Identities on the Move: An Ethnography in the Violence Context

Abstract

The paper analyzes some movements on which the identities in the research with families of victims of violence in Rio de Janeiro, trigger codes of ethical and moral conduct. From the participant observation, interviews and other information obtained in field, all these, done between 2009 and 2013, we have discussed the inter-subjective relationship of the anthropologist and the victim's family based in the contemporary debate about identity and alterity. In the field, these identities are elaborated in order to overcome the individual suffering of the victims' families in favor of the collective causes, but it is not only this, what becomes a collective struggle against violence from the news media. Considering the appropriate degrees of involvement, the suffering of the family triggers, others as researchers, readers and institutions that enroll in a language and in a violent sociability. However, inside this identity movement, in a limit situation, the emergence of denials and "double" subject / agent of urban violence can be seen.