Excessive Use of Deadly Force by Police in the Philippines Before Duterte

ABSTRACT

Under President Duterte the Philippine National Police have killed several thousand suspects in so-called legitimate encounters. While this has engendered much media attention and scientific research, earlier police violence is still a black-box in many respects. This article provides at least a partial filling of this void. It establishes several indicators for measuring lethal police violence. Moreover, it presents a detailed mapping of regional and sub-regional patterns of armed police encounters for the decade from 2006 to 2015. The spatial and temporal comparisons show that even though actual levels of deadly police violence have been quite low in several Philippine provinces and cities, the Philippine National Police almost always shot to kill suspects and not to incapacitate them. While there was significant variation over time and between sub-national units, neither the magnitude nor the levels of lethality of the violence are related to the threat levels to which the police officers were exposed.     

The silence of the bullet monument: Violence and “Truth” management,Dusun-nyor 1948, and Kru-Ze 2004

Abstract

The so-called Dusun-nyor rebellion of April 1948 is a central and highly controversial episode in the history of southern Thailand. During the “rebellion,” Malay-Muslim villagers fought pitched battles with Thai police and soldiers. Drawing upon sources from a variety of perspectives, this article reviews these events in light of the Thai state's persistent attempts at “truth” management. What soon emerges is that the same events are understood quite differently by those of different perspectives. Using insights developed in other studies of the political usages of monuments, the article focuses on a rather mysterious “bullet monument” that commemorates the 1948 event. The bullet-shaped monument, which is located in the grounds of a police station in Narathiwat Province, has no accompanying text. Like the rebellion whose suppression it appears to celebrate, the bullet monument represents an ambiguous and confusing manifestation of collective memory. In various respects, the “Dusun-nyor rebellion” prefigures the controversy and ambiguity surrounding the storming of the Kru-Ze mosque in Pattani in April 2004. In this recent episode, thirty-two men were killed by Thai security forces inside one of the country's most sacred Muslim sites. Both the Dusun-nyor and Kru-Ze events point to the importance of looking beyond violence, and of thinking critically about the nature of “truth.”     

State Discourses, Police Violence and Democratisation in Argentina

Police violence is a persistent problem throughout Latin America despite the return of electoral democracy; it is pervasive and includes torture, murder and disappearances. Certainly institutional reforms aimed at changing police practice are important. However, it is equally important that state actors maintain a clear and relatively consistent discourse in favour of democratic policing. This article argues that, in the case of Argentina, state actors do not maintain a consistent position in favour of democratic policing and instead oscillate between denying the occurrence of police violence, justifying such police action and absolving themselves of responsibility.     

Manufacturing Black-on-Black Violence in Africa: A Decolonial Perspective on Mfecane and Afrophobia/Xenophobia in South Africa

The phenomenon of “black-on-black” violence among the people of Africa has, ever since the advent of modernity/coloniality, been articulated in such a way that it presents victims as perpetrators. Thus, from the Mfecane violence of the “pre-colonial” era to the xenophobic/Afrophobic violence of the “post-colonial” era in Africa, incidents of black-on-black violence have always attracted explanations that cast doubt on the humanity of the black subject, through the colonial strategy of inventing and inverting causation. This colonial strategy entails both mis-presenting the epochal history of coloniality by representing it in terms of rupture instead of continuity, as well as representing the indigenous African subject as inherently violent. I argue in this article that black-on-black violence is a product of coloniality—a racist global power structure that makes incidents of “non-revolutionary violence” among the oppressed black subject inevitable. Thus, I deploy the case of the Mfecane violence of the “pre-colonial” era in southern Africa, and the Afro-phobic attacks on foreign nationals in “post-apartheid” South Africa to unmask the longue durée of coloniality, and its role of manufacturing blackon-black violence among the black people of Africa.     

