Title: A Walk on the Wild Side: Political Sociology of the Cocaine Value Chain
By: Gabriel Feltran, Sciences Po, Paris.

Abstract
Cities are spaces of power, but what power structures shape contemporary urban life? This talk examines the governance of cocaine value chains linking cities across Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa. It explores the norms, values, and beliefs of the criminal world, alongside the role of illicit money and violent coercion as tools and resources of urban governance. I argue that the regulatory practices of illicit economies—and their transformation into urban space—are no longer marginal but central to global urban production. This talk is based on long-term ethnographic research (2005–2025) conducted in urban peripheries, border zones, and port cities.

Biography
Gabriel Feltran is Research Professor CNRS at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po in Paris, France. Visiting Researcher at the University of Oxford and Goldsmiths College (2019), Visiting Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin (KOSMOS Fellow, 2017) and at CIESAS, Mexico (2015). Editor of Stolen Cars: A Journey Through São Paulo’s Urban Conflict (Wiley SUSC Series, 2022); author of The Entangled City: Crime as Urban Fabric in São Paulo (Manchester University Press, 2020); and of the documentary series PCC: The Secret Power (HBO Max, 2022), which adapts his 2018 book in Portuguese, Irmãos: uma história do PCC.

More information?
Please contact Georg Fischer: fischer@cas.au.dk

Poster
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