Militarization as Conviviality: How Women Define and Resist Gendered Everyday Violence and Discipline in Brazil

This working paper uses Mecila’s conviviality framework to advance a gendered analysis of Brazilian militarization. Drawing on ethnographic vignettes, it examines how three distinct women’s movements in Brazil – mothers opposing state violence, women from the landless worker’s movement, and women in São Paulo’s urban student movement – perceive and resist militarization. Their perspectives diverge from traditional definitions of international relations scholarship. Moreover, they provide critical insight into dimensions of militarization often overlooked by the “pluralist normative” framework and other anthropological approaches to urban violence in Brazil. The paper demonstrates that these movements’ interpretations of militarization align more closely with feminist perspectives. Building on these feminist interpretations, the paper conceptualizes militarization as conviviality, framing it as an everyday process with differential impacts on men and women. This process is both material and ideological, shaped by the influence of men with guns on politics, but also extending beyond and affecting women in specific ways. Recognizing these varied impacts is crucial to effectively challenge and oppose militarization within Brazilian society, its economy, and its politics.