Armed Dominions / Domínios Armados: The Fabrication of Insecurity and the Governance of Public Space by Criminal-Political Monopolies in Rio de Janeiro

Coercive forms of armed governance have little direct interest in free markets. Armed dominions monopolize urban economies in a shifting intersectional and disputed (not shared in any positive sense) fabric. This concept differs from parallel power, since the strategies of armed dominion require interaction, connivance, or intimate collaboration with state agents in the regulation of illegal and informal markets. Armed dominions—their mobile, political, and commercial technologies—are key to understanding negotiations (violent or peaceful) between police, militias, and drug cartels in Rio de Janeiro. As an expression of autonomous government, they reveal links between the policy objectives, business strategies, commercial tactics, and logistical needs for territorial maintenance of the various factions attempting to exert dominion over a given urban area. Armed dominions are a potential and concrete means of violence, used to undermine citizenship and the more or less inclusive limits of the political-legal pact.