Erika Robb Larkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 81636 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erika Robb Larkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erika Robb |
| FAMILY NAME | Larkins |
| SIGNATURE | LARKINS E R |
| AFFILIATIONS | San Diego State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6710-7799 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Insights from the grassroots: Political ecology of Brazilian environmental justice movements
Latin American political ecology has advanced a rigorous critique of mainstream development models predicated on intensive extraction of natural resources. In Brazil, the diversity of environmental justice movements illustrates the multifaceted ways different actors contest dominant notions of "progress." This article and a related series of lectures published at the JPE Grassroots platform present first-hand perspectives of diverse Brazilian env…
Ciência cidadã e antropologia visual engajada para justiça climática
Apesar dos avanços na compreensão das causas das mudanças climáticas, ainda é necessário dedicar maior atenção aos impactos, às formas de adaptação e à sua distribuição desigual. Este artigo argumenta que plataformas científicas que integram pesquisas em ciências sociais, mídias digitais e ativismo socioambiental possibilitam espaços para a coprodução de conhecimento e de soluções oriundas dos territórios mais afetados. Análises críticas sobre os…
Tanning with Anitta, the New Girl from Ipanema: Creating Visibility Capital in a Global Look Economy
In this article, we argue that Brazilian tan lines constitute a new site of race and class struggle on and over women’s bodies. Popular in Rio’s socially and geographically marginalized periphery, fita (electrical tape) bikinis leave sharp and shocking tan lines that call attention to the contrast between lighter and darker skin. Brazil’s funk music sensation Anitta brings this aesthetic practice to the global stage as part of her brand, disrupti…
Guns, fatigues, and fitness: Elite squad Instagramming in Rio de Janeiro's everyday war
Penetrating the everyday and mundane, social media has become an important political battleground for hybrid warfare and far-right claims. In this visual analysis of the Special Operations Unit of Rio de Janeiro's Military Police Instagram feed, we examine how Rio's favelas are aesthetically produced as warzones, and their inhabitants as enemies to be eliminated and transformed. We argue that the images shared draw on a repertoire of right-wing m…
Thermal Violence: The Politics of Climate Control in Brazil's Prisons
This article explores the intersection of carceral geographies and climate (in)justice in Brazil, home to one of the world's largest incarcerated populations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and an analysis of reports from monitoring organisations examining facilities across the country, we ask how thermal conditions are part of a national project of inflicting suffering within the prison system. Conductive building materials, a lac…
Solar Seduction: Aesthetic Labor and Racial Discipline in Brazil's Newest Tanning Craze
Fita tanning entails the application of thin strips of electrical tape to create an individualized bikini that will give women "a marquinha perfeita" (perfect little tan lines)-lines that are sharp, straight, and delightfully symmetrical. In Brazil, a country hyperfocused on color and racial mixture, tanning shows how low-income non-white women layer racial ideologies onto their bodies and into their aesthetic practices. We argue that tanners in …
In the shadows of protection: Brazilian police in private security
The police play a pivotal role in Brazil’s private security industry, even though they are prevented by law from participating in the business. In this article, we argue that the configuration of the private security market reinforces officers’ material and symbolic gains. Drawing on long-term ethnographic work on private security and policing in elite residential complexes in São Paulo state, we demonstrate how police enhance their individual st…
Os profissionais de segurança: Creating Moral Security Subjects in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Brazilian police and security personnel are generally known for their embrace of conservative, hardline positions on crime and on politics more generally. In this article, however, we seek to bring a fine-grained ethnographic perspective to bear on understanding the formation of conservative subjectivities in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo’s security arena in the Bolsonaro era. Departing from traditional studies of police and state centered actors …
Working for Nico
Over the course of the last decade, I have conducted fieldwork on the militarization of Rio de Janeiro and on the security industry that developed in response to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. This fictional short story follows two different imagined security laborers, Nico and Valesca, reflecting the racial, gendered, and class tensions I saw play out between police and military operators from different regions during my research. Working…
Guarding the Urban Elite: Hospitality Security in São Paulo
In the past decade, Brazil's largest city, São Paulo, has witnessed an exponential growth in private security. In this article, we contribute to understandings of how security shapes urban life by focusing on what we call hospitality security, which takes place in elite spaces of residence and leisure such as high-end neighborhoods, gated communities, and shopping malls. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that hospitality secur…
Securing the Mall: Daily Hospitality Security Practices in São Paulo
Security-whether public or private-is a key tool for managing populations and integral for creating urban spaces. This paper examines how mall security practices in São Paulo work to create safe and clean worlds for customers, distinguishing it from an cityscape that is seen as violent, dangerous, and populated with criminals. Drawing on five months of ethnographic research and interviews with the security team of the 'Rivertown' shopping center …
Policing and Incarceration: Dispatch from a Brazilian Prison
Violent masculinities: Gendered dynamics of policing in Rio de Janeiro
Historically, policing in Rio de Janeiro has been shaped by the equation of racialized violence and masculinity. Attempts to reform the police have paradoxically drawn on forms of male violence that are centered on the rational and professional use of force and on "softer" practices, such as dialogue and collaboration, symbolically coded as feminine. The failure of police reform reflects the cultural salience of understandings of masculinity cent…
