Crime, proceder, conviviality-security: an anthropological experiment from relations among bandits

Author(s)

Adalton Jose Marques

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-02-26

Examining board members

Ana Lúcia Pastore Schritzmeyer; Antonio Carlos Rafael Barbosa; Ana Claudia Duarte Rocha Marques

• Advisor: Ana Lúcia Pastore Schritzmeyer

Abstract

In this anthropological experiment inspired in the Michel Foucault works I present an ethnography mainly constituted from conversations with prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families about the experience of prison. In the first chapter I tried to present the native answers to the question they address to themselves: Which is the right way to behave?. So I worked on the meanings of the native concept of proceder and the internal division of the space of the prisons under the conviviality-security label. In each of these places they present their defenses and claim to be acting the right way, condemning the other collectivity. In the second chapter I show the strategies that underlies in the proceder especially those that make them pay attention to themselves in a balance between being humble and being fearless, the main definition they present for being a bandit. Finally, in the last chapter, I map the native concept of crime defined as a movement that institute the nurturing alliances among bandits and other allies in the same time that define the enemies from the speculations they get in their path. (AU)