EXCLUSION AND PUBLIC POLICIES:

Theoretical Dilemmas and

Political Alternatives
*
Alba Zaluar
It has becom e com m on currency in Brazil to
speak of social exclusion w hen approaching a
series of them es and problem s not alw ays clearly
differentiated or rigorously defined. W idely em -
ployed in France, the concept proposes a new w ay
for dealing w ith som e of the questions related to
the subject of underclass, w ithout its theoretical
purposes and consequences, inspired by and com -
m only used in the U nited States. The underclass
concept, recently developed in discussions about
dual or global cities (Sassen, 1991; Castels and
M ollenkopf, 1992), uses class as its m ain reference,
inasm uch as, in confrontation w ith the w orking
class, it reflects w hat is lacking am ong the poor
w ho do not have regular jobs, live in ghettos,
belong to dysfunctional fam ilies, are addicted to
illicit drugs and live in a neighborhood w ith high
rates of crim inality. The concept, thus, bears im -
portant theoretical resem blance to those theories
developed in Latin Am erica about the inform al
m arket and crim inality, chiefly linking the social to
the econom ic aspects. Exclusion, on the other
hand, connects the econom ic to the political and
social aspects. N evertheless, besides citizenship
and insertion in the national society, its references
are the borders betw een groups and a non-explicit
classificatory logic, not alw ays clear to those w ho
m isuse the concept.
In order to clarify the m istakes and doubts
assaulting those w ho w ish to em ploy the concept
of exclusion w ith accuracy, w e m ust differentiate
tw o sorts of problem s: the theoretical and the
practical/political, w hich have been often m iscon-
strued by rhetoric.
The theoretical problems
The concept of exclusion com es, in fact, from
a tradition in the study of sym bolic system s that has
prevailed in social thought, especially the one
w hich w as m ore influenced by Structural Anthro-
pology. In this discipline, as it is w ell know n, the
analysis does not favor the policy of m eanings in
the discourse nor the relation of the discourse w ith
its references, but instead the attributes in the chain
of significants. In other w ords, the links betw een
the nam e and the reality it covers, the signifier and
* Published originally in Revista Brasileira de Cincias
Sociais, volum e 12, n. 35, O ctober 1997, pp. 29-48.
Translated by M aria Cristina de Andrade Vieira and
revised by the author.
Brazilian Review of Social Sciences, special issue, no. 1, October 2000
26 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
the signified, do not m atter as m uch as the connec-
tions betw een nam es w ithin the system they form .
This chain of significants is logically m ounted upon
inclusion/exclusion, in categories that intersects
reality and allow com m unication. It is the classify-
ing logic or binary logic (the yes/no of com puters
or of artificial intelligence) w hich is thus used to set
differences, m ade possible by the signs they carry
the diacritic signs resulting in a group of
sounds or letters defined as significants. This logic
corresponds to w hat the French call structurelle,
that is, the form al relations betw een the elem ents
of a sym bolic system , to differentiate from struc-
turale, w hich is associated to the social, to the
m oral, and to relationships betw een people, w hich
also form a system . This anthropologic theory has
proven to be a good one for thinking the idea of
contrasting identities at the borders betw een
groups that touch or confront one another and are
sym bolically represented as different. But the sam e
theory presents problem s w hen it is applied to all
sorts of com m unities, m ore or less com prehensive,
in w hich social or m oral links, reciprocity, solidar-
ity, m utuality, authority, and not only classificatory
logic or the excluding gam e of pow er and discrim -
ination, becom e a part of the com plex scenario in
w hich m anifold actors com m and the social and
political fields.
From the point of view of the sym bolic system
theory, w e can assert that every classificatory sys-
tem , or every com m unity, insofar as they have their
ow n peculiar identities, w ill create exclusion: differ-
ent religious, ethnic, racial, fam ily or tribal groups,
different localities, nations, etc. These groups, how -
ever, w ill create exclusion by different procedures
and different criteria, being m ore or less flexible, its
borders being m ore or less defined, the links
betw een its m em bers being of a very different
nature. This is the first difficulty in focusing just the
yes/no of inclusion/exclusion. Any classificatory
system that is based solely on term s of binary logic,
inasm uch as it needs a clear boundary separating
the parts and this cannot be reduced to polarized
system s betw een only tw o categories w ill pro-
duce exclusion, w hich is, therefore, a classifying
trait upon w hich the structural concept of social
identity is based. Even the system s of m ultiple
categories, if their boundaries are strictly defined
w ill create exclusion and potential conflicts. It is
im portant, therefore, to understand the shady areas
betw een com m unities or social groups, the pro-
cesses of integration or rejection of each one, the
intrinsic relationships betw een those included, as
w ell as the relationships betw een the com m unity or
the group of included people w ith other groups that
are of the sam e or of a different nature.
Som e of these com m unities are m ore fluid,
m ore open or m ore com prehensive than others.
Som e refer to the rights and obligations acquired
by birth in the territory w hereas som e refer to
bonds of kinship or of ancestry; others yet refer to
the m oral, intellectual or psychological characteris-
tics of its m em bers that are denied to the excluded.
N ations can be born out of different com binations
of these criteria, stressing one or the other, like for
instance ancestry and race, as discussed in Tam bi-
ahs (1997) concept of ethno-nationalism , w hich
w ill create a m ore or less excluding nation in so far
as the acceptance of foreigners and im m igrants is
concerned. Som e com m unities m ay be m ore
indulgent in the processes of adm ission, conver-
sion or inclusion w hereas others m ay im pose m ore
dem anding criteria. M ost European countries ow e
m ost of their problem s of exclusion to the non-
acceptance of recent im m igrants as m em bers of
society, creating a new form of cultural racism . In
any event, to opt for inclusion is to opt for a
com m on plateau of identity and of social belong-
ing, overcom ing differences.
In this sense, Brazil is one of the m ost
accepting and less excluding nations of the w orld.
The lack of ethnical and racial hom ogeneity m akes
it a m ulticultural country by vocation in spite of
the occurrence of subtlediscrim inations and
m ore open to the variety of the existing ethnical
identities in the w orld. At the sam e tim e, its defense
of hybridism softens the differences and, as a result
of the m ixture, creates a com m on racial and cultur-
al nucleus. That is also w hy the violently excluding
form s of biological racism of the past or cultural
racism of the present are not rem arkable in this
country. In fact, Brazil is a country that theoretically
rejects racism , even if in practice it presents signs of
discrim ination of blacks and m ulattos stem m ing
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 27
from the m ixture betw een the blacks and w hites
w ho landed in Brazil and the Indians w ho w ere
already here. The sam e, how ever, cannot be said
of exclusions derived from poverty. It is w hen
racial discrim ination is com bined w ith discrim ina-
tion against the poor that w e find distinct situations
of exclusion in various areas, through different
processes.
The other theoretical problem of this ap-
proach is that the existence of m ore or less closed
com m unities or groups does not necessarily create
a situation of injustice. To belong or not to belong
to a fam ily, a religious group, a particular ethnic
group or a tribe doesnt necessarily m ean to live a
situation of social injustice, of privation or w anting
in relation to other groups. W hen, then, does
exclusion and injustice overlap? In this case, w ould
the excluded and m em bers of the underclass be
the sam e? D espite the converging points and the
juxtaposition, the debate on exclusion focus injus-
tice from a point of view different from the one that
sees it through the underclass concept.
French theoreticians w ho deal w ith todays
social issues agree that, in order to think social
injustice, one does not have to consider only the
sm all groups anym ore, but instead the national
societies in their relations w ith national states.
Exclusion as a m anifestation of injustice (distribu-
tive) is m anifest w hen people are system atically
precluded from services, benefits and guarantees
generally thought of as a right of the citizen,
offered or assured by the state. Som e point out that
even then w e w ould have greatly differentiated
situations, levels and degrees of exclusion. It is
therefore necessary to understand the processes
that lead to exclusion and the particular content of
different exclusions in order to reach a truer and
less rhetoric understanding of exclusion. For in-
stance, the life history and situations lived by street
boys, young drug addicts, slum dw ellers, unem -
ployed w orkers, hom osexuals, umbanda practitio-
ners, blacks and m ulattos are very different. Final-
ly, others discuss justice as a m ore com prehensive
concept, w hich encom passes not only the relations
betw een society and state but also interpersonal
relations, several com m itm ents and possible par-
ticipation of and betw een different sectors of soci-
ety w ithin public space w hich are not to be
m istaken w ith the state or w ith the m arket. W hich
brings us to a new order of problem s.