Organising Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Rickshaw Drivers in Bogotá

Workers in the informal transport sector are often exposed to multiple forms of workplace violence, for instance by the police and their colleagues. Through a collection of rich ethnographic stories and using the concept of popular resistance, this article investigates how and under what conditions rickshaw drivers in Bogotá resist violence in their workplace. The results reveal that rickshaw associations have been essential in articulating acts of everyday resistance to the legal ban on this activity, such regulating routes, fees and stops. However, associations have created new forms of oppression, being labelled as mafia-like organisations, showing that resistance can also translate into new forms of domination. Contrary to the argument that everyday resistance is uncoordinated, this article shows that acts of everyday resistance can be organised by actors that switch between different individual and collective strategies. Thus, organisations can provide a framework to resist the law on an everyday basis.     

Acute and Everyday Violence in Sri Lanka

Police torture in Sri Lanka has been subject to extensive investigation and condemnation but remains a widespread and seemingly entrenched practice. Seeking to understand the resistance of such practices to existing interventions, this article locates the police’s use of torture within a broader geography of social violence in Sri Lanka. We discuss the findings of extensive fieldwork conducted in the north-west of Sri Lanka where we examined not only police behaviour and interactions between police and the broader community but also the social dynamics relationships more generally. One significant finding was that violence against certain types of people, including police use of torture against such people, is generally accepted, even as the police are broadly criticised in the community for their unethical and ineffective behaviour. Another significant finding was that the society is riven with social hierarchies and that patterns of domination are embedded in social, political and symbolic systems. We conclude that police torture needs to be understood against the background of broader cultural practices whereby social subjects are disciplined and policed to produce appropriate citizens and punish social boundary violations.     

Jenseits von Zentrum und Peripherie

The central question for Karl Marx concerning the specific role of symbolic domination in capitalism challenges us down to the present day. We continue to improperly perceive the symbolic and immaterial structure subjacent to capitalism that is responsible for its peculiar ??symbolic violence.?? This article analyzes two interrelated issues: first, the racism implicated by concepts that articulate central and peripheral capitalism; and secondly, its principal consequence, which is the absence of broad and encompassing concepts in modern social theory. This eliminates a chance to articulate universal contexts??at least as universal as capitalism in its global expansion. The reach of contemporary critical theory is therefore limited in terms of central questions. Among the concepts that are abandoned by the fragmentation and contextualization is that of social class and that of the symbolic violence produced by structural changes that encompass capitalism as a whole. The following article draws on empirical studies concerning under class and the ??new?? middle class conducted in Brazil to illustrate its thesis.     

The Politics of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil

More than a decade after Latin America's most recent turn to democracy, unchecked police violence and torture continue and in some cases have increased. This study examines police killings in 19 Brazilian states from 1994 to 2001 and finds that democracy has not substantially reduced these types of human rights violations, for two reasons. First, underlying social conflict has continued to exert a significant impact on the lethal use of force by police officers. Second, pro-order political coalitions, generally represented by right-wing politicians, have blocked effective measures to control police violence and have implemented public safety measures that stress the use of force. The analysis emphasizes the nonteleological nature of democratization processes and demonstrates the strength of political forces working to maintain "illiberal democracy."     

From Racial Mixture to Black Nation: Racialising Discourses in Brazil's African Affairs

The article links reflections about Brazilian race relations with institutional transnational dialogues between Brazil and ‘Africa’. I point out that although racial/cultural mixture and the ‘brown’ census category have traditionally reflected much of national identity in Brazil, Brazil today is increasingly spelling out its blackness, both on the national and international scenes. I highlight that, not by coincidence, this fact is happening at a historical moment when programmes of ‘black’ affirmative action and other differential politics in favour of Afro‐descendants are taking off in the country, and also at a time when Brazil is expanding its geopolitical and economic interests in Africa.     

Majoritarian values and women’s rights: police and judicial behavior in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan

This paper analyzes judicial and police behavior in dealing with cases of family violence and divorce in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. Police and judges deliberately violate existing legal provisions to prevent women from divorcing or filing charges against their husbands in cases of domestic violence. While the law does not recognize religious marriages in Tajikistan, judges often rule to protect women’s living space after the dissolution of such unions. Drawing on rich interview and archival data, this behavior is explained by showing that judicial and police behavior reflects their biases, which in turn are a reflection of majoritarian norms in these countries. Since current laws are derived from Soviet codes, which were never internalized by the population, police and judges bend them to fit their understanding of social justice.     

