The inhabitants of the urban margins are hardly ever heard in discussions about public safety.

A harrowing look at violence among Argentina's urban poor Arquitecto Tucci, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, is a place where crushing poverty and violent crime are everyday realities. Homicides—often involving young people—continue to skyrocket, and in the emergency room there, victims of shootings or knifings are an all-too-common sight. In Harm's Way takes a harrowing look at daily life in Arquitecto Tucci, examining the sources, uses, and forms of interpersonal violence among the urban poor at the very margins of Argentine society. Drawing on more than two years of immersive fieldwork, sociologist Javier Auyero and María Berti, an elementary school teacher in the neighborhood, provide a powerful and disarmingly intimate account of what it is like to live under the constant threat of violence. They argue that being physically aggressive becomes a habitual way of acting in poor and marginalized communities, and that violence is routine and carries across various domains of public and private life. Auyero and Berti trace how different types of violence—be it criminal, drug related, sexual, or domestic—overlap, intersect, and blur together. They show how the state is complicit in the production of harm, and describe the routines and relationships that residents, particularly children, establish to cope with and respond to the constant risk that besieges them and their loved ones. Provocative, eye-opening, and extraordinarily moving, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic work on violence at the urban margins.

This survey of various African and Asian conflicts examines people's experiences on territorial borders and the ways they affect political configurations. By focusing on individuals' routines and daily life, these contributions treat borderland dynamics as actual political units with their own actions and outcomes.

The inhabitants of the urban margins are hardly ever heard in discussions about public safety.

Over the last few decades, debates about policing in poor urban areas have turned from analyzing the state's neglect and abandonment into documenting its harsh interventions and punishing presence. Yet, we know very little about the covert world of state action that is hidden from public view. In The Ambivalent State, Javier Auyero and Katherine Sobering offer an unprecedented look into the clandestine relationships between police agents and drug dealers in Argentina. Drawing on a unique combination of ethnographic fieldwork and documentary evidence, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped phone conversations, they analyze the inner-workings of police-criminal collusion, its connections to drug markets, and how it promotes cynicism and powerlessness in daily life. They argue that an up-close examination of covert state action exposes the workings of an ambivalent state: one that both enforces the rule of law and functions as a partner in criminal behavior. The Ambivalent State develops a political sociology of violence that focuses not only on what takes place in police stations, courts, and poor neighborhoods, but also the clandestine actions and interactions of police, judges, and politicians that structure daily life at the urban margins.

Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires — Ottoman and Qajar, but also European — to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region.

A timely and incisive examination of contemporary urban unrest that explains why riots will continue until citizens are equally treated and politically included In the past few decades, urban riots have erupted in democracies across the world. While high profile politicians often react by condemning protestors' actions and passing crackdown measures, urban studies professor Mustafa Dikeç shows how these revolts are in fact rooted in exclusions and genuine grievances which our democracies are failing to address. In this eye-opening study, he argues that global revolts may be sparked by a particular police or government action but nonetheless are expressions of much longer and deep seated rage accumulated through hardship and injustices that have become routine. Increasingly recognized as an expert on urban unrest, Dikeç examines urban revolts in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Greece, and Turkey and, in a sweeping and engaging account, makes it clear that change is only possible if we address the failures of democratic systems and rethink the established practices of policing and political decision-making.