The practical/political problems
In its political dim ension, the term exclusion
from the debate on the w elfare state crisis
currently refers to the exclusion or integration in
the national society. That is how the term is used by
m ost authors. Pierre Rosanvallon (1995), for in-
stance, is a universalistic rather than a com m unitar-
ian
1
in his perspective of exclusion, defining indi-
vidual citizenship by the dim ension of its political
and civil participation in the national society. H e
thinks about the real rights, not about those w ritten
in declarations of m ens universal rights, in national
constitutions or other law codes that m anifest their
purely form al and unreal character since they are
not alw ays im plem ented. From this perspective,
political and civil participation im plies concrete
responsibilities and duties, not sim ply those vague-
ly described in decrees. Thus a person is not sim ply
a subject of rights assured by law , but rather a
receiver of care and protection and, at the sam e
tim e, som eone w ho rem ains available to fulfill
roles expected by society, that is, one should return
the services received from the state. It is in this
sense that he w rites about rebuilding the nation
w ith new solidarities, new social usefulness and
new identities. In this m anner, Rosanvallon com -
bines the so-called social or collective rights, ex-
tending them to a category of people that are not
taken into account, w ith individual rights and
duties. It is not anym ore a m atter of the collective
right to a portion of the w ealth created by the
nation, but also of individual rights or m oral obli-
gations that each person has w ith all the other
individuals that form s the nation.
Basically, this author is against passive citizen-
ship, characterized by the affirm ation and assurance
of the right to w ork, w hich develops into a policy of
m ere protection and an attem pt to guarantee the
right to life. This system , how ever, has generated a
tension that led to a crisis betw een the autonom y
thus acquired by the individual and a m ore general
solidarity, since life in the poverty niches, due to the
28 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
excessive num ber of people to protect, has allow ed
the vam pirism of national society, underm ining that
sam e solidarity. An active citizenship is not just
about the right to life, but the right to live in society,
that is, the right to civil and political involvem ent
w hich above all im plies a retribution from those
w ho benefit. Likew ise, it is not just about the right of
w ork, but the right to w ork, w hich requires over-
com ing the contractual interpretation of solidarity.
In this contractual concept, social rights belong to
the w orker at risk, that is, assistance is given to those
w ho cannot w ork (extended som etim es to the free
ridersw ho get used to getting the benefits and quit
searching for a position in the form al w ork m arket),
w hat is guaranteed by the ones w ho w ant and can
w ork. Beforehand, solidarity w as founded on the
contributions m ade by w orkers and redistribution
w as a consequence of w orkersaptitude for w ork.
In its current phase, econom ic globalization has
changed it all, for technological changes have
deeply altered the w orking process, and m assive
unem ploym ent w as follow ed by the grow th of the
inform al m arket together w ith the lack of regula-
tions in the relationship capital/labor. As a conse-
quence, the financial crisis of the w elfare state
rekindled the concern for those w ho avoid w ork
and developed the addictionof dependence,
becom ing parasites of those w ho w ork. So the
discussion about the deserving pooror the m oral
aspects of the issue have com e up again, this tim e
w ith m ore dem ocratic solutions.
The proposition, then, is that the Passive
W elfare State should be replaced by the Active
W elfare State. The aim w ould no longer be just to
assist the needy but to aid people w ith different
social usefulness, w hose capacity could alw ays be
put to use. There w ould also be a radical socializa-
tion of goods and responsibilities. The ideology of
this new state w ould bring forw ard a new concept
of solidarity: not private charity or the w ell-being
that com e from social rights, nor the m utuality of the
19th centurys solidarity. The m otto of this ideology
to rebuild the nation m eans to prom ote the
solidarity that com es from belonging to the sam e
national com m unity, w ith a national social security
system . In this new sense of the social, since the
social issue is national, solidarity m eans the right
and the obligation to integration. In the Civic
W elfare State, as Rosanvallon calls it, civility is built
upon a general process of education, inside and
outside schools, and becom es an alternative to the
often frustrated attem pts to am end the unsociable
sociability to w hich K ant refers. In it, ideally, public
policies should focus m ore on the prevention of
exclusion than on the reinsertion of the excluded,
on the creation of a positive sociability rather than
on searching for the cure of the negative, although
during current crisis rather the opposite is bound to
occur in the policy of reinsertion. This project
w ould be carried out by other actors: not anym ore
by unions and the redistributing state, but by a
series of different associations w orking w ith the
state still the m ain actor for the social creating
a new legitim acy for its intervention.
In the current policies of reinsertion by w hich
one applies a cure to w hat has not been prevented,
the French m inim um w age program RM I
incorporates som e of the considerations about the
Active W elfare State and proposes the institutional-
ization of a social debt, this tim e w ith a counterpart:
the beneficiarys personal com m itm ent to the na-
tional society. In other w ords, it m eans that the
person w ould be expected to engage in different
activities, either investing in his ow n schooling,
participating in associations that deal w ith the
general interest, or in case of drug users or petty
crim inals trying to readapt to society. The very
concept of labor has to be m odified, redeem ing
K eynes propositions from the early 20th century:
not the idea of the econom ically productive labor,
w hich results in the increase of plus value, but the
idea of a socially useful labor, w hich m ay m ean
selling orange juice on the streets, helping to clean
a poor neighborhood, reforesting state areas in
order to reduce unem ploym ent, and even attend-
ing the sick, the elderly or the children w ho are at
risk, even if one is not professionally trained to do
it. The use of non professionals in solidarity actions
is follow ed by the decentralization of decisions on
w ho should get or go on getting the different kinds
of assistance. H ow ever, this decentralization is not
reduced to the transfer from federal to m unicipal
pow er; it is instead a net system w here the com -
m on citizen, w orkers w ho represent their profes-
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 29
sional categories and neighborhoods, their associ-
ations, religious or other, take part on the sam e
forum of discussions about the criteria and the
people to be included in the plan (Affichard, 1995).
N evertheless, another author Robert Castel
(1995) due to the above-m entioned theoretical
problem s, prefers to talk about disaffiliation instead
of exclusion, and proposes different policies to
solve the issue. The term inological change is im por-
tant insofar as affiliation refers to a social process,
w ith active people participating in it, and not to a
binary logic of classification. Robert Castel also
w orks w ith the possible and necessary choices
w ithin national societies that, even in European
countries ethnically and racially hom ogeneous be-
forehand, present today a picture of heterogeneity,
m arked by explicit racism . H e stresses the fact that
the policies of integration in a national society
should not lose sight of situations differentiated by
religion, ethnic identity, race and gender, and re-
sum e the them e of pluralism and m ulticulturalism .
Even so, like everybody, the author repeats the
m otto of integration in the national society for those
w ho are the m ost atom ized, the m ost useless, the
m ost indifferently treated by everyone. That is w hy
he then speaks of negative individualism , the
individualism of those confined in islands by frag-
m ented social tissue, isolated, reduced to nothing,
w ithout the socially shared idealism and values; the
individualism of those w ho, through narcissism ,
have sought the illusion of absolute individual
independence and have found the void.
For him , the big challenge of European na-
tional societies w ould be for a part of the popula-
tion to stir up the existing exile of citizenship and
national societies, now predom inant in those soci-
eties, w hich w ould tend to affect everybody. H is
understanding of exclusion is the closest to the
concept of underclass, em ployed for thinking the
situations of housing, m orality and w ork of the
m em bers of ethnic m inorities in the U nited States
(Jenks, 1992; K atz, 1989; D anzinger and W einberg,
1986). Since for him the m ain aspect of exclusion is
the end of the salaried condition, w hich requires a
stable em ploym ent, a nicely constituted fam ily and
a hom ogeneous religious group or neighborhood,
the result is a hazardous and unpredictable life. In it,
tom orrow is uncertain due to w hat tem porary w ork
or odd jobs, i.e., the alternation of periods of activity
and inactivity, im pose today to the able w orker.
They becom e, therefore, subjects by default, since
they are excluded from all collective protections:
fam ily, neighborhood or religious groups, com pa-
nies, unions, etc. Thus, w hen analyzing disaffilia-
tion, one should com bine national issues to local
and to private processes so that one can find
antidotes. H ere Castel is also closer to the U S
discussion of justice, w hich follow s the com m uni-
tarian line, looking for the articulation of this per-
spective w ith the universalistic that is conceived in
the societal line.
For this reason, Castel argues that the exclu-
sion of the addicted youth is not the sam e as that of
the unem ployed, and different public policies are
necessary for their integration. H e also criticizes
w elfare policies for their post facto characteristic of
rem edying a situation instead of preventing it. In a
final estim ation, he prefers the m ore forceful em -
ploym ent policies, the only ones that w ould revert
the grow ing difficulties caused by the end of the
w ork society. These w ould be econom ic policies
and w ould seek to m odify the structure of produc-
tion, w ith large-scale intervention of the state. Thus
his restrictions to the RM I law , that he sees as
prom oting insertion in an am biguous w ay. The
m inim al w age for integrationis a national im per-
ative, seen as a m ere tem porary aid to those w ho
have succum bed to the crisis. H ow ever, w hat w as
created to be tem porary has taken a perm anent
quality am ong the unem ployed w ho now live off
w elfare, transform ing the citizen into an addict to
idleness.
