From Social Assistance to Control in Urban Margins: Ambivalent Police Practices in Neoliberal Chile

Luneke, Alejandra; Dammert, Lucía; Zuñiga, Liza

doi:10.4322/dilemas.v15n1.42944

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Chile represents a case study of great interest. Carabinerosthe main Chilean police forceis the militarized institution with the largest staffing and budget among the police forces and has been extensively studied by social scientists in Chile (e.g., (Bonner, 2018;Dammert, 2019;Hathazy, 2018;Luneke et al, 2022). This is partly explained by the preeminent role it played during the Chilean military dictatorship in cases of human rights violations (1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990).…”

Section: The Chilean Casementioning

confidence: 99%

How Do Individuals Interact with the Police? Validation of a Scale of Motivational Postures Toward the Police in Spanish

Gerber,

Sáez Fuentealba,

Bahamondes

et al. 2024

Preprint

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This article addresses the critical issue of citizens' attitudes toward law enforcement, focusing on motivational postures towards the police (i.e., the psychological dispositions that individuals maintain towards the police). The study contributes by providing the first validated motivational postures scale towards the police in Spanish. It responds to a gap in research on motivational postures within Spanish-speaking societies and the absence of properly validated scales in both English and Spanish. Using two independent online panel samples from Chile, exploratory (Study 1, n = 1,163) and confirmatory (Study 2, n = 770) factor analyses were conducted refining a scale that initially proposed five postures (commitment, capitulation, resistance, disengagement, game-playing). Surprisingly, a sixth posture, termed "avoidance", emerged in Study 1, reflecting a physical-behavioral dimension of distancing from the police. The scale with six motivational postures dimensions was validated with satisfactory results, evidenced by favorable fit indices. Concurrently validated, the scale exhibited correlations with positive and negative emotions towards the police, procedural justice, legitimacy and identification with the police. However, divergent validation results were unexpected, revealing correlations between trait aggressiveness and motivational postures, possibly influenced by the context of heightened police repression. Given the relevance of citizen-police dynamics in democratic societies, this research offers insights crucial for reducing conflict and violence between citizens and the police. Future studies are encouraged to explore the contextual relevance of the avoidance dimension, replicate divergent validity analyses using alternative variables, and validate the scale in other Spanish-speaking contexts.

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Section: The Chilean Casementioning

confidence: 99%

How Do Individuals Interact with the Police? Validation of a Scale of Motivational Postures Toward the Police in Spanish

Gerber,

Sáez Fuentealba,

Bahamondes

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…In such contexts, the provision of urban services (such as water, sewerage, electricity and public lighting) is a critical point of contact between residents and the state (bureaucracy), with implications for state–society relations and securitisation. Debates on securitisation in Argentina (Auyero and Sobering, 2019), Bolivia (Goldstein, 2005), Chile (Luneke et al, 2022) and Brazil (Willis, 2014) acknowledge the relationship between the bureaucracy and citizens, but there is a tendency to focus mainly on bureaucrats pertaining to the security and judicial system – police, prosecutors, judges or the military – and the extent to which they contribute to the (in)security experienced by citizens. To move away from the judiciary-centred approach, Wacquant’s (2009) thesis on the neoliberal state is useful.…”

Section: A Socio-spatial Framework To Explore Urban Securitisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

2023

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In the context of growing concern with violence in Latin American and Caribbean cities this paper offers an analytical synthesis of urban securitisation which involves the construction of issues, spaces and populations as security threats. The synthesis contributes to debates on urban studies and critical security studies, which focus on neoliberalism as the driver of urban securitisation and militarisation as its main expression, by highlighting the embedded, contextualised and historically situated nature of securitisation and its multiple manifestations. The paper proposes a framework for the socio-spatial analysis of securitisation processes focusing on their causes, manifestations and consequences, while capturing their dialectic relation with cities’ spatial characteristics. Bringing together Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the social production of space with Wacquant’s analysis of the penal-assistential state, and using secondary sources complemented by primary data from our research, the paper shows that urban securitisation in this region is contingent to four socio-spatial dimensions common to Latin American and Caribbean cities – segregation, territorial stigmatisation, overlapping insecurities and territorial struggles. Using a multidimensional framework, the paper illustrates how unaddressed legacies of colonialism and notions of state power in the context of struggles with criminal actors have driven urban securitisation and diversified its targets and techniques beyond militarisation. Under a securitising logic, programmes which often appear progressive are also shown to prejudice marginalised groups and undermine democratic values. The paper concludes with a call for further multidisciplinary analyses that account for the socio-spatial and historical particularities of contemporary forms of urban securitisation in this and other regions.

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“…The headlines were collected from 2011 -when the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) policy was introduced -until 2017, when the inter vention began. In both papers, we analyze ostentatious moralistic critiques of figures from both sides of the spectrum concerning this 'urban violence' (Werneck et al, 2021;Werneck, 2022b): on one hand, the grammar of crime (Rocha, 2020), especially the socalled bandidos ('bandits', criminals) -interpreted as actants making use of a disproportional degree of force (Werneck & Talone, 2019) and 'adrenaline' (Prado, 2020), especially in the form of traficantes ('drug traffickers': Werneck et al, 2021), ladrões ('thieves': Grillo & Martins, 2020;Caminhas & Beato, 2020) and milicianos ('militia members': Werneck, 2015b) -and, on the other, the grammar of the militar y police officers (Talone, 2020;Cubas, Alves & Oliveira, 2020;Luneke et. al., 2022).…”

Section: Final Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Imperative of Opinion: A Pragmatic Sociology of Critique in ‘Actualité Politique’

Werneck,

Talone,

Gualande Junior

2023

Sociol. Antropol.

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Based on the concept of actualité politique, this essay aims to analyze the economy of opinion and critique in contemporary societies. Based on various research projects arising from our works and on a reflection concerning the pragmatic sociology of critique, we respond to a fundamental question: what are the determinants of the ‘passage’ of a critique into action; i.e., the conversion of internal indignation into an external manifestation of the social actors? The argument has three parts, one structural and two conjectural. In the first, we map the main variables determining the passage from indignation to criticism. In the second, we show how a series of historical transformations in the scarcity/abundance interplay of the elements in this matrix have made opinion and criticism more available and, in the continued evolution of their presence in contemporary life, a core mode of sociability. In the third part, we analyze three consequences of this movement: the trivialization of criticism, conflict, and the devaluation of objective truth.

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From Social Assistance to Control in Urban Margins: Ambivalent Police Practices in Neoliberal Chile

Cited by 8 publications

References 27 publications

How Do Individuals Interact with the Police? Validation of a Scale of Motivational Postures Toward the Police in Spanish

How Do Individuals Interact with the Police? Validation of a Scale of Motivational Postures Toward the Police in Spanish

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Imperative of Opinion: A Pragmatic Sociology of Critique in ‘Actualité Politique’

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