La cuidad de los reyes and los amigos policias. An anthropological approach to everyday practices of security and urban space in Lima

Abstract

"La Cuidad de los Reyes and los Amigos PoliciasAn Anthropological Approach to Everyday Practices of Security and Urban Space inLima" By Therese Landås In this master thesis, I discuss aspects of security in relation to social and urban space of Lima in Peru. My main approach to security is the police perspective where I draw attention to agentes del orden, or people practicing policing which I use as a general term. The four chapters in this thesis bring into prominence particular aspects of security in relation to insecurity. The first chapter highlights the police and police practices through two events. I relate the two events to specific kinds of police practices, which accounts for the variety of security in Lima. The second chapter presents different components to the system of security where I discuss the dispersed practice of policing. The third chapter contributes in an understanding of some social consequences of disorder, in presenting relations at the limit". Further, the forth chapter exemplify material consequences of security and insecurity where for instance urban space is a manifestation of fear. I discuss aspects of the system of security which is shaped by and shape insecurity. I look at practices of security which responds to the insecurity in ways that generates particular social and material consequence. One aspect of this is the way ordinary people are silently and sometimes obliviously dragged into the system where there are fine limits between the legal and illegal. I argue that insecurity leaves marks and traces on ordinary people, on the system of security and on city space. These consequences are personified through one of my informants in whom the great complexity of security is given a human face. In addition, I discuss urban space as an arena in which security is expressed through crayoned spaces or mental maps. This case of security in urban space articulates with other underlying discourses of democracy and modernity. Thus I discuss some consequences of crime, violence, and corruption in relation to the emancipation of urbanization as a challenge with regard to security. I conducted my fieldwork as una amiguita policía and was concerned for security. Generally speaking, though I discuss security amongst others by looking at aspects of police work and the system of security, it is insecurity which appropriates much space in this case study. I discuss social and material consequences of this in urban life in Lima.