Thus, Castel is also against neo-philanthropy
and agrees that the inserted should contribute w ith
com pensations for their insertion, although, con-
trary to Rosanvallon, he proposes that the political
and civil integration w ith responsibility should be
accom panied by real possibilities of a steady job.
Follow ing this line of thought, the m odern state
should redefine its functions and find again its lost
legitim acy. According to him , the problem is that
the new form s of insertion besides a steady job, the
new form s of identity, of solidarity and of social
usefulness are m ore harm ful to som e people than
30 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
to others. The right to w ork as opposed to the right
of w ork is not equal for everybody. H e even adm its
that w e m ay be at the end of the w age-based
society, or of the job as the m ain vector of integra-
tion, but w e have to keep our attention focused on
those w ho rem ain outside of this long process of
the building of a new citizenship, w hich is far from
being com pleted. Today, the unem ployed or the
ones assisted by the RM I still consider the job as the
biggest expression of dignity and citizenship. W hat
to do w ith those w ho are the m ost dam aged by the
end of the w age system , that is, the w eaker and the
dispossessed, the ones that are w aiting for the
em ergence of new form s of identity and of citizen-
ship? U rgent political m easures and the restructur-
ing of global econom y are still in the horizon of the
current debate, w hich cannot be solved by the
m agical form ula of decentralization in order to
integrate the poor.
In present society, social classes, such as w ere
recognized and studied in the 19th century and in
the first half of the 20th century, are not the only
relevant divisions. M ultiple segm entations have cre-
ated other exclusions and new subjects of right in
the follow ing political struggles. In Brazil, for in-
stance, any link betw een m en and w om en has been
institutionalized, but hom osexuals are still excluded
from this institutionalization. H ow ever, the concept
of hum an rights, w hich is applied to those catego-
ries not granted w ith civil rights, is less and less
invoked as far as the national law s have incorporat-
ed their claim s. M any of the struggles brought
forw ard as being a hum an rights issue, especially
those referring to institutional violence against the
poor, are in fact fights to transform their civil rights
into real rights, i.e., not m erely formal, for they are
already law ful. In Brazil, the poor are not consid-
ered foreigners, such as happens w ith the Arabs and
their descendants in France and w ith African and
Antillean blacks in England and France.
W e live today, then, betw een tw o dangers.
The tendency to consider specific rights in detri-
m ent of the m ore general rights, or local identities
ignoring the national and even the supranational
and international ones, has created the danger of
an exaggerated stress on the autonom y of specific
com m unities or localities. This tendency could
break up the nation, creating serious problem for
the integration of the poor since the social issue, as
defined by those authors w ho thought about it, is
basically a national issue. O ne of the dangers of
decentralization of public policies w ould be the
strengthening of local solidarities and identities
w hich w ould leave out a large num ber of poor
m igrants, rejected by the richer m unicipalities,
such as occurs today in several southern states, in
the interior of So Paulo and in som e m unicipalities
of M inas G erais. This w ould represent a reversion
to the English policies of the 17th and 18th centu-
ries, characterized by the im m obilization of the
poor in their m unicipalities of origin (H im m elfarb,
1984) and of im m ense inter-m unicipal differences.
Another danger ensues from the idea of
nation as the fatherland that dem ands sacrifices
from its children, including the loss of their specific
identities, w ith w hich w e w ould end up elim inat-
ing com pletely the diversities for the benefit of a
national identity. The question is, therefore, how to
rebuild the nation. In so doing, the articulation
betw een recognized levels of sociability and soli-
darity has to be re-established. Cosm opolitanism
does not m ean the relinquishing of interpersonal
sociability or of reciprocity as the principle of
interpersonal ties, but an extension of these ties
beyond the sm all universe of the fam ily, w hich is
the m atrix of other prim ary groups. Therefore, the
confines of a neighborhood, or even of the associa-
tive trends that are characteristic of m odernity, as
w ell as those of trade unions, restricted profession-
al groups, political parties, and enclosed religious
groups, have to be surm ounted so as to include
and integrate the layers of the population, in a
m ore general level, in am pler circuits of solidarity.
O ne should alw ays bear in m ind that the
grow ing option for the concept of exclusion, of
French origin, reveals the final purpose of integra-
tion, that is, belonging to a higher unity encom -
passed in the idea of nation. In its turn, this re-
establishes the new social issue: it is not just the
civil contract betw een tw o people or organiza-
tions, nor the political contract sponsored and
m ediated by the state w hich controls the sover-
eignty over the territory and the subm ission of all
to the law . In the new social issue w e deal w ith the
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 31
com m itm ent that each one has w ith the others, that
every person belonging to the nation has w ith
everybody else, in circuits of various exchanges
(Ricoeur, 1990). At the sam e tim e, the universalistic
notion of justice based in the idea of equal justice
for all becom es relative, opening the w ay for
criteria that are local, situational and diversified, as
w ell as thrived w ithin the different circuits of
distribution and exchange, of w hich the state is not
anym ore the sole m ediator.
The discussion about reciprocity in m odern
society is, therefore, a them e of utm ost actuality,
judging by the am ount of w orks published by the
M .A.U .S.S. (M ouvem ent Anti-U tilitariste des Scien-
tistes Sociaux) and others that intend to unravel the
m arket, self-interest and im personal or bureaucrat-
ic rules as the icons of m odernity in sociologic
thought, inspired by utilitarianism . Instead, they
propound to reintroduce interpersonal ties, dis-
dain tow ards private gains (desintrssement),
com m unicative rationality and reciprocity w ithin
w ide circuits as outlets for the predicam ents creat-
ed by neo-liberalism .
Reciprocity in modernity
O ne of the m ost influential currents of Anthro-
pology has characterized the social field as the
sphere of reciprocity, of m oral ties and interperson-
al com m unication, keeping in sight the am biva-
lence and contradictions of these term s. As tools for
building up of the idea of social order, organization,
sociability or positive sociality, these concepts w ere
first adopted, then pretty m uch criticized and re-
cently recuperated. Today, at the end of the centu-
ry, num erous social scientists re-start using the
term s em ployed at the beginning of the century
because of the fraying of the social tissue, urban
violence and social fragm entation that affects all
form s of cellular organization, the loss of im petus of
social m ovem ents, besides the new challenges
originated from neo-liberal econom ic theories still
based on the individual and self interest.
It is not by chance that the first theory of
reciprocity appeared in the first decades of the 20th
century, w hen liberal m arket theories prevailed in
the pre-K eynesian era, prior to the attem pts to fight
corrosion in society caused by a m arket devoid of
institutional or m oral lim its. According to M arcel
M ausstheory, the three m om ents of reciprocity
to give, receive and to return w ould form a unity
m ade possible by the character of the gift. The
donated good, charged w ith a vital strength and
w ith the energy that w ould m ake retribution oblig-
atory, w ould create the m agic of uniting people
and establish social ties am ong them . The gift
w ould then be the m ediator of interpersonal and
inter-group links; but it w ould circulate in the
restrict circuit of interpersonal relationships, con-
stituting the com m unity of prim ary relations.
M auss, how ever, did not have a naive concep-
tion of donation, for he did stress its negative and
am bivalent aspects. The am bivalence of donation
w ould be present in the connotations suggested by
its G reek root dosis associated to dose, to
poison not strong enough to kill if served in sm all
doses, in w hich case the person is capable of giving
it back. The gift, how ever, w ould sham e those w ho
w ould get it in doses that they w ould not be able to
reciprocate. In fact, in the several ethnographic
exam ples used to build up his theory, M auss de-
scribes how the donation received w ithout the
possibility of retribution can hum iliate the receiv-
er,
2
becom ing even dangerous and phony as in the
G reek gift, a w ell-know n expression in several
languages. The donation is also a resource of pow er
m uch used in rituals of status display, providing the
donor w ith prestige and pow er, that is, it is not a
token m ade out of pure unselfishness or generosity,
although its selfish character is m ore sym bolic than
m aterial. Reciprocity is also m aintained at the edge
of the agon, a force that pushes m en into com peti-
tion, rivalry and revenge w hen they feel they have
suffered grievance or offense (Boilleau, 1995). D o-
nation is at the sam e tim e selfishness and unselfish-
ness, generosity and strategic or instrum ental calcu-
lation, concepts expressed in the sym bolic rather
than m aterial level, w hich are m aintained in perm a-
nent tension, especially in the relations betw een
unequal people. For this reason, M auss pointed out
one of its perversions: the giving of alm s in Christian
charity, the hum iliating philanthropy. W e could
also add: clientelism in its articulation w ith the
political w hich has turned personal loyalty into a
32 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
tool for electoral purposes during the First Republic;
the neo-clientelism that privatizes public budgets
and services today for the sam e purpose; the loyalty
associated w ith terror that characterizes the person-
al relations inside the M afia. All of those possibilities
hinder free choice for those w ho bet on giving,
receiving and rendering.
