Pentecostalism, crime and pacification in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro

Carly Machado
Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ)
Referent: Matthijs van de Port (VU)

Over the past six years, the State Government of Rio de Janeiro implemented as a public safety project the so-called “pacification policy”. This policy was meant to be a strategic shift in the relationship of the State Police with the population, allegedly seeking to reduce the frequent violent clashes that mark everyday life in different cities of Rio de Janeiro State. Under the aegis of the idea of “pacification”, different practices, discourses and institutions – both governmental and non-governmental – were articulated into governance actions toward poor, marginalized and criminalized populations of the peripheries of this state. In this presentation I intend to discuss the configuration of a complex apparatus of pacification in Rio de Janeiro that goes beyond practices exclusively belonging to the field of public security. I take as my privileged point of departure in this analysis the plot made up of religious and secular agents, and how their projects operate as “conduct of conducts” of certain groups of the population in Rio de Janeiro, and the relationship between these projects with State practices.

Carly Machado teaches Anthropology at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Brazil. Carly’s first degree was in Psychology (1997) and she went on to receive her M.A. in Social Psychology (2000) and her PhD in Social Sciences in 2006. During her PhD Carly Machado was a visiting student at the University of Amsterdam, in the research group of Professor Birgit Meyer. After receiving her PhD, she held a postdoctoral position at McMaster University, with Professor Jeremy Stolow. Her principal areas of research are Religion, media and technology and more recently Religion, media, politics, and the city. Carly Machado’s current research project focus the issues of religion, media and politic in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro.