ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault argued that security was the primary object of government. This he referred to as biopolitics, the management of life itself. ‘Biopower’, which consists of biopolitics plus specific disciplinary mechanisms is applied to constantly mobile and changing populations. Equally, neither insecurity and security are simply material states of existence, but also processes, either movements towards greater security and the “capacity for taking action to secure a better future” or the risk of an increasingly insecure existence. The security knowledge generated and applied in the global urban network is directed at solving ‘them’ and the existential security problem that they represent to the wealthier classes, in other words at securitizing their existence for the benefit of the mainstream society. Rio de Janeiro has a complex governmental and security landscape. The city has its own government under the Prefeito, responsible for some aspects of security, particularly emergency services, disaster preparedness, and low-level crime through the Guarda Municipal.
