Negotiating boundaries: Gender, violence and transformation in Brazil

The favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro are renowned for their high levels of urban violence at the hands of gangs and the police. This book problematises the exclusive focus on men as the victims of these wars played out on city streets, an approach which serves to trivialize and sideline the experiences and victimization of women. Nevertheless, women are both actors and victims in these wars, as well as suffering from distinct forms of violence, most notably domestic and sexual violence. This book explores the moral, ideological and spatial boundaries that are produced by high levels of violence and the ways in which they govern everyday interaction, behaviour and movement. Men and women engage with these boundaries in distinctive ways, in negotiating or challenging the imposition of norms and unwritten rules that delimit everyday behaviour. The book argues for a more holistic gendered perspective in how we conceptualise the issue of urban violence and how we develop alternatives and initiatives to tackle violence in general