"Wars of Sertão: violence, security and citizenship in Brazil"
Os Sertões; State Violence; Public Security; Police, Politics; Racism; Citizenship; Brazil
The thesis aims to investigate representations (acts and narratives) of violence produced in the name of the security of Brazilian society. To this end, it articulates an analysis of the context of violence presented in Os Sertões, by Euclides da Cunha, with an analysis of the political performance of federal deputies, whose professional training took place in public security institutions, members of the Parliamentary Committee for Public Security and Combating Organized Crime, of the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress. Like Os Sertões, the thesis is divided into three parts; the first, A Terra, is dedicated to the analysis of Os Sertões and Brazilian social thought at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century; the second, O Homem, is dedicated to the bibliographic review on the development of guiding meanings for the production of public security policies in redemocratized Brazil, as well as to the material collected in the Commission; the third, A Luta, aims to build bridges of meaning between the first two parts through the aid of concepts from the field of research on racism and violence in Brazil. Still, in A Luta, the thesis makes four major attacks on structural functions of representations of violence in Brazilian society: as an instrument of territorial disputes, as an instrument of reproduction of racial hierarchies, as a language and as a commodity.