Príncipes e castelos de areia: performance e liminaridade no universo dos grandes roubos

Abstract

This work is an ethnography that leads with an assault against a financial institution. I begin the text with a reflection under the empirical material and the skills that I use to get them. Then, at that point, I articulate the dilemmas and tensions that I experienced during the fieldwork through my long contact with recluse criminals and outlaws. Next I analyze the procedures and efforts of a team of robbers that mastermind a conspiracy to rob a large quantity of money from a private security company. I guess on the affinities and conflicts between the members of this complex project. My perspective is on the conception of performance analysis by Erving Goffman, that puts himself in the position of a daily observer. Through this method I noticed the building of façades by the so- called “bank robbers” in the periods that they are projecting their criminal actions and in their routine full of risks and uncertainties like outsiders. With the notions of liminal and experience by Victor Turner I observe the consequences of the involvement in the great robberies under their daily life and personal trajectories making use of illegal acts as life alternative and way to social ascent. One of my central points is to focus in the singularities of their identities and notions of themselves.