The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil
In Rio de Janeiro's favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called "big skulls." Images of these spectacles circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, masking everyday forms of vio…
The Bolsonaro Election, Antiblackness, and Changing Race Relations in Brazil
We apply the concept of antiblackness and a Deleuzian approach to sociopolitical events to analyze Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 election in Brazil. Historically, Brazilians turned from overt expressions of antiblackness to subtler forms of racial prejudice, what Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1956) called the "cordial man" who practiced a "gentlemanly" form of white supremacy. Recently, however, cordial racism has eroded in favor of more virulent and explos…
Guarding the Body
Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of upstanding, respectable, law-abidin…
Watching the World Cup from the Infectious Disease Ward
Performances of Police Legitimacy in Rio's Hyper Favela
Rio de Janeiro is home to over one-thousand favelas (slums), the majority of which are controlled by armed drug traffickers engaged in a long-standing war with police. This article shows how state legitimacy is challenged by the everyday reality of dual power, postcolonial legacies of inequality and marginalization, and a porous culture of law. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the largest favelas in the city, I argue that police action…
Performances of Police Legitimacy in Rio's Hyper Favela
Rio de Janeiro is home to over one-thousand favelas (slums), the majority of which are controlled by armed drug traffickers engaged in a long-standing war with police. This article shows how state legitimacy is challenged by the everyday reality of dual power, postcolonial legacies of inequality and marginalization, and a porous culture of law. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the largest favelas in the city, I argue that police action…
The Bolsonaro Election, Antiblackness, and Changing Race Relations in Brazil
We apply the concept of antiblackness and a Deleuzian approach to sociopolitical events to analyze Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 election in Brazil. Historically, Brazilians turned from overt expressions of antiblackness to subtler forms of racial prejudice, what Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1956) called the "cordial man" who practiced a "gentlemanly" form of white supremacy. Recently, however, cordial racism has eroded in favor of more virulent and explos…
Violent masculinities: Gendered dynamics of policing in Rio de Janeiro
Historically, policing in Rio de Janeiro has been shaped by the equation of racialized violence and masculinity. Attempts to reform the police have paradoxically drawn on forms of male violence that are centered on the rational and professional use of force and on "softer" practices, such as dialogue and collaboration, symbolically coded as feminine. The failure of police reform reflects the cultural salience of understandings of masculinity cent…
Os profissionais de segurança: Creating Moral Security Subjects in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Brazilian police and security personnel are generally known for their embrace of conservative, hardline positions on crime and on politics more generally. In this article, however, we seek to bring a fine-grained ethnographic perspective to bear on understanding the formation of conservative subjectivities in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo’s security arena in the Bolsonaro era. Departing from traditional studies of police and state centered actors …
In the shadows of protection: Brazilian police in private security
The police play a pivotal role in Brazil’s private security industry, even though they are prevented by law from participating in the business. In this article, we argue that the configuration of the private security market reinforces officers’ material and symbolic gains. Drawing on long-term ethnographic work on private security and policing in elite residential complexes in São Paulo state, we demonstrate how police enhance their individual st…
Securing the Mall: Daily Hospitality Security Practices in São Paulo
Security-whether public or private-is a key tool for managing populations and integral for creating urban spaces. This paper examines how mall security practices in São Paulo work to create safe and clean worlds for customers, distinguishing it from an cityscape that is seen as violent, dangerous, and populated with criminals. Drawing on five months of ethnographic research and interviews with the security team of the 'Rivertown' shopping center …
Guarding the Urban Elite: Hospitality Security in São Paulo
In the past decade, Brazil's largest city, São Paulo, has witnessed an exponential growth in private security. In this article, we contribute to understandings of how security shapes urban life by focusing on what we call hospitality security, which takes place in elite spaces of residence and leisure such as high-end neighborhoods, gated communities, and shopping malls. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that hospitality secur…
Guarding the Body
Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of upstanding, respectable, law-abidin…
Performances of Police Legitimacy in Rio's Hyper Favela
Rio de Janeiro is home to over one-thousand favelas (slums), the majority of which are controlled by armed drug traffickers engaged in a long-standing war with police. This article shows how state legitimacy is challenged by the everyday reality of dual power, postcolonial legacies of inequality and marginalization, and a porous culture of law. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the largest favelas in the city, I argue that police action…
Guarding the Body
Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of upstanding, respectable, law-abidin…
Watching the World Cup from the Infectious Disease Ward
The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil
In Rio de Janeiro's favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called "big skulls." Images of these spectacles circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, masking everyday forms of vio…
The Bolsonaro Election, Antiblackness, and Changing Race Relations in Brazil
We apply the concept of antiblackness and a Deleuzian approach to sociopolitical events to analyze Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 election in Brazil. Historically, Brazilians turned from overt expressions of antiblackness to subtler forms of racial prejudice, what Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1956) called the "cordial man" who practiced a "gentlemanly" form of white supremacy. Recently, however, cordial racism has eroded in favor of more virulent and explos…