Because they are the basis or the binding
elem ent of any sociability, reciprocity and dona-
tion in sym m etrical and asym m etrical circuits of
exchange w ere not restricted as M arcel M auss
him self asserted to the so-called tribal or prim -
itive societies. The specific circuits of m odern and
contem porary societies in their econom ic and po-
litical consequences as w ell as in their positive and
negative aspects, have been increasingly the object
of analysis by countless authors, in different social
fields: in healthcare, w elfare, blood and organ
donation, in the state fiscal policy, in various social
m ovem ents, but also in the circuits of private
revenge and in the m odern penal system that has
not lost its vindictive character. In the social field
there has alw ays been an interw eaving betw een
necessity (or interest) and donation, envy and
solidarity, despite the overly optim istic assertion of
the critics of personal interest as societys binding
elem ent. To speak of reciprocity is, therefore, not
enough. It is im portant to know w hat kind of
reciprocity w ere talking about, its social context,
its com m unitarian lim its, its circuits, w ho is part of
it and based in w hat criteria.
The current debate about concepts of reci-
procity, unselfishness and interest is crucial to
bring together the econom ic, political and social
issues that have been so dissociated in the neo-
liberal nineties, as w ell as to the understanding of
relations in w hat w e call the new social issue. At
the sam e tim e, the field of debate on justice has
been am plified, com prising different branches ac-
cording to different principles: the principle of
legal rights (justice as institution) and the principle
of m aterial necessities (social justice). Both, how -
ever, are based on the recently resum ed discussion
about reciprocity and solidarity am ong m en in
general (universal and abstract rights and duties) or
am ong real people belonging to specific com m uni-
ties (specific and concrete rights and duties).
This discussion has been im pelled by the
Anti-U tilitarian M ovem ent of Social Scientists in
France, w hich is trying to retrace the paths of
reconstruction of the social tissue, or w hat Francis
Farrugia called the social tie in his book La Crise du
Lien Social. According to the authors of that m ove-
m ent, the social tie or the new form s of reciprocity
w ould serve as the basis for new w ays of living in
society (w anting to live together, according to
H annah Arendts concept). These form s w ould
constitute the new contract of civility that is neither
the civil nor the political contract w ith the state, but
rather one m ade by each m em ber w ith everybody
else w ithin the national com m unity. They w ould
justify the new form s of legitim acy that stress the
rational character of the state (according to H aber-
m as and Ricoeur), in w hich the practice of violence
should be lim ited, controlled and justified. Finally,
they w ould shape new form s of solidarity in w hich
the state is also the prom oter of innum erable
circuits of reciprocity and solidarity that need
definition. W e are talking here about reuniting the
social and the political or about the re-politiciza-
tion of social ties, linking them to social rights and
citizenship, that is, it is about the overlapping
betw een the W elfare State and the N ational State.
O ne of the authors involved in this debate, the
Canadian G odbout (1992), tries to build the theoret-
ical space of m odern reciprocity that is distinct from
the m arket, the state and the traditional reciprocity
w hich encom passes only dom estic com m unities.
Reciprocity is different from the m arket in so far as it
com plies the receiver to render the donor there-
by creating a relationship, a tie, a link betw een
partners in an exchange w ithout a lim it in tim e. This
social tie allow s for a long term protraction of the
retribution, depending on how close the partners
are. In it, the goods exchanged have above all a
sym bolic value, m arked by the social relations in
w hich they are displayed, consum ed or destroyed.
In the m arket, the exchange based on the principle
of equivalence or m easured by currency (general
equivalent) w ould end the relation as soon as the
exchange takes place and the goods have an
exchange value that is quantitatively m easurable.
In the state, the existing principle in the circulation
of goods and services is, at least theoretically, that of
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 33
equity and justice in a system that is based upon
im personal and bureaucratic relationships, realized
in the concepts of Law , that is, in a perspective of
justice that is universalistic and juridical. In dom estic
com m unities, w here the relationships based on
love and friendship prevail, reciprocity is of a
restrict or generalized nature, although alw ays w ith-
in the excluding lim its of a com m unity w ith prim ary
ties, that is, involving people that know each other
and have long-tim e links of affection excluding
others. By definition, com m unities such as fam ilies,
villages, old neighborhoods, etc., are ruled by
countless private and local (non juridical) perspec-
tives of justice. H ere the guidelines are those that
another author has called binding value(Caill,
1994), w hich joins and assem bles people in lasting
relationships.
In a fourth sector, that of m odern reciprocity,
gifts w ould be based on generosity tow ards strang-
ers and w ould spring from the donors free and
w illful action. It could be considered im personal in
the sense that the receiver w ould probably rem ain
unknow n, but it does not shun calculations about
the possibility of a return in the future through
m iddlem en w ho act as redistributing agents. Its
m odel w as initially considered that of organ and
blood donation w hich, in w estern countries, are of
a totally voluntary nature; today, though, they are
not restricted to these goods that, although still of
a voluntary nature, need the m ediation of and
redistribution by the state. N ow adays, other volun-
tary and participating associations in w hich the
partners exchange services and other form s of
com m unication that create social relations be-
tw een them and w hich require active participation
or a responsible com m itm ent in collective objec-
tives, appear as the m ost representative of the
fourth sector. They are, for instance, the alcoholic
anonym ous, narcotic anonym ous and other orga-
nizations that should not be likened to non-gov-
ernm ental organizations. In the fourth sector, the
states bureaucratic character of m ediator in the
redistribution system w ould not be replaced by
another bureaucratic organization that also w orks
as a redistribution node and needs a budget to
operate. Likew ise, due to the effects of its ow n
presence in the social dynam ics, the private and
local criteria of justice present in the com m unitar-
ianism , from w hich the dom estic sector takes its
functioning, suffer a variation. Local autonom y,
w hich does not organize the relationships betw een
the various groups or com m unities, is split so as to
form chains of solidarity betw een strangers w hose
final aim m ay be the distribution of som e scarce
good, based in several justice criteria that im ply
perm anent public discussion about the choice
processes of w ho w ill be the beneficiaries.
This is w hy m any authors that take part on
the debate about the theory of justice have m en-
tioned a controlled pluralism (consequence of
the different criteria of the com m unity), w hich
w ould depend upon public discussion of the distri-
bution criteria and of the evaluations subm itted by
the participants of the solidarity circuits (Ricoeur,
1995; Boltanski, 1990; Rosanvallon, 1995). The
effect is also to create different ties, either through
donation of goods or through participation in
public discussions about evaluation and distribu-
tion. In this circuit of reciprocity it w ould be
included not only com m ercial but also non-com -
m ercial goods, such as nationality, w elfare, educa-
tion, adm inistration of justice, that is, different
spheres of justice controlled by the state (W alzer,
1995), or still those deriving from the process of
justification in the dem ands for justice and its
evaluation, in w hich the ideas of honor, trust and
reputation im m aterial goods not controlled by
the state are proclaim ed in the disputes
(Thvenot, 1995; Boltanski, 1990). For the sam e
reason, these authors assert that, on the issue of
inclusion or participation, the allocation of goods is
not discussed anym ore, being replaced respective-
ly by the (lim ited) control exerted by the state in
each sphere and in the interactions betw een them ,
or the social relationship itself. Likew ise, Rosanval-
lon, W alzer, Ricoeur and others suggest the re-
placem ent of a strictly juridical view of equality and
rights, as w ell as a purely m echanic concept of
goods redistribution, by a rem onstrated and pub-
licly discussed practice of the social policies that
change the picture of the distribution of political
pow er. Finally, criticism of a m erely distributive
and utilitarian social justice leads to criticism of the
idea of the citizen as a passive subject, a m ere
34 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
receiver of w hat is distributed by social agencies.
The distributive theories w ould not take into ac-
count the justice, respect and consideration ow ed
m utually by the citizens in the dem ocracy of
everyday life, that obviously are not goods the
governm ent can distribute (Shklar, 1995).
In this debate, w here do w e find the am biv-
alence of social life? W here are the individual
passions and em otions that are entangled w ith the
rational objectives in action? The sym bolic rew ards
of self-esteem , the quest for notoriety, the disputes
that liberate aggressiveness, the ostentation of
pow er and w ealth or the search for justification,
object of attention from researchers, still show up,
although w ith explicit rules that lead to w hat
N orbert Elias (1993) nam ed balance of tensions
in extended disputes, though controlled by con-
ventional rules. Elias m ade a good analysis of this
process in w hat concerned the diffusion of courte-
ous habits by the inhabitants of a country; the
adoption of rules applied to the dispute for pow er
that replaced the use of guns by the use of w ords
and of voting in the parliam entary regim e, as w ell
as the institutionalization of em otional disputes in
sports and other regulated activities by the plea-
sure of com peting. Sport itself has evolved to-
w ards a policy of training and self-control instead
of custom ary rules, lenient and hardly applied, that
allow ed for explosions of em otion and violence in
the m iddle age, often ending w ith the death of
participants. H ow ever, during this evolution, in
w hich the role of m ediators and of agreed rules
have occupied m ore and m ore space, the gam e
dynam ics continued to presuppose tension and
cooperation, local solidarity and interest for the
continued struggles in several levels at the sam e
tim e. In other w ords, group tensions and coopera-
tion are sim ultaneously present in the situation of
balance of tensions.
