Security and policing shadows

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyze the shadowy dimensions of security and policing as a constitutive part of social life, the state, and the economy, a ghostly presence that deserves to be the focus of ethnographic research. We use ethnographic fragments from a broader research project to draw complexities of security assemblages in cities in the state of São Paulo. We navigate through violent practices, ambiguous biographies, opportunities, and threats manipulated by concrete and experienced shadow men in the precarious lives of those employed in outsourced security companies. This chapter discusses the ways in which security is manufactured on a daily basis in urban Brazil. Accordingly, we have given thought to how methodological courage is needed to deal with the risks in such an ethnographic endeavour, and for ethnographers who engage deeply and intimately in this kind of fieldwork with the aim of producing non-normative ethnographies. In order to give a clearer sense of the implications of doing fieldwork in the grey zones of security, we propose the concept of pendular ethnography, a reflexive approach committed to following the shadows of security without being subject to them.