Abstract
Violence is a difficult subject to analyze, all the more so when we attempt to go beyond the conventional collection and analysis of empirical data to inquire about the less evident, more elusive, meanings of violence. In recent decades violence in contemporary Latin America has expanded to encompass a wide variety of actors, affect a broad spectrum of society (whether physically or by association and symbolically), and involve a bewildering if transient array of sometimes unlikely accomplices and interests, making it difficult to systematically analyze violence beyond noting common elements that appear to have contributed to its proliferation such as drug trafficking, the emergence and spread of private forms of justice, the breakdown of institutions in the wake of neoliberal economic policies, and a growing confusion and complicity between sectors of legitimate society, agents of the state, and a murky underworld of privately armed interest groups (paramilitaries, criminals, traffickers, etc.)
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References
Arias, Enrique Desmond, and Daniel M. Goldstein, eds. Violent Democracies in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. Print.
Corona, Ignacio, and Beth E. Jorgensen, eds. The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on a Liminal Genre. New York: SUNY P, 2002. Print.
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Rotker, Susana. Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2002. Print.
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© 2011 Gabriela Polit Dueñas and María Helena Rueda
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Roldán, M. (2011). Afterword. In: Dueñas, G.P., Rueda, M.H. (eds) Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120037_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120037_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29554-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-12003-7
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