edilício, tendencialmente hegemônica nos grandes centros urbanos. Dessa perspectiva, a questão sobre a sobrevivência do elemento fascista na contemporaneidade é centrada, não na possibilidade de os regimes políticos atuais transmutarem-se em regime fascista, e sim na sua (re)produção no âmbito da erosão da experiência aprofundada pelo dispositivo totalitário das grandes metrópoles da era neoliberal.