[Dimensions and constructions of violence in Latin America]

The recent growth of urban violence obliges us to examine the multiple factors and the variety of participants, scenarios, and logics which simultaneously interact to give rise to the current state of violence occurring on a daily basis in our societies. This paper attempts to specify the dimensions of the complex problem of violence, introducing concepts and data developed in the course of several research projects and stressing social and criminal violence in preference to other kinds. It is structured in terms of four themes: impoverishment and expectations, vulnerability and the State, the spread of firearms, and the idea of respect among men. In the light of these four themes and of the unprecedented transformations taking place in world society at the present time, the paper concludes by articulating the need to understand today's violence as a new social phenomenon in Latin America.