Armoured with morality: Community expressions of hope and resistance to neighbourhood violence in Brazilian slums

How do you arm children against violence in the neighbourhood? How do they learn to offer resistance in a context full of dangers and create alternative future perspectives? This dissertation describes the results of an ethnographic study on the upbringing of youth in a violent context, from the perspectives of school educators, mothers and young people in Brazilian slums. Although many interventions have been developed to counter neighbourhood violence, the communities where these interventions take place are often not involved. A review of the literature shows that interventions generally use an individualised approach that reduces neighbourhood violence to a problem of individual youth and communities. These approaches generally ignore societal aspects such as social inequality. Based on longitudinal ethnographic field work, this study offers in-depth analysis of the complex dynamics involved in neighbourhood violence to provide insights for the development of educational interventions. From a sociocultural-historical perspective on agency and social transformation, the analyses show how educators and young people - despite structural limitations – create ways to resist violence beneath the surface and construct alternative moralities. They constantly move between survival and resistance, between resignation and hope, and arm themselves with a shared moral counteroffensive that opposes violence and promotes dialogue and care for others. The findings underline the importance of understanding the neighbourhood context for intervention design and implementation. Therefore, the study stresses the need for a more profound involvement of local communities and argues for contextualised programmes that build on the potential of local educational practices to bring about change. However, to accomplish larger transformations of related structural issues, a more systemic approach of neighbourhood violence is required that moves beyond the neighbourhood level to address violent social structures of inequity. The study concludes with underlining the important social task to resist the limits of existing realities of neighbourhood violence and collectively create more just and peaceful neighbourhoods and societies.