Cléssio Moura de Souza

Knowledge and experiences of violence transform the ways in which individuals perceive the urban landscape, construct and reproduce (un)safety, and make everyday decisions regarding mobility and the use of space. This knowledge and these experiences are placially anchored and are shaped by everyday regionalisations. In the context of interpersonal violence in Recife, Brazil, we examine the ways in which volunteered geographic information (VGI), formal and informal information exchange networks, and individual experience contribute to the reproduction of violent spaces. During interviews with civilian residents and police officers, we explore the knowledge and information flows and their spatial anchorings before and after presenting informants with a VGI-based map of firearms violence. Following coding, interviews were also analysed using a novel, semiautomated text mining algorithm to produce context-sensitive co-occurrence graphs of key arguments within participant narratives. The results indicate strong differences in the placial anchorings between police officers and civilians, and highlight key dynamics in the flows of VGI amongst residents and local news organisations, as well as through social media. These forms of placial knowledge exchange are in constant negotiation with individuals’ perceptions and experiences of the study area and reflect cognitive-discursive reproductions of everyday geographies of (un)safety.

This paper presents an empirically grounded call for a more nuanced engagement and situatedness with placial characteristics within a spatial epidemiology frame. By using qualitative data collected through interviews and observation to parameterise standard and spatial regression models, and through a critical interpretation of their results, we present initial inroads for a situated spatial epidemiology and an analytical framework for health/medical geographers to iteratively engage with data, modelling, and the context of both the subject and process of analysis. In this study, we explore the socioeconomic factors that influence homicide rates in the Brazilian state of Alagoas from a critical public health perspective. Informed by field observation and interviews with 24 youths in low-income neighbourhoods and prisons in Alagoas, we derive and critically reflect on three regression models to predict municipal homicide rates from 2016–2020. The model results indicate significant effects for the male population, persons without elementary school completion, households with reported income, divorced persons, households without piped water, and persons working outside their home municipality. These results are situated in the broader socioeconomic context, trajectories, and cycles of inequality in the study area and underscore the need for integrative and contextually engaged mixed method study design in spatial epidemiology.