Prof. Albarracín and PhD Candidate, Rodrigo Moura Karolczak published in the Journal of Peace Research
Introduction
Assistant Professor, Juan Albarracín and PhD candidate, Rodrigo Moura Karolczak, recently co-authored an article for the Journal of Peace and Research titled, Violence against civil society actors in democracies: Territorialization of criminal economies and the assassination of social activists in Brazil.
The Research Center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe) also published a Policy Brief, in which Prof. Albarracín and Rodrigo translate the main findings of their article to a wider audience.
Violence against civil society actors in democracies: Territorialization of criminal economies and the assassination of social activists in Brazil.
International NGOs and cross-national scholarship have drawn attention to a type of political violence particularly prevalent in democracies of the Global South: the assassination of social activists. We argue that the decentralized yet systematic nature of this targeted, lethal violence requires a theoretical framework and empirical approach addressing subnational dynamics. Specifically, we suggest that a significant share of these assassinations stems from the presence of highly territorialized illicit activities, particularly those based on dispossession. These criminal economies are sustained by networks of local elites and criminal actors – criminal-political networks – that develop forms of extra-legal governance and redefine land ownership and resource use, provoking resistance from local communities. When confronted by activist-led challenges, these criminal-political networks respond with lethal violence.
| The Journal of Peace and Research