This article discusses the etymological meaning of the term violence, analyzes the multiple possibilities of the definition and practices considered violent today. Contemporaneity is understood through a reference to Ulrich Beck's theory of the global society of risks, which allows conceiving violence as contemporaneous configurations, linked to imprevisibility and to the risks that compose the current world. It identifies the emerging discourse of security as a possibility to mobilize people and legitimize practices of vigilance and social control, constituting a strategy of access and maintenance of the power of governing a municipality, state or nation. The paper presents some theoretical-methodological proposals for the study of contemporary violence, based on the study conducted and on the sociology of actor-network.
violence; security; contemporaneity; sociology of actor-network