‘Law Into One’s Own Hands’ as a Moral Performance in Colombia and Mexico: Analytical Perspectives for a Pragmatic Model of ‘Violence’ in Contemporary Social Theory

Abstract

This paper proposes a performative model of analysis of the facts typified as “justice into one’s own hands”. It questions the notion of “violence” as an explanatory factor and, in contrast, considers that these manifestations can be analyzed as social dramatizations that produce and recreate a problematized image of “us”. Different constatative narratives, dissimilar normative valuations and accusatory normative perspectives are then traced in order to understand the way in which these phenomena are constituted as significant social facts in two study units (Mexico and Colombia).