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Antagonistic Authorities and the Civil Police in São Paulo, Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Graham Denyer Willis
Graham Denyer Willis*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

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This article draws on participant observation research in a Civil Police station (delegacia) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, to disentangle existing notions of police resistance to democratic change. Through processes such as “talk of castigation,” the Civil Police reproduce three kinds of authority—public, institutional, and criminal—that influence how police work is done. These authorities are antagonistic, battling over different normative worldviews and notions of acceptable police practice, and these antagonisms result in police work that is often a conflicted amalgam of democratic, institutional, and criminal pressures. The slow pace of democratic change at this police station emerges from not one but multiple modes of resistance that complicate how police can do their work.

Resumo

Resumo

Este artigo visa, a partir de uma pesquisa etnográfica feita numa delegacia da polícia civil na cidade de São Paulo, questionar noções existentes de mudança democrática na polícia brasileira. Para policiais civis nessa delegacia existem e são reproduzidos por eles três tipos de autoridade—pública, institucional e criminal—que marcam o trabalho policial pelos processos como a fala do castigo. Essas autoridades são antagônicas, lutam entre si sobre normas sociais, institucionais e idéias de prática operacional criando um espécie de produto composto por traços democráticos, institucionais e criminais. Na delegacia, não existe uma só resistência a democracia, mas sim várias resistências, ligadas a essas autoridades, que complicam o trabalho policial.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , 2014 , pp. 3 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Diane E. Davis, Peter Houtzager, John Van Maanen, Desmond Arias, Susan Silbey, and Ben Ross Schneider, as well as participants in the MIT Interdisciplinary Working Group on Institutions and Development for comments on this research. Thanks are also extended to my three anonymous LARR reviewers. Previous versions were presented at the Legal Subjectivity, Popular/Community Justice and Human Rights Conference at the University of Cambridge, at a guest lecture at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), as well as in a panel on Violence, Law and State Institutions at LASA 2010. Special thanks go to the Carroll L. Wilson Fellowship at MIT for funding and to Laurie Denyer Willis for her patience and ability to cut to the chase with critique. In particular, the author would like to acknowledge the police of Santa Clara.

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