Red Brigades and Sendero Luminoso – Shifting Forms of Political Violence: A Sociospatial Relational Approach

Lorenzo Bosi and Stefan Malthaner In this paper we look at qualitative shifts between different forms of political violence across time and space in two episodes of political violence within the New Left wave of revolutionary violence: the Red Brigades in Italy (1970-1982) and Sendero Luminoso in Peru (1980-1999). We propose an analytical framework to conceptualize and analyze forms of political violence based on patterns of relationships with their social and spatial environment (constituencies and local social environments; safe spaces / territory), which leads us to distinguish four types: (1) clandestine political violence, (2) semi-clandestine political violence, (3) semi-clandestine insurgency, and (4) territorially-based insurgency. We argue that this approach allows us to epand our understanding of different forms as well as variations and heterogeneity within processes of political violence.