Hopes regarding a more peaceful world became widely disappointed nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall. While the end of the cold war went along with a significant reduction of inter-state wars, new conflicts and asymmetric threats have emerged over the last decades. Today’s urban violence represents one of these conflicts. Although urban violence presents by no means a new phenomenon, the intensity of these conflicts today has been unprecedented in world history. Cities undergoing political and economic transformations have been particularly affected. Given the longevity and growing rates of violence in many cities of the southern hemisphere, physical violence as a social fact can hardly be regarded as an often proclaimed temporary sideeffect limited to the transformation process. Instead, physical violence has become endemic and contributed to changing patterns of social interaction (McCartney 2007: 17). This article tackles the very changing governance structures and the inclusion of new actors into the process of re-negotiating power relations in a high crime area of Rio de Janeiro. Specifically, I draw on the influence of international companies to bring about changes in the concept of governing through crime in a neighbourhood of Rio’s West Zone. Like many other areas in the city, the neighbourhood of Jacarepaguá is largely characterized by the absence of an egalitarian system of public security, high levels of violence resulting from rivalries between traffickers and the police within the areas biggest slum called ‘City of God’ as well as robberies and assault attacks on the streets and highways. The latter have risen highly as industries settled and new residential areas began to emerge in the area. As a result, the local population finds itself as much affected in their everyday life as the industries in their day-to-day operations. However, while appearing to be sheer local on the surface, the root causes for Rio’s changing patterns of governability are far more complex. Concluding from my empirical research in Rio de Janeiro, I argue that the changing concepts of governance shaping Rio’s
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political, social and geographical landscape today cannot be fully understood without the embeddings of Rio into processes of economic globalization. To enhance this perception, I argue that the urban violence in Rio de Janeiro represents visible reflections of the cities very own critical juncture of globalization. Among other structural factors, urban violence has largely contributed to the cities economic stagnation over the last years (Osório 2008: 4). According to a recently published study, violence costs the state of Rio de Janeiro between 6,5 and 7,5 of Billion US Dollars annually. This represents approximately eight percent of the state’s GDP. Due to the different forms of crimes in Rio de Janeiro and the absence of a functioning system of public security, violence represents the main concern of CEO’s running the biggest companies in the state (PWC/O Globo 2007). Gang related fights and robberies inand outside company facilities have kept employers from getting to work, caused fabrication deadlock, keep qualified workers from accepting jobs in certain areas and prevented potential customers from entering business negotiations with companies located in certain parts of Rio (Carvalho 2007: 34). But how do companies as key actors in globalization contribute to changing governance structures and the upholding of the geographically visible and culturally perceivable walls which separate the local population into socially in- and excluded parts of the Brazilian society? To answer this question one has to consider the security interests of companies operating in Rio as well as their political influence and bargaining power in order to steer the course of events according to their own interests. As Collier pointed out, the uncertainty resulting from physical violence reduces the time horizon and willingness of actors to obey contracts (Collier 1999: 8). As the formal market depends on long-term planning reliability in order to prevent financial and reputational loses from occurring, some companies have left the state or have settled in other parts