Sociability in crime. Culture, form of life or ethos?

In: Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology ; Revista semestral publicada pela Associação Brasileira de Antropologia, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 12-46

Abstract

This article discusses how primary social bonds, which constitute sociability, or the lifeworld, or day-to-day experience of what is taken for granted, are influenced, dominated or even colonized by economic and politico-institutional systems. It focuses on how the theory of transnational network-organized crime is important to understand the lives of the poorest young inhabitants of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It explores the politico-economic associations and cultural interpenetrations between professionalized crime and local politics; the connections between illegal and legal commerce, the transitions between deviance and the conventional world; the links between the economic system, with the power structure that accompanies illicit activity, and the lifeworld of small vendors, their families and neighbours.