Policing the Revolution

Rebecca Hanson is Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center for Latin American Studies and director of UF's International Ethnography Lab. Her research focuses on how policies and political changes that seek to reduce inequality and violence end up contributing to these problems and how changing modalities of violence in the 21st century affect state building and capacity, with a specific focus on policing. She is the coauthor of Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research (University of California Press, 2019) and co-editor of The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing during Chavismo (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022).

• List of IllustrationsChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Research Design, Methods, and Embodied EthnographyChapter 3: Reform and its DiscontentsChapter 4: Securing the Revolution Part IChapter 5: Malandros Uniformados: Masculinity, Marginalization, Insecurity, and Attitudes on Police ViolenceChapter 6: The New Socialist Mother and Her Fight against CrimeChapter 7: Caiga quien Cagia: Systematic Killing in Maduro's VenezuelaChapter 8: Securing the Revolution Part IIChapter 9: ConclusionIndex

Hanson's Policing the Revolution provides counterintuitive insights into the nature of politics and the state in Bolivarian Venezuela. The book addresses important and complex puzzles that fit Venezuela into debates about violence in Latin America, highlighting similarities but also key differences. Hanson perceptively shows that violence and crime in Venezuela emerge, in part, because of decisions made by state leaders that keep the police disorganized, thus reducing their capacity to engage in effective law enforcement and shifting the balance of police power in the country. Hanson's detailed and incisive ethnography of Venezuelan police provides critical insights into politics in that country and its police forces.