Exclusions and some stirred up
circuits of reciprocity in Brazil
In Brazil, from a rhetoric discourse about
freedom , the issues of sociability, reciprocity and
com m unication in the public sphere have been
m ore and m ore stressed, though still vaguely, as
m anifestations of citizenship, or even as its core. In
fact, individual freedom , in its aspects of negation
of the states control, is fiercely defended by those
w ho w ould like to see the state and the society
subm itted to the free m arket gam e, in the endless
search for profit, and in the inexorable gam e of
hum an passions, especially in their taste or w ill for
pow er. H ow and w here should this freedom be
lim ited, controlled or repressed?
The question takes us to the issue of crim inal-
ity and its rhetorical link w ith poverty, w hich sets
up a trap to the social scientist. To justify the violent
crim inality of a sm all portion of the young m en
w ho live in poverty is to deviate the attention from
those w ho should be controlled: those w ho m ake
fortunes on drug and gun trafficking, on the one
hand, and those w ho m isapply the m oney destined
to public policies that w ould educate this youth for
a positive sociability and for the positive rights of
participation. It also m eans a refusal to criticize the
ethos of profit at any price that has dom inated them
and that has created pow er based on fear and
terror in som e popular neighborhoods of several
Brazilian cities. G agged by the law of silence,
seduced by the appeal of groups of defense or
exterm ination, m any poor w orkers, of various
religious and political affiliations, end up by com -
m itting them selves to policies that are conserva-
tive, authoritarian and in violation of hum an rights,
in their desperate quest to leave a situation that is
unbearable to them . W e m ust, therefore, carefully
exam ine the altered patterns of sociability and
conflict negotiation in these places w here identities
seem now to be forged in the logic of w ar.
For this reason, it seem s dangerous to m e to
present the tw o sides of the public discussion on
crim inality in a certain w ay, dividing not only the
general population but also scholars betw een
those w ho advocate social policies to fight crim i-
nality am ong youngsters (the poor) and those w ho
defend a m ore efficient policy and justice by m eans
of institutional reform s. The vices and problem s of
the Brazilian justice system are not few and have
been denounced by several authors linked w ith
the defense of hum an rights, such as Srgio Adorno
(1990), Paulo Srgio Pinheiro (1991), Antnio Luis
Paixo (1988) and m yself. Social policies should be
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 35
im plem ented, not because the poor are a perm a-
nent danger to security, not because they are the
dangerous classes, but because a dem ocratic and
just country cannot exist w ithout such policies. In
other w ords, w e should not forget that despite the
enorm ous inequalities existing in this country, few
poor youngsters choose crim inal careers. Special
care or focal policies should be given them , one
that considers the social context closer to their
actions, w hether they have control or not over
them .
This takes us to the crux of the m atter. It is not
a question of opting for the liberal principles that
rule that each person m akes his ow n choices
independently of social constrictions and habits
and aspirations that are external to them . It is the
question of analyzing in a m ore com plex w ay the
w ider and the local social contexts in order to
understand the reasons w hy a grow ing num ber of
youngsters (of every social standing) com m it
crim es, w hich does not alw ays m ean the em brac-
ing of a crim inal career. Likew ise, w hy som e of
them end up practicing a kind of m ilitary pow er in
the com m unities w here law -enforcing institutions
are either absent or are conniving w ith illegal
business or else are too w eak; w here neighboring
organizations have disintegrated or w ere exhaust-
ed by political com petition betw een parties and
religious groups (Zaluar, 1995); w here paternal
and m aternal figures are no longer m odels of
behavior and parents are not able to control their
children. W hen this happens, the balance of
tensionsw ithin its solidarity and rivalry netw orks
is shattered. Im m ature and extrem ely w ell arm ed
youngsters get involved in neighboring recreation-
al or political organizations. To ignore this fact is to
fail in understanding w hy som e poor youngsters
com m it crim es and others do not, and w hy their
organizations copy m ilitary com m ands, gangs of
autonom ous w arriors led by a despotic chief.
M y reasoning, developed in tw enty years of
research, places the existence of organized crim e
related to drug trafficking in the eye of the hurri-
cane. N ow adays, thefts and robberies are interna-
tionally linked to the need to pay the drug dealer,
if one is a user, or the need to am ass enough capital
in order to m aintain the drug business, in case of
the dealer, w ho uses m ilitary pow er to control his
arm y of collaborators and clients. W ell, even if
registered crim es are not directly related to drugs,
that does not m ean that the presence of this new
pow er in capitalist countries is not in operation
even at the sym bolic level, as a m odel, a sym bolic
m ap.
At w orld-w ide plane, organized crim e, w hich
has com plex structures and deals w ith large sum s
of m oney, cannot be ignored as the big force that
it is, together w ith the national states, churches,
political parties, m ultinational businesses, etc. In
certain countries, like Italy, organized crim e has
been considered m ore im portant than the national
state, the Church and the parties. In Brazil, w here
the justice system is still focused on individual
crim es and is not equipped for investigating m ore
im portant groups and the m eanders of organized
crim e, w e have no idea of the im pact it has today
on institutions and on society. For instance, the
interesting rem ark found in the latest researches
(Adorno et al., 1995) about the sm all incidence of
illiteracy am ong young crim inals m ay be related to
technicalrequirem ents of the organized crim e,
w ith account books and elaborate plans that m ake
elem entary education an im portant elem ent in task
perform ing. The current policy of w ar to drugs and
repression to users, especially in countries w here
the rights of citizenship are feeble, have not freed
these countries from the traffic and could not
hinder H IV epidem ics caused by the use of injected
drugs in ports and cities along the crim inal route,
nor the epidem ic of deaths by hom icide am ong
young m en in the big cities.
O ther elem ent of im pact, to w hich I have
been alerting since 1986, is not of a lesser m agni-
tude in the social lives of slum s and popular
neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. It is the process
that turns an organized gang into a central pow er
in the slum s, w here they m ay banish troublesom e
dw ellers, kill rivals, alter the netw orks of sociability
and interfere in the organizations. The next step
w ill be to take over the organizations, im pose
electoral votes and dissem inate terror even inside
the w orkershom es. The football gam e played by
arm ed m en w ithout a referee is em blem atic of this
situation. The interference in the choice of the
36 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
samba to be played in the annual parade at
Carnival nullifies the conventional rules and justice
criteria previously accepted w hich, w hile keeping
the dispute lively and exciting, did not scare
contestants or shut up opponents. The elections at
dw ellersassociations becam e m ore and m ore
contested, resulting in their gradual em ptying and,
consequently, in a decrease of public participation
discussing the allocation of goods and services in
the com m unity, and deciding the criteria and justi-
fications to do so. Instead, the local leaders have
neared the im age of sheriffs like the ones in the
slum s of Central Am erica, w ho had been influ-
enced by the culture of cow boys, outlaw s and
sheriffs of the N orth Am erican W est.
Lets now return to the social issue that is
m ixed up w ith exclusion. In it, besides the
revolution in aspirationsreferred to by Toc-
queville w hen describing England after the indus-
trial revolution, and that w e know now adays as
relative deprivation, w e cannot disregard the
abrupt changes that took place in social organiza-
tion. N o doubt the speed of changes in fam ily
organizations, in sexual relations, in the values that
considered w ork as the m ost im portant reference
for large layers of the population, now replaced by
values related to consum erism , especially the con-
sum erism of style, m ore expensive and less
fam iliar (Sassen, 1991), prom oted w hat w e could
call diffused social anom y. Apart from that, it is a
fact that deep-rooted participation of organized
crim e in institutions through corruption, the highly
disparate functioning of our penal system and the
obsolescence of the penal code have created is-
lands of im punitysuch as the ones conceived by
D ahrendorf (1987) to characterize other countries.
To talk about this confusion of values and rules of
conduct and of institutional w eakness at the sam e
tim e does not m ean to ignore poverty.
N evertheless, in this new scenario, poverty
acquires new m eanings, new problem s and new
divisions. The destitution is not only of m aterial
goods, even because m any of these are m ore of a
sym bolic im portance of assertion of a hierarchic
position or of an identity through style than a
real need for physical survival. M aterial and sym -
bolic privation is relative, that is, it exists w hen
com paring w ith those w ho have m ore, but it is also
a result of this new kind of consum erism .
Exclusion, w hich also has to be understood
in different levels and processes, is sim ultaneously
deprivation of justice, it is institutional. Studies
m ade in countries w ith a m ore egalitarian justice
system than the Brazilian one have proved that an
English citizen, if he is a m an, is less than 21 years
old and w as raised in an area considered of
delinquency, w ill have 120 tim es m ore chances
of being considered a crim inal than an English-
w om an older than 21 years old w ho lives in a
m iddle-class neighborhood (Jones, 1981). This
m eans that the poor w ould be m ore at the end of
the crim inality flow than at its beginning, at least as
the prom oters of its initial dynam ic.
