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‘Knowing How to Walk’: Risk, Violence and Practices of Endurance in Urban Brazil

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Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives

Part of the book series: Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty ((CRSTRU))

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Abstract

Violence has encroached on the city of Recife for decades and infused everyday life. This chapter explores practices of endurance under conditions that are best described as violent-ordinary. In the mid-2000s, a peripheral area of the city started to undergo state-led redevelopment that in unanticipated ways forged new spaces of violence. The chapter analyses how residents navigate the new and shifting spaces of danger, which, as residents explain, requires ‘knowing how to walk’. It argues that the sensory and quotidian practices of knowing how to walk should not be understood as residents’ attempts of seeking security, but as a way of pragmatically enduring pervasive insecurity. The analysis bridges theory on risk-taking as a state of exception with risk-taking as a mundane practice that can be routinised and normalised.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editors of this volume and especially Beata Świtek for careful revisions of the manuscript that strengthened the argument. The 2010 fieldwork was conducted under the research project: ‘Power, Force Fields and the Social Construction of Space: An Anthropological Study of Slums in Recife, Brazil.’ It was led by Prof. Nuijten from 2006 to 2011 and funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. During the 2013 fieldwork, I was a Ph.D. student at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. I am grateful to the late Monique Nuijten for the opportunity to do fieldwork in Recife, and I am grateful to all the families in Recife who let me into their homes and lives and so generously participated in my research and looked out for me during my stays in the community.

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  1. Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Copenhagen, Denmark

    Marie Kolling

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  1. Marie Kolling
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  1. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Beata Świtek

  2. University College London, London, UK

    Allen Abramson

  3. Independent Researcher, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Hannah Swee

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Kolling, M. (2022). ‘Knowing How to Walk’: Risk, Violence and Practices of Endurance in Urban Brazil. In: Świtek, B., Abramson, A., Swee, H. (eds) Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives. Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83962-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83962-8_2

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