URBAN VIOLENCE, CITIZENSHIP AND PUBLIC POLICIES

This paper endeavours to interpret the range of ideas concerning crime and violence expressed in a written form in a survey conducted in Rio de Janeiro in 1984. This poll was the largest ever undertaken in Brazil, answered (and written) by 223,000 respondents. The commonsense ideas appearing in these written texts are more highly differentiated than usual and contain explicit ideas and implicit rules or principles that are interpreted according to theories of culture which deal with the ambiguity and the bizarre nature of such cultural expressions. In order to identify patterns that may explain observed differences, the latter have been grouped by sex, neighbourhood and age. Special attention is paid to images of the criminal and to the forms of punishment advocated, as a way of discussing the respondents' ideas on labour, the social pact, citizenship, public policies and democracy.