Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book offers a rare, bottom-up exploration of everyday violence under criminal governance in Medellín, Colombia. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it shifts focus from state–organised crime relations to the lived experiences of barrio residents navigating gang rule. It shows how intimacies rooted in kinship, friendship, shared memories and local knowledge shape how violence is negotiated and, at times, challenged.

By examining practices such as extortion and community mediation, the book reveals how criminal authority is sustained through both coercion and consent. Complicating the dominant narrative of urban transformation in Medellín, it uncovers how violence remains embedded in the social and economic fabric of marginalised communities.