This book asks what peace means when the state wages war against its own citizens in the name of security in the war on drugs. Set in Rio de Janeiro, a deeply unequal city where life chances are shaped by race, class, gender and neighbourhood, it questions whose peace is protected, and at whose expense. Tracing the historical racialisation, marginalisation and criminalisation of the favelas, the book shows how this has resulted in complex forms of hybrid governance involving criminal groups, police and the state. It conceptualizes urban violence in Rio as a form of performative, necropolitical state war-making, where a discourse of security sustains deadly and inefficient operations in the favelas. In this violent context, the book explores favela peace formation as a grassroots alternative, in which residents construct new forms of nonviolent politics and envision more just and peaceful futures, offering important insights for rethinking and decolonizing peace. 

Ingri Bøe Buer is an MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellow at Noragric, The Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and IRI, PUC-Rio. She holds an MA (2017) and PhD (2022) in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from the University of Manchester, with eight months fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro in 2019–2020.