The hypostasis of violence

Ethnographic Implications and Knowledge Production alongside Social Movements

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2026/96143

In this essay, we analyze dilemmas of ethnographic practice in contexts of violence, criminalization, and incarceration. We therefore examine: (a) our ethnographic engagements with social movements, taking in account strategies of exchange and collective action; (b) the temporalities that shape ethnographic writing and politics, whose differences have decisive effects on our practices of collaboration and knowledge production; (c) the complexities of conducting ethnography in contexts of violence, criminalization, and incarceration; and (d) the problem of what we call the “hypostasis of violence,” which is constitutive of our fields of research, of our interlocutors’ mobilizations, and of certain State processes.