Book Discussion: Policing the Revolution State Violence and Security in Venezuela under Chavismo

In this session, Rebecca Hanson will present her book Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Security and Violence in Venezuela during Chavismo, which offers a critical analysis of how revolutionary state projects shape the use of coercive power, policing, and security.
 

Through the case of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, the book examines the complex and often paradoxical relationship between leftist revolutionary politics and state violence in the contemporary Global South. It asks: How did a revolutionary government redefine the institutions and actors responsible for coercion? What consequences did these transformations have for the populations the revolution claimed to protect? And what can this tell us more broadly about policing, left-wing governance, and state power today?

Speaker:
Rebecca Hanson – Associate Professor, University of Florida (Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law / Center for Latin American Studies); Founder and Director of the International Ethnography Lab.

Discussant:
Laurent Gayer – Senior Researcher, CNRS / CERI, Sciences Po