Why do we still talk about urban violence?

This paper explores contemporary uses of “urban violence” through a systematic review of the Brazilian literature. The most common uses of this concept in academia, media, or political debates tend to be conducive to the stigmatization of peripheral groups and territories. For this reason, we propose a reconceptualization of urban violence by constructing a proper “urban” meaning for the term. The intention is to dispute the political meaning of urban violence, removing the focus from criminalizing discourses that fall on peripheries, and turning it towards the violence intrinsic to urbanization practices, following clues left by anti-racist, abolitionist, and decolonial criticism.

Keywords
Urban violence; Urbanization; Stigmatization