Police corruption has found its alibi in the
sam e dogm a of poverty and exclusion that ex-
plains everything: the problem w ould be solely
social(read m aterial). This has assured the
im punity of those responsible for illegal and dis-
crim inatory activities against youths, especially the
poorer ones, those w ho the public pow er should
defend by treating them in health centers and
educating them in schools. Extorted and incrim i-
nated by drug use, these youths end up at the
hands of dealers and assailants, or are victim s of
m assacres that, w hen clarified, exhibit their real
m otives: debt collection or profit division im ple-
m ented by corrupt policem en. M ore than exterm i-
nation groups, extortion groups are the ones that
create the environm ent in w hich gangs and other
even m ore organized groups fight for turf control.
The tendency revealed in cities like So Paulo and
Porto Alegre by the end of the eighties (especially
the first one, w here the rate of hom icides has
doubled and is still grow ing) indicates that drug
trafficking is also m odifying the public security
panoram a in these cities. The question that arises is
if, side by side w ith the chains of m ass com m uni-
cation, quicker and easier each day in the process
of culture globalization, the corrupt and violent
policem en w ho use their guns w ith little institu-
tional control do not exert over the poor youths a
fascination for the m ilitary pow er thus operated.
The presence of arm ed gangs and the w ars
betw een them have added an extra hardship for
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 37
the poor m enlives. Even if w e accept the fact that
not every gang or group of youngsters is linked
w ith crim inal activities in Brazil, the grow ing pres-
ence of gangs of drug dealers and assailants is
today an irrefutable reality in Brazilian urban cen-
ters. In Rio de Janeiro their short-lived im m ature
leadership, that exhibit a high incidence of prem a-
ture deaths, are im portant links in the chain of
effects that originate the observed high rate of
violent deaths am ong youngsters. It is, therefore, a
big m istake to argue that, since the life of crim e is
not alw ays the result of personal choice, there is no
rupture or distinction am ong the poor in relation to
crim inal careers. W hat really m atters is to under-
stand the different processes and their intertw ined
effects that m ake these youngsters continuously
breach not only the law , but different form s of
sociability. O nly then can one conceive public
policies that m ay help to prevent that m istrust and
hostility result in their m utual destruction.
At the sam e tim e, it is a denial of equally
im portant chains of effects the attem pt to reduce to
social fragm entation the problem s and dilem m as of
the com plex social processes that link the local, the
national and the global. According to this deter-
m inist theory, poor adolescents are left w ith no
future alternatives besides drugs, delinquency or
prem ature death. Therefore,to dem and only m ore
schooling, m ore professionalization and adequate
job opportunities is to sim plify the drug issue, in so
far as illegal drugs are used by w ell-paid and
prestigious professional groups, like journalists
and stock m arket brokers, or by w ealthy university
students. The big difference, and here w e find
another m anifestation of this countrys inequality,
is that poor users do not have the sam e access to
health services to treat them in case of abuse or
defend them in case of problem s w ith the law . In
short, w ithout a public policy that w ould m odify
the current crim inating of the use of drugs, w ithout
a health policy of risk reduction and prevention of
drug use as part of the youngsters education, w e
w ill not be able to change the current scenario of
violence and injustice existing in the country.
If w e do not consider solely his sm all and
tem porary m aterial gains, directed by a dangerous
rhetoric, w e are forced to acknow ledge the disas-
trous consequences drug trafficking inflicts to this
poor youngster that w e intend to protect: the w ar
betw een gangs has already killed and w ill go on
killing thousands of those w ho have been seduced
by the pow er bestow ed from a gun and from
belonging to a w ell-arm ed gang. It is m ainly the
young poor m en black, m ulatto and w hite
that put their lives in the hands either of violent
policem en or of their ow n friends and accom plic-
es. The political use of this ill-fated fact that adds
even m ore suffering to poor fam ilies, m ay be
securing m ore space in the new s, but it is not
enabling us to create public policies that w ould be
efficient in lessening the com plex problem s of this
puzzle. W e have to deal today sim ultaneously w ith
a social issue that is also a m atter of education and
of public health, linked to police and juridical-
penal issues.
Today Brazil is a country that also show s
signs of religious intolerance that reverts the effects
of historical processes that resulted in the assum ed
hybridization of its cultures. In the local plane, this
new tendency has had unexpected and tragic
consequences for the poor fam ilies and their
neighboring organizations w hich, from m y point of
view , has allow ed that groups of drug traffickers
take over local pow er. Broken social ties w ithin the
fam ily and betw een neighboring fam ilies, have
destroyed or inverted the sign in reciprocity cir-
cuits: from solidarity to revenge, from the agonistic
to the antagonistic, from rivalry expressed in sports
and cultural gam es to deadly rivalry. It is undeni-
able that there has been a disinvestm ent in Brazil-
ian traditions, m ainly those of Rio de Janeiro,
w hich are now adays considered as inauthentic and
m anipulative political devices directed to the
building of the Brazilian nation. N ow , as w e w ell
know , every cultural tradition is artificial, fruit of
political articulations that serve as substrate or
reinforcem ent for identities in conflict. H ow ever,
beyond the diacritic signs of difference or of
political artificial identities, there rem ains the social
ties, the solidarity netw orks w oven daily w ithin
their organizations. The com m unity of m eanings is
also the com m unity of exchanges based upon the
reciprocity principle, outside the logic of the m ar-
ket, w hich H aberm as called the w orld of life.
38 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
Encroaching splits w ithin these finely w oven social
ties is destroying the social fabric and creating
social fragm entation, anom ie and isolation.
Poor w orkers that stayed together in neigh-
boring organizations, getting m arried to form fam -
ilies regardless of race or creed, now w atch the
shattering of their fam ilies and of these organiza-
tions, so im portant in the creation of culture, in
achieving m oral and political autonom y, in partic-
ipating in the public debates about justice w ith all
its m ultifaceted aspects. In m y last research at
favelas in Rio de Janeiro, I heard depositions from
teary-eyed m others saying that they w ere born and
raised there, that they used to go to samba parties
w ith their w hole fam ilies, but that now they w ould
like to m ove from the favela, a place full of
conflicts, risks and threats.
3
A me-de-santo (Afro-
Brazilian fem ale sham an) painfully described how
she quit visiting their children converted to the
Pentecostal religion because the pastor had forbid-
den her chargedand diabolicpresence in their
hom es, even at her grandchildrens birthdays. And
I saw sm all children outside adultsattention play-
ing of gang, shouting orders and killing w ith a toy
gun pointed to their subordinates. Even if not the
initial effect, leaving the organizations they built up
during decades of republican history (Zaluar, 1985;
Carvalho, 1987) in the poor neighborhoods of Rio
de Janeiro adds one m ore fuel to this chain of
effects, if w e consider previous analysis about the
im portance of reciprocity netw orks and of conven-
tional rules that allow for the continuous controlled
m anifestation of em otions in a dispute.
W ithin the fam ily, estrangem ents em erge
because m en belong to different com m ands (the
Red, the Third); because they have different posi-
tions in the w ar trenches that som etim es separate
policem en and gangsters; but also because they
have been converted to Pentecostal religions that
forbid the contact w ith other religions, presented
as devils m anifestations. Furtherm ore, quick diffu-
sion of youthsnew styles that turned young
people into consum ers of products m ade specially
for them clothes, m usical styles or illegal drugs
has also generated detachm ents. Fam ily m em -
bers do not go together to the samba anym ore, and
funk balls do not congregate different generations
in the sam e space. The uncle w ho is a trafficker
w ould like to banish from the favela the nephew
that belongs either to another com m and, to the
police or to the Arm y. The black grandm other, a
sham an, cannot visit the hom es of Pentecostal
children and grandchildren.
The m etaphors of w ar, criticized and yet
reinforced by interpretations diffused in the m edia,
are in the process of becom ing the logic of w ar
actually follow ed in the everyday life of this popu-
lation. It is not by chance that the m ost sacred and
w orshiped sym bol of the black identity is Zum bi,
the black leader w ho refused to negotiate, to give
in, w ho fought to his death like a brave w arrior.
This is the m odel presented to the poor youngster,
black or m ulatto, in public schools, especially in
Rio de Janeiro. It is not by chance that favelas are
identified as quilombos and their defenders as
quilombolas, despite its internal heterogeneity,
despite the fact that today there are m ore people
from the N orth-East or M inas w ithout any racial
uniform ity than blacks. Likew ise, it is not by
chance that youths w ho constitute the cheap w ork
force and scapegoats of organized crim e are pre-
sented as heroic and rebellious because of the
iniquities of social inequality in Brazil or victim s of
exterm ination by the police, w ithout any attention
to the com plex relations betw een the w orld of
organized crim e and the w orld of legal businesses,
including the institutions that should confront it.
