NEOLIBERAL RATIONALITY AND THE MILITARIZATION OF THE URBAN SPACE

Abstract

The neoliberalism that has been consolidated as an economic policy since the 1980s reaches its full form of social order today. Far beyond the discourse of non-intervention by the state and self-regulating markets, neoliberalism presupposes a state that regulates economic and social reproduction. Management and entrepreneurship become key concepts in the neoliberal rationality, in which the managing state and the individual enterprise are structured. The notions of collective and public service become grey, highlighting the notions of performance and profitability. The aim of this paper is to analyze this process from the perspective of public security, which becomes a violence management sector that criminalizes areas of poverty concentration, where the state of exception becomes the norm. Case studies are taken from the Federal Government intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro in 2018 and the Criminal Law Bill of the current Minister of Justice and Public Security; unilateral actions and measures that lead to the constitution of a police state and the militarization of urban space.