When viewed from the perspective of those who suffer the consequences of repressive approaches to public security, it is often difficult to distinguish state agents from criminals. The mistreatment by police and soldiers examined in this book reflects a new kind of stigmatization.

The New War on the Poor links the experiences of labour migrants crossing Latin America's international borders, indigenous Mexicans defending their territories against capitalist mega-projects, drug wars and paramilitary violence, Afro-Brazilians living on the urban periphery of Salvador, and farmers and business people tired of paying protection to criminal mafias. John Gledhill looks at how and why governments are failing to provide security to disadvantaged citizens while all too often painting them as a menace to the rest of society simply for being poor.

John Gledhill is emeritus professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester, and a fellow of the British Academy and UK Academy of Social Sciences. He was chair of the UK Association of Social Anthropologists from 2005 to 2009, has served on the executive committees of the World Council of Anthropological Associations and the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and is co-managing editor of the journal Critique of Anthropology. He is the author of Casi Nada: Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo; Neoliberalism, Transnationalization and Rural Poverty; Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics; and Cultura y Desafío en Ostula: Cuatro Siglos de Autonomía Indígena en la Costa-Sierra Nahua de Michoacán; and editor of State and Society (with B. Bender and M. T. Larsen), and New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico (with P. Schell).