H ow ever, it is exactly by m eans of these relations
and at the expense of gang w arfare and police
violence that som e w hite m iddle or upper class
adults get rich, profiting from com m ercial associa-
tions w ith these poor youngsters that end up dead
or in prison.
Thus, the city as a stage for rivalry and a
m eeting place for different groups that live in it is
also under a radical transform ation. If, at a tim e,
conflicts and com petitions betw een districts,
neighborhoods or groups of different affiliations
w ere presented, represented and experienced in
public places, gathering people from different
parts of the city, of different origins and ages,
creating sociations(Sim m el, 1983), ties, m eta-
phorical and esthetic perform ances of their dissen-
sion, today the club funk dances
4
can seldom
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 39
gather different youth groups w ithout violent and
som etim es deadly outcom es. Although m eritorious
efforts have been m ade to civilizeor, as som e
prefer to put it, dom esticatethese w ar rituals, its
deeper logic should deserve our full attention. The
young funk groups develop a w ar ethos by w hich
they learn how to fight and to be tough, the m ale
attribute m ost valued and searched for during
adolescence. An uncontrolled and uncritical incor-
poration of youth styles advanced in the process of
cultural globalization, not yet appropriately stud-
ied am ong us, as w ell as the adoption of an
extrem ely repressive policy concerning som e of its
effects (such as the use of illegal drugs), bolsters
this new subjective form ation. W ithout the study of
these crucial aspects of the social issue it w ill be
im possible to m ount efficient public policies for
the construction of a m ore just and peaceful soci-
ety.
In a w orld w here ethnic w ars inside the
nation itself, and m olecular w ars w ithin the sam e
groups, social classes, ethnic and racial groups and
even the sam e neighborhoods are predom inant, it
seem s that the netw ork of sociability in the private
space and of civility in the public have deteriorat-
ed. W ith so m any reticular focus of violence, how
to define evil, or, if w e choose Paul Ricoeurs
option, how to com bat evil? In fact w e do not have
any substantive, essential answ er of a general
nature, despite the efforts of hum an rights defend-
ers. The concept of evil com m itted against hum an-
kind is historically recent. H um ankind w ould have
today absolute values for instance, against
genocide and the Chart of H um an Rights,
approved by the U nited N ations. The evil that
touches the hum ane, such as in genocide or in
attem pts against hum an rights is a m odern concept,
only tw o hundred years old in the Enlightened
w estern tradition (Ricoeur, 1986).
The problem is that in m olecular violence,
even if it is increasingly less private, these general
term s of hum an rights do not apply easily. O n the
contrary, they create a huge dissension am ong
those w ho are the targets of violence and feel fear,
and those w ho becom e fascinated w ith the pow er
thus acquired. It has becom e necessary, therefore,
to analyze each case in its context, each context in
its m ultiple aspects, each aspect in its specific
process. Thus w e w ould not have tw o opposing
fields of confrontation, but one struggle diversified
in several fronts. Avoiding the trap of relativism
and yet relativizing, w e have to analyze the conse-
quences of violent acts for the person or group that
practice them , as w ell as the effects of their acts on
third parties, m ere passers-by, spectators, innocent
victim s, part of the fight for survival im posed by the
dispute for urban territories, part of the rivalries
around w hich proud m en m ove in search for
m oney, pow er and prestige.
The sam e people w ho enunciate the global-
ization of the econom y insist in repeating a form ula
used to criticize the security policy of the O ld
Republic the social issue is not a police issue
denying the phenom enon of crim e globalization.
H ow ever, crim inality in Brazil had then different
characteristics from those found today. The coun-
trys prisons w ere then filled by vagrants and
troublem akers. N ow adays prisons are filled w ith
poor crim inals involved in drug trafficking, rob-
bing and stealing in order to pay their debts w ith
drug dealers, am assing capital through kidnapping
in order to establish them selves in the business, or
starting their careers w ith a sentence of prison
because of a plain m arijuana cigarette.
There is a need today of understanding the
recent w ave of violence not only as a geological
effect in the cultural layers of the usual violence in
Brazil, but also w ithin the scenery of international-
ly organized crim e, itself part of the globalization
process, w ith econom ical, political and cultural
characteristics that are sui generis, in the scenario
of a capitalism w ith an unbridled search for profit
at any price. O ne cannot deny, in face of the
evidence, the urge to extend the analysis outside
national borders, in the study of crim inal society,
that is, of those w ho opt to live not alw ays as
outlaw s, but in a peculiar m ixture of legal and
illegal businesses. To sim plify the issue, the im age
of the slum kid w ho, w ith an AR15 or an U ZI
m achine gun in his hand, w hich he considers as
sym bols of his virility and source of a great local
pow er, w earing a cap inspired by the black m ove-
m ent in the U nited States, listening to funk m usic,
sniffing cocaine produced in Colom bia, yearning
40 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
for the latest m odel of Nike sneakers and a brand
new car, cannot be explained only by the m ini-
m um w age level or by grow ing unem ploym ent in
Brazil, neither by the custom ary violence of Brazil-
ian N ortheastern inland. The questions concerning
w ho brought him these tools of pleasure and
pow er and how these values w ere established and
are still being reinforced in him , com pelling him to
go on searching in such a w ay for pleasure and
pow er, are obviously questions that do not derive
from the local m inim um w age. Therefore, buying
guns easily in the U nited States is part of this social
context, as w ell as the drug w ar policy w hich
proved to be inefficient and expensive for reduc-
ing the use of illegal drugs but extrem ely effective
in raising the level of violence am ong blacks. It is
the high level of hom icides am ong blacks that lead
conservative observers to assert that there is not a
crim e problem in the U nited States, but rather a
black crim e problem , in the peculiar segregated
view of the U S society or, w orse still, that conser-
vative politicians should w ash their hands w ith
their m inds at rest, because the responsibility for
the killings belong exclusively to the black people.
Such assertions, as becom e clear for the
attentive reader, do not im ply a standing against
the raise of the m inim um w age or against incom e
distribution in a country that presents one of the
highest rate of social inequality in the w orld. They
are instead a w arning to the fact that the raising of
the m inim um w age alone or the im plem entation of
public policies that do not contem plate the speci-
ficity of the new crim inality w ill not be sufficient or
effective. The strategy of stressing the high profits
of w hat slum dw ellers call easy m oneyis to
decree the failure of any social policy, for it is very
rare to find jobs, even m iddle-class ones, that offer
levels of incom e such as those obtained in illegal
drugs traffic. At the sam e tim e, it is necessary to
develop theoretical tools to understand these kill-
ings, this violent antagonism that ignores rules of
sociability, of m utual respect, of the others recog-
nition, and that classifies any m inim al difference in
hom e locality, group, gang or of any celebrated
urban tribes that redefined social identities in term s
of territoriality as a sign of a deadly foe, of the
G erm anw ho should be killed, in an obvious
though incom plete im itation of the gangs existing
in the U nited States since the beginning of the
century (Zaluar, 1997a and 1997b).
Such a great task, involving so m any and
com plex processes, cannot be the exclusive object
of one instance or organization (w hether govern-
m ental or not). M oreover, these problem s w ill not
be solved by the repressive functioning of the
justice system w hich punishes the sm all crim inal,
less im portant in the chain of the involved and less
responsible, so to speak, for departing the flow of
crim inal activities, especially those connected w ith
drug trafficking (Zaluar, 1997c). Likew ise, they w ill
not be solved only by policies of job offers or salary
raises, including for civil servants, am ong them the
police, the m ost active category in todays union
m ovem ents.
Job alternatives for the young are im portant,
but above all it is fundam ental to restore local
netw orks of positive reciprocity, to reinforce the
w eakened solidarity betw een generations, w ithin
and outside classes. As far as public policies are
concerned, one should open political space for the
recognition and establishm ent of partnerships w ith
all form s of associations that prom ote reciprocities
and solidarities, especially in the fourth sector. O ne
should also be aw are of and to respond to the
insidious tendencies of globalization, via the m edia
and the cultural industry, especially those that have
altered the form s of sociability and solidarity
above-m entioned, especially those dealing w ith
the youths that belong to the poorer layers of
society. That is w hy an intense w ork w ith the latter
is needed, to regain their hearts and m inds, w ith an
appreciation for that w hich w as created in the
country by political initiative and cultural creativity
of the layers of society called the com m on people,
the subordinates, the w orkers or the dom inated.
