O FRACASSO DAS PRÁTICAS ESTATAIS COMO SUA JUSTIFICATIVA: Projetos de Policiais-Professores na Cidade de Deus

Abstract

This paper discusses the state efforts to manage and contain the contemporary conflict on the urban margins from a empirical case: projects conducted by military police officers assigned by the Pacifying Police Unit in the Cidade de Deus slum. From an ethnography of the routine of these state agents and in dialogue with a desessential perspective of the State, I argue that the explanations for the problems of slums are based on the characteristics of the community. These characteristics would explain the maintenance of social problems and the problem of violence. In this narrative, very common for poor people, a reflection on the conception and the implementation of the politics itself is obliterated. The ineffectiveness of projects in transforming reality emerges as an indicator of how difficult the community is, turning the very failure into justification for the need to maintain those same policies.

Keywords

• social projects
• military police officers
• urban conflict
• poverty
• violence