Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Coercive Power and Venezuela's Security Landscape During Chavismo

This seminar will provide an in-depth analysis of policing and security policies during the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, focusing on the experiences of three groups: police officers, police reformers, and residents of neighborhoods most affected by violence.

Speaker: Rebecca Hanson, Assistant Professor of Crime, Law, and Governance, University of Florida; Director of UF's International Ethnography Lab; DRCLAS Visiting Scholar, Harvard.

Moderator: Alisha Holland, Professor of Government, Harvard University 

Speaker and Moderator Bios

Rebecca Hanson holds a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center for Latin American Studies. 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. Dr. Hanson is co-author of Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research (University of California Press), co-editor of The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo (University of Pittsburgh Press), and the author of Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Security and Violence in Venezuela during Chavismo, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

Alisha C. Holland studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on Latin America. Her first book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America(Cambridge University Press, 2017), examines the politics of law enforcement against the poor. She is working on a new book on the institutional determinants and challenges of infrastructure investment in Latin America. Prior to joining the faculty, she was an assistant professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.