Geography and development: violence and crime as development issues

Abstract

Violence and crime are not new phenomena in the field of development theory andpractice. Since the nineteenth century there has been an assumed link between violence,crime and societal development (Rogers, 1989). In the 1990s, however, the issue ofviolence has taken on particular significance. This is partly because of the perceivedconcentration of crime and violence in the countries of the South. For instance, Africa iscurrently viewed as the most violent continent on the basis of crime victimization rates,and is followed by Latin America (UNICRI, 1995; see also UNCHS, 1996). In terms ofspecific countries, Colombia and South Africa stand out as two of the most violentsocieties in the world (Tickner, 1998; Louw, 1997). Moreover, although not a coreconcern, the recent UK Department for International Development’s White Paperidentified violence as an important development issue in relation to gender andpoverty reduction (Beall, 1998; White, 1998). Interest in violence has also been an important scholarly concern within developmentstudies. Indeed, a number of recent texts, especially those considering urbandevelopment in the South, deal with the issue of violence and insecurity. JosefGugler’s (1997) recent edited collection, for example, has a section on ‘Politicalintegration and conflict’ in which two of the six articles deal directly with violence(Adam and Moodley, 1997 on South Africa; Johnson, 1997 on Lebanon). Similarly, JoBeall’s (1997) volume on diversity in the city has a section on ‘Building a liveable city:secure homes and neighbourhoods’ where the four articles are bound together by thecommon theme of violence and insecurity (see especially Patel, 1997). Perhaps themost interesting example of this trend is in Stuart Corbridge’s (1995)