O nce solidarity netw orks are re-established and
conditions are given so that sociability can m ain-
tain local societies alive and social gam es m obi-
lized, it is possible to sustain that the election of
com m ittees and com m issions, w hich have m ulti-
plied throughout the country, be m ade locally (and
not nom inated by the governm ent), giving them
m ore legitim acy. G iven the precarious functioning
of this dem ocracy that intends to go beyond the
EXCLU SIO N AN D PU BLIC PO LICIES 41
lim its of electoral or representative dem ocracy, the
problem s faced by these com m ittees have under-
m ined attem pts to call the new dem ocratic proce-
dures as participative, such as the participative
budget of city halls, the com m ittees of the Solidary
Com m unity, etc. Last but not least, dem ocratic
policies of public safety w ill bring back the social
and cultural effervescence that w orkers (from the
form al and inform al sectors of econom y) have lost
w ith the grow ing violence betw een their neighbors
and the police, especially the M ilitary Police. This
has already happened in several slum s and public
housings of Rio de Janeiro during the brief police
w ork perform ed by the Civil Police based in new
rules of respect for the dw ellers. O n this occasion,
streets and alleys w ere again filled w ith children
playing ball, adults playing gam es on tables set on
the street (Alvito, 1997) and talking only for the
pleasure of chattering, besides celebrations and
parties that alw ays offer opportunities to activate
and accelerate the various circuits of reciprocity.
Thus they w ould rebuild the eternally sought after
union, the guarantee against atom ization, negative
individualism and social fragm entation that so
w orry social scientists w ho study post-traditional
and post-industrial societies.
NOTES
1 The debate betw een universalists and com m unitarians
has stirred m uch m ore the academ ic w orld in N orth
Am erica, but it w ill not be dealt w ith here. The book
Liberals and Communitarians (M ulhall and Sw ift, 1992)
presents part of this debate that centered on the w ork of
J. Raw ls. The authors m entioned here broke up the
postulations of non-social individualism and even the
idea of contracts betw een free and equal individuals,
basis of civil contracts, w hich have been criticized by
Am erican universalists.
2 In Brazilian folklore, the expression it either hum iliates
the m an or addicts the citizenw hen referred to the
giving of alm s is the m ost perfect translation of w hat
M auss m eant about non-returnable gifts.
3 In som e shantytow ns of Rio de Janeiro, it is calculated
that 30% of its original population has already left the
prem ises due to its violence (O Globo, M ay 23, 1996).
4 In Rio de Janeiro there are tw o types of funk parties:
those of the com m unities, attended solely by young-
sters w ho live in the neighborhood or shanty tow n,
w here there are no conflicts, and those of the clubs, in
w hich young people from different areas gather w ith the
purpose to confront each other ritually inside the parties
and actually outside them after the dance finishes
(Cecchetto, 1997).
REFERENCES
AD O RN O , Srgio. (1990),Violncia U rbana, Justia
Crim inal e O rganizao Social do Crim e. So
Paulo, Center for the Study of Violence, U ni-
versidade de So Paulo, m im eo.
AD O RN O , S., BID ERM AN , F., FEIG U IN , D . and LIM A,
R.S. (1995), O Jovem e a Criminalidade Urbana
de So Paulo. So Paulo, SEAD E/N EV-U SP.
AFFICH ARD , Jolle. (1995), D u D bat sur les Inegal-
its au Pluralism e Contrl,in J. Affichard and
J.B. Foucauld (eds.), Pluralisme et Equit, Par-
is, Com m issariat G nral du Plan, ditions
Esprit.
ALVITO , M arcos. N otas sobre um Bicho de Sete
Cabeas, in A. Zaluar and M . Alvito, Cem
Anos de Favela, forthcom ing.
BO ILLEAU , Jean-Luc. (1995), Conflit et Lien Social: La
Rivalit contre la Domination. Paris, Edition La
D courverte/M .A.U .S.S.
BO LTAN SK I, Luc. (1990), LAmour et la Justice Com-
me Comptences; Trois Essais de Sociologie de
lAction. Paris, ditions M taili.
CAILL, Alain. (1994), Don, Intrt et Dsintresse-
ment; Bourdieu, Mauss, Platon et Quelques
Autres. Paris, ditions La D couverte/
M .A.U .S.S.
CARVALH O , Jos M urilo de. (1987), Os Bestializados;
o Rio de Janeiro e a Repblica que No Foi. So
Paulo, Com panhia das Letras.
CASTEL, Robert. (1995), Les Mtamorphoses de la
Question Sociale; Une Chronique du Salariat.
Paris, Librairie A. Fayard.
CASTELS, M anuel and M O LLEN K O PF, John (ed.).
(1992), Dual City: Restructuring New York.
N ew Y ork, Russel Sage Foundation.
CECCH ETTO , Ftim a. (1997), G aleras Funk Cario-
cas: Entre o Ldico e o Violento, in H . Vianna,
Galeras Cariocas,Rio de Janeiro, Editora da
U FRJ.
D AH REN D O RF, Ralph. (1987), A Lei e a Ordem.
Braslia, Tancredo N eves Institute.
42 BRAZILIAN REVIEW O F SO CIAL SCIEN CES - SPECIAL ISSU E N o. 1
D AN ZIN G ER, Sheldom and W EIN BERB, D aniel
(eds.). (1986), Fighting Poverty. Boston, H ar-
vard U niversity Press.
ELIAS, N orbert and D U N N IN G , Eric. (1993), Quest for
Excitement, Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing
Process. Paperback first edition, O xford, Black-
w ell.
FARRU G IA, Francis. (1993), La Crise du Lien Social.
Paris, ditions LH arm attan, Collection
Logiques Sociales.
G O D BO U T, Jacques T. (1992), LEsprit du Don. Paris,
ditions la D couverte.
H ABERM AS, Jrgen. (1991), Pensamento Ps-
Metafsico. Rio de Janeiro, Tem po Brasileiro.
H IM M ELFARB, G ertrud. (1984), The Idea of Poverty.
London, Faber and Faber.
JEN K S, Christopher. (1992), The G hettoand The
U nderclass, in C. Jenks, Rethinking Social
Policy,Boston, H arvard U niversity Press.
JO N ES, H ow ard. (1981), Punishm ent or Correction?,
in H . Jones, Society against Crime, M iddlesex/
N ew Y ork, Penguin Books.
K ATZ, M ichael. (1989), Interpretations of Poverty in
Post-Industrial Citiesand The U nderclass?,
in M . K atz, The Undeserving Poor, N ew Y ork,
Pantheon Books.
PAIXO , Antonio L. (1988), Crim e, Controle Social e
Consolidao da Cidadania, in F.W . Reis and
G . O D onnell (eds.), A Democracia no Brasil:
Dilemas e Perspectivas, So Paulo, Vrtice.
PIN H EIRO , Paulo S. et al. (1991), Violncia Fatal:
Conflitos Policiais em So Paulo (81-89). Re-
vista da USP, 95.
RICO EU R, Paul. (1986), O Mal. Cam pinas, Papirus.
__________. (1990), Soi-Mme comme un Autre.
Paris, Le Seuil.
__________. (1995), La Place du Politique D ans une
Conception Pluraliste des Principes du Juste,
in J. Affichard and J.B. Foucauld (eds.), Plural-
isme et Equit, Paris, Com m issariat G nral du
Plan, ditions Esprit.
RO SAN VALLO N , Pierre. (1995), La Nouvelle Question
Sociale. Paris, ditions du Seuil.
SASSEN , Saskia. (1991), The Global City: New York,
London, Tokyo. Princeton, Princeton U niversi-
ty Press.
SH K LAR, Judith. (1995), Justice et Citoyennet, in J.
Affichard and J.B. Foucauld (eds.), Pluralisme
et Equit, Paris, Com m issariat G nral du Plan,
ditions Esprit.
SIM M EL, G eorg. (1983), A N atureza Sociolgica do
Conflito; A Com petioand Sociabilidade,
um Exem plo de Sociologia Pura ou Form al, in
Simmel, So Paulo, tica.
TAM BIAH , Stanley J. (1997), Conflito Etnonacionalis-
ta e Violncia Coletiva no Sul da sia. Revista
Brasileira de Cincias Sociais, 12, 34: 5-24.
TH VEN O T, Laurent. (1995), LAction Publique con-
tre lExclusion D ans des Approches Pluralistes
du Juste, in J. Affichard and J.B. Foucauld
(eds.), Pluralisme et Equit, Paris, Com m issar-
iat G nral du Plan, ditions Esprit.
W ALZER, M ichael. (1995), Exclusion, Injustice et tat
D m ocratique, in J. Affichard and J.B. Fou-
cauld (eds.), Pluralisme et Equit, Paris, Com -
m issariat G nral du Plan, ditions Esprit.
ZALU AR, Alba. (1985), A Mquina e a Revolta. So
Paulo, Brasiliense.
__________. (1995), O M edo e os M ovim entos Soci-
ais.Proposta, ano 23, 66: 24-32.
__________. (1997a), G angs, G aleras e Q uadrilhas:
G lobalizao, Juventude e Violncia, in H .
Vianna, Galeras Cariocas,Rio de Janeiro, Edi-
tora da U FRJ.
__________. (1997b), As Im agens da e na Cidade: A
Superao da O bscuridade. Cadernos de
Antropologia e Imagem, 3,2.
__________. (1997c), Justia, Violncia e D inheiro
Fcil. Paper presented at the Institut des
H autes tudes sur la Justice, Paris, M arch.