Resistance to Chronic Violence in Informal Workplaces: The Strategies of Domestic Workers in Brazil (2003–2018)

This article analyses the repertoire of individual strategies utilised by domestic workers to resist routinised workplace violence in the cities of São Paulo and Ilhéus, Brazil. Findings suggest that domestic workers favour two strategies of resistance: exit (quitting work without prior notice) and voice (negotiating workplace conditions). The latter strategy is divided into two subtypes: voice-pleading (appealing to decency) and voice-confrontation (warning and rights-claiming). Voice strategies appear more effective than exit in ameliorating patterns of chronic workplace violence, particularly when they incorporate labour rights claims and when emotional ties exist between workers and employers.     

Ethnic Rights Under Threat: The Black Peasant Movement Against Armed Groups' Pressure in the Chocó, Colombia

During the past decade Colombia has been experiencing the paradox of, on the one hand, enjoying one of the most advanced constitutional frameworks for the empowerment of citizenship rights in general and ethnic rights in particular, and on the other, suffering from the drawn-out effects of endemic violence and armed conflict. In this paper, the manifestation of this paradox in a specific context, that of the black peasants' land rights movement in the Chocó region, is explored. Under the aegis of the 1991 Constitution, organisations of black peasants have been making headway in filing for and receiving substantial collective land titles on the basis of a discourse of black ethnic rights. At the same time, and not coincidentally, various armed actors such as the FARC guerrillas and paramilitary forces have made violent inroads into this region. The violence has led to internal displacement, social uprooting, and the disruption of the organisational efforts of the black peasantry. This has put the process of ethnic construction and mobilisation under severe strain. However, black peasants' organisation have been trying to use the land entitlements as a tool to mount a counterstrategy against the violence inflicted by the armed groups.     

Public Opinion on Nonwhite Underrepresentation and Racial Identity Politics in Brazil

Brazil has an “African‐origin” population that is proportionally more than four times larger that of African Americans in the United States, but white Brazilians mostly dominate electoral politics. How do ordinary citizens explain this phenomenon? Drawing on a large‐sample survey of public opinion in the state of Rio de Janeiro, this article explores perceived explanations for nonwhite underrepresentation in the political arena. It also examines attitudes toward a particular black candidate, Benedita da Silva, to discern the state of negro identity politics. Most Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro cite racial prejudice to explain nonwhite exclusion, although whites do this less than nonwhites. Indicators of a racial undercurrent in political preferences suggest the importance of allegiances based on perceived common racial origins. Class is robustly associated with voting preferences, suggesting that, in contrast to the United States, class differences among nonwhites in Brazil could attenuate the success of negro identity politics.     

A British ‘Foreign Legion’? The British Police in Mandate Palestine

The men of the British section of the Palestine police have romantically imagined their time as officers in Mandate Palestine, a land infused with historical and biblical significance. Many compared their service to that of the famed military force, the French Foreign Legion. This study sets the nostalgia of memory against the reality of service in Palestine, one that involved considerable brutality against local people. This essay details the empirical evidence of violence, including torture and a ‘dirty war’, mining archival sources, contextualizing primary source material within wider notions of British ideas of collective punishment within the empire. The Palestine police failed in its job of policing, necessitating the deployment of the army to Palestine, and with this collapse in police control the force became more violent. Ironically, the reality of life in the Palestine police was similar to that in the French Foreign Legion: a shock force there to maintain imperial control. The article argues that policing methods from the Mandate period continued after the Palestine force was disbanded in 1948, both within Israel and in other parts of the British Empire where demobilized Palestine police officers went to serve. It pushes the current paradigm on policing, extending the literature that details reforms and institutional change in the Palestine police to include the impact on local people.     

Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas

After nearly 20 years of democratization, residents of Rio's favelas suffer high levels of civil and human rights abuse at the hands of both police and drug traffickers. The government is generally unable to guarantee the political order necessary to protect the rights of residents in these communities. Existing theories of democratization and advocacy networks offer little to explain how the types of endemic violence that affect poor neighborhoods in the developing world can be brought under control. Based on more than two years of participant observation and interviews in Rio de Janeiro, this article examines how democratic order can be extended to favelas. It argues that networks can link favela residents to organizations in civil society, and state actors can play a critical role in reducing violence and establishing democratic order.     

Militär und Gewalt. Eine konzeptionelle Skizze

The article presents the empirical evidence of violence and the military. It describes acts of violence by, of and within the military and by the members of military organizations. It turns out that, as with modernity in general, violence is an inherent aspect of the military in modern societies, albeit an ambivalent one. Violence by, of and within the military cannot be framed negatively only; it disposes of productive capabilities. The chapter tries to conceptualize the empirical evidence and proposes a 2 × 2 Violence-Military-Matrix. It is argued that violence can be differentiated as constructive-legitimate violence on the one hand and destructive-illegitimate violence on the other hand. With regard to the fields of violence, the extra-organizational and the intra-organizational dimension are differentiated. At the end, it is argued that taming violence transgressions in terms of destructive-illegitimate violence is a Sisyphean task. The proposed conceptual approach to violence and the military may inform the future debate on the sociology of violence.     

Black everyday life and the burden of death in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying

ABSTRACT

Zakes Mda’s novel, Ways of Dying, centers on physical violence and death in black communities during the transition from apartheid to democracy. Rather than look toward a post-apartheid future that is anticipated by so many, Mda depicts the reality of death as the product of the volatile politics of late apartheid, demonstrating through the lives of his characters the ways in which systemic violence persists. Set in the early 1990s, the pervasive experience of death and inescapable poverty is relentlessly depicted, unmasking any illusion of positive transformation. The novel debunks the widely celebrated idea or impression of the country’s transition as remarkable or peaceful; its focus on the tens of thousands killed at the tail-end of apartheid refuses this untruth. Mda invites a critical understanding of black literal death, its horror in the questions about mourning raised, and the structural conditions that confine black lives even as a grand narrative is being told outside this novel’s pages.     

Ernest Cole: the perspective of time

Ernest Cole’s photographs reveal the contradictions and paradoxes of apartheid South Africa. At a very young age, and with little formal instruction Cole instinctively produced a significant documentary photo-book titled House of Bondage (1967). This article makes a close reading of some of Ernest Cole’s photographs in relation to the historical circumstances of apartheid and how they can be perceived through the lens of hindsight in postapartheid South Africa. The work offers a potent argument for the power of perception to uncover overlooked moments of the period. As an African, Cole’s photographs construct a narrative of apartheid from the position of an “invisible” black insider. In so doing, they tellingly reveal how he used the system of apartheid to his own advantage in his photographic practice. His photographs ask us to consider his modus operandi and the courage it took to make them at that time, offering the opportunity to behold moments that cut across gaps of space and time.     

From Family Feud to Organised Crime: The Cultural Economy of Cannabis in Northeast Brazil

Abstract — Traditional family feuding and banditry as well as envy-inspired violence associated with capitalised irrigation have been intensified by the introduction of cannabis farming and organised crime in the Sertão of Northeast Brazil to the point that today the cannabis producing zone is one of the most violent places in the world. These three interrelated forms of contemporary violence arose, respectively, in the pre-1940 frontier setting, in the 1940 to 1980 period of rapid Brazilian industrialisation which depressed peasant sectors and stimulated the rise of capitalised irrigation and in the post-1980 period of economic stagnation and social-political crisis in Brazil which depressed consumer markets and induced the State to liberalise foreign trade policy to the detriment of periphery regions like the Northeast.     

Breaking the Law to Ensure Order: The Case of Tijuana (2007–2012)

This paper explores how state agents and civilians justify human rights violations when the military perform police tasks. Based on a set of interviews and documents, it analyses the actions of the armed forces and the police during a military-led operation that targeted drug trafficking organisations in Tijuana. In a context of limited civilian control over the armed forces and the police, the paper identifies two discourses that supported the illegal action of state agents: the construction of a foreign other who does not belong to society and the need to use violence to accomplish a greater good.