Latin America is one of the world's fastest-developing regions, yet also a hub area for crime and violence, where the links between social exclusion, inequality, and violence are clearly visible. Drug crime, robbery, international trafficking, gang violence, and domestic violence destabilize countries' economies and harm their people and social structures.
Encounters With Violence in Latin America, written by specialists on development in the region, takes examples from Colombia and Guatemala to create a complete theory of how and why violence takes place. Considering the various types of political, social, and economic violence that afflict communities, and asking local people about their own experiences as mediated by family, gender, ethnicity, and age, it measures the costs and consequences of violence, giving a voice to those whose daily lives are dominated by widespread aggression.

Cathy McIlwaine, Caroline Moser

List of figures. List of tables. 1. Urban violence as a contested domain 2. Toward a policy-relevant positioning of violence: the role of participatory research methodologies 3. The multiple complexity of daily violence in urban Colombian and Guatemalan communities 4. Community perceptions of the structural factors underlying political and economic violence 5. The family as a violent institution and the primary site of social violence 6. Substance abuse-linked violence relating to drug and alcohol consumption 7. Organized violence at the community level 8. Violence, social institutions and social capital in communities 9. Avoiding or confronting violence? Community perceptions of strategies and solutions Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index.