Séance du séminaire “Sociologie des guerres civiles” : Dennis Rodgers.
The moral economy of murder: Gangs, violence, and death in urban Nicaragua
“This presentation explores the evolving moral and ethical underpinnings of killing and dying in a gang-affected urban neighbourhood in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. It contrasts the funerals of two gang members who died ten years apart in order to highlight how one death was considered socially more meaningful than the other, linking this particular evolution to the broader transformation of Nicaraguan gang dynamics, as well as to the more general evolution of contemporary Nicaraguan society. In doing so, the presentation highlights how a “thanatopolitical” perspective – that is to say, one based on a politics of death – can be highly revealing of particular socio-economic dynamics that are not necessarily immediately obvious when analysed from the standpoint of the living.”
Biography:
Dennis Rodgers is currently Professor of Urban Social and Political Research at the University of Glasgow, and taught previously at the University of Manchester (2007-12) and the London School of Economics (2000-07). From 1 January 2016 he will be taking up the chair of international development studies at the University of Amsterdam. A social anthropologist by training, he works on issues relating to urban development, conflict and violence in Nicaragua, Argentina, and India. In particular, he has carried out almost 20 years of longitudinal ethnographic research on the political economy of gang violence in a poor neighbourhood in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. Recent publications include the edited volumes Popular Representations of Development: Insights from Novels, Films, Television, and Social Media (with David Lewis and Michael Woolcock, Routledge, 2014) and Global Gangs: Street Violence across the World (with Jennifer Hazen, University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
Readings
Rodgers, D., (2010), “Genèse d’un Gangster? De la pandilla au cartelito au Nicaragua post-Sandiniste”, Problèmes d’Amérique Latine, 76: 61-76.
Rodgers, D., (2007), “Joining the gang and becoming a broder: The violence of ethnography in contemporary Nicaragua”, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27(4): 444-61.
Rodgers, D., (2006), “Living in the shadow of death: Gangs, violence, and social order in urban Nicaragua, 1996-2002”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(2): 267-92.
Adam Baczko
Univ. Paris 1, salle 208, 2 rue Cujas, le mercredi 14 octobre à 17h.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Jeanne Pawella (12 octobre 2015). Conf * Genèse d’un Gangster * 14 oct 2015. Radicalisations. Consulté le 18 avril 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/t4tp