VIOLÊNCIA E OUTRAS PRÁTICAS COTIDIANAS: MALLET/PR (1914-1940)

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation was to present and discuss everyday life practices identifiable in the analysis of criminal documents of homicides and personal injuries in Mallet-Pr, during the years of 1914 to 1940, a period of considerable increase in the number of criminal records in the municipality. In general terms, this documentation was produced in a context of attempts at crime control in the State of Paraná. Thus, the notion of governmentality, produced by Michel Foucault (2008), served to think about the production of sources in this process. Documents produced for the purpose of crime control have proved to be valuable sources for the study of everyday life practices, as defined by Michel de Certeau (2012). In this work, we highlight violent practices. Jean Claude Chesnais (1981) defined violence as the imposition of one's physical strength on the other. But understanding violence by this definition alone has its limits. It goes beyond a possible distinction between criminalized violence and other practices of violence. Although some practices are considered crimes, others, although apparent in the records, are not. Criminal violence can be understood from the notion of crime developed by Maria João Vaz (2011), and reflected from the notion of "strategies" and "tactics" that produce "places" and "spaces". In addressing these violence practices we find that people have justified their crimes due to threats to the honor of female and male, personal and family. We also find that the defendants' defenses have proved to be extremely functional. In addition to violence, other daily practices are visible in criminal records; they are the ordinary craftiness that are operations of consumption of places such as streets, commercial houses, parties, and the exercise of the judiciary, as well as escape routes and popular knowledge which reveal a certain intelligibility of daily Malletense life in the first decades of the twentieth century.