Securing the Mall: Daily Hospitality Security Practices in São Paulo
Security-whether public or private-is a key tool for managing populations and integral for creating urban spaces. This paper examines how mall security practices in São Paulo work to create safe and clean worlds for customers, distinguishing it from an cityscape that is seen as violent, dangerous, and populated with criminals. Drawing on five months of ethnographic research and interviews with the security team of the 'Rivertown' shopping center …
Policing and Incarceration: Dispatch from a Brazilian Prison
Violent masculinities: Gendered dynamics of policing in Rio de Janeiro
Historically, policing in Rio de Janeiro has been shaped by the equation of racialized violence and masculinity. Attempts to reform the police have paradoxically drawn on forms of male violence that are centered on the rational and professional use of force and on "softer" practices, such as dialogue and collaboration, symbolically coded as feminine. The failure of police reform reflects the cultural salience of understandings of masculinity cent…
In the shadows of protection: Brazilian police in private security
The police play a pivotal role in Brazil’s private security industry, even though they are prevented by law from participating in the business. In this article, we argue that the configuration of the private security market reinforces officers’ material and symbolic gains. Drawing on long-term ethnographic work on private security and policing in elite residential complexes in São Paulo state, we demonstrate how police enhance their individual st…
Os profissionais de segurança: Creating Moral Security Subjects in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Brazilian police and security personnel are generally known for their embrace of conservative, hardline positions on crime and on politics more generally. In this article, however, we seek to bring a fine-grained ethnographic perspective to bear on understanding the formation of conservative subjectivities in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo’s security arena in the Bolsonaro era. Departing from traditional studies of police and state centered actors …
Working for Nico
Over the course of the last decade, I have conducted fieldwork on the militarization of Rio de Janeiro and on the security industry that developed in response to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. This fictional short story follows two different imagined security laborers, Nico and Valesca, reflecting the racial, gendered, and class tensions I saw play out between police and military operators from different regions during my research. Working…
Guarding the Urban Elite: Hospitality Security in São Paulo
In the past decade, Brazil's largest city, São Paulo, has witnessed an exponential growth in private security. In this article, we contribute to understandings of how security shapes urban life by focusing on what we call hospitality security, which takes place in elite spaces of residence and leisure such as high-end neighborhoods, gated communities, and shopping malls. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that hospitality secur…
Tanning with Anitta, the New Girl from Ipanema: Creating Visibility Capital in a Global Look Economy
In this article, we argue that Brazilian tan lines constitute a new site of race and class struggle on and over women’s bodies. Popular in Rio’s socially and geographically marginalized periphery, fita (electrical tape) bikinis leave sharp and shocking tan lines that call attention to the contrast between lighter and darker skin. Brazil’s funk music sensation Anitta brings this aesthetic practice to the global stage as part of her brand, disrupti…
Guns, fatigues, and fitness: Elite squad Instagramming in Rio de Janeiro's everyday war
Penetrating the everyday and mundane, social media has become an important political battleground for hybrid warfare and far-right claims. In this visual analysis of the Special Operations Unit of Rio de Janeiro's Military Police Instagram feed, we examine how Rio's favelas are aesthetically produced as warzones, and their inhabitants as enemies to be eliminated and transformed. We argue that the images shared draw on a repertoire of right-wing m…
Thermal Violence: The Politics of Climate Control in Brazil's Prisons
This article explores the intersection of carceral geographies and climate (in)justice in Brazil, home to one of the world's largest incarcerated populations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and an analysis of reports from monitoring organisations examining facilities across the country, we ask how thermal conditions are part of a national project of inflicting suffering within the prison system. Conductive building materials, a lac…
Solar Seduction: Aesthetic Labor and Racial Discipline in Brazil's Newest Tanning Craze
Fita tanning entails the application of thin strips of electrical tape to create an individualized bikini that will give women "a marquinha perfeita" (perfect little tan lines)-lines that are sharp, straight, and delightfully symmetrical. In Brazil, a country hyperfocused on color and racial mixture, tanning shows how low-income non-white women layer racial ideologies onto their bodies and into their aesthetic practices. We argue that tanners in …
Insights from the grassroots: Political ecology of Brazilian environmental justice movements
Latin American political ecology has advanced a rigorous critique of mainstream development models predicated on intensive extraction of natural resources. In Brazil, the diversity of environmental justice movements illustrates the multifaceted ways different actors contest dominant notions of "progress." This article and a related series of lectures published at the JPE Grassroots platform present first-hand perspectives of diverse Brazilian env…
Ciência cidadã e antropologia visual engajada para justiça climática
Apesar dos avanços na compreensão das causas das mudanças climáticas, ainda é necessário dedicar maior atenção aos impactos, às formas de adaptação e à sua distribuição desigual. Este artigo argumenta que plataformas científicas que integram pesquisas em ciências sociais, mídias digitais e ativismo socioambiental possibilitam espaços para a coprodução de conhecimento e de soluções oriundas dos territórios mais afetados. Análises críticas sobre os…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (6 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (5 works) · Ethnography (5 works) · Art (4 works)