Masks of Legality

Luis Otávio Vilela da Cruz — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article develops a critical problematization of the Brazilian criminal justice system in dialogue with Legal Anthropology and Critical Criminology. It is based on a theoretical bibliographic review, complemented by engagement with ethnographic literature on conflict administration, criminal justice, and institutional violence. The article argues that law, far from operating as a neutral and universal institution, participates in the production and legitimation of social inequalities. It presents a classical and contemporary anthropological state of the art and, from that basis, discusses penal selectivity as a structural process linked to secondary criminalization and to institutional practices of classification, hierarchization, and differential management of subjects. It also examines how legal language, decision-making routines, and institutional organization produce symbolic and material violence under the sign of legality. Finally, the paper proposes a critical reflection on the limits of modern legal rationality and on analytical and political possibilities for thinking a more plural, democratic, and socially situated justice.

Anthropology Without Borders: Journal of the Graduate Program in Anthropology and the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at UFBA

Masks of Legality