Poder local e gestão urbana

This article draws upon theories of performance, everyday life, social space, and community to explore an ethnographic vignette juxtaposing two scenes: in one, neighbors form an improvised huddle around a young gang member dying of a gunshot wound in the streets of the favela, or squatter town, of Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro; in the other, a Palm Sunday procession passes through the same spot later that night. Contextualizing this illustration with detailed information on Rocinha (including police and gang activities there and changing trends in favela activism in recent decades) and a framework for distinguishing the live, "organic" spaces of performances from the still-life, "inorganic" spaces of abstract settings, I argue that Rocinha residents use popular performances to create refuges from the desolation facing them in the poverty, violence, and injustice of their lives and to reposition themselves in spaces of abundance, peace, and community.

The article discusses the Brazilian government's "pacification project" to occupy slums, disarm drug gangs, and arrest drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro, particularly focusing on the favela, or slum, called Rocinha. It draws on the author's travels in Rocinha and his conversations with artist Marcos Rodrigo Neves. The author also reflects on poverty in the slums, government-backed urban renewal projects to improve quality of life, and the control of Rocinha by the criminal organization Amigos dos Amigos.

This paper contributes to critical and Southern urban studies by discussing how the notion of hybridity is useful to understand contemporary modes of politics rooted in equality pursuits and crafted by peripheral subjects. It analyses the birth, discourses and tactics of three grassroots groups in Rocinha, an immense peripheral settlement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to show how modern insurgent claims – based on material urban rights – are intertwined with other grammars of justice, such as the politics of intersectional difference, critical pedagogies, solidarity and care. These cases suggest that contemporary insurgency builds on rights-based citizenship claims to create unique pathways that somehow articulate the universality and relationality of justice. I suggest that hybrid insurgent citizenship operates like a braid in which different strategies are uniquely and interdependently linked over time. Whilst in Rocinha the central thread is insurgency, the same logics could apply to other context-situated political traditions.

BOOK REVIEW ESSAY
In Harm’s Way: the Dynamics of Urban Violence AuyeroJavier BertiMaría Fernanda
Violence at the Urban Margins AuyeroJavier BourgoisPhilippe Scheper-HughesNancy
Bruno: Conversations with a Brazilian Drug Dealer GayRobert
The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil LarkinsErika Robb
Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America MoncadaEduardo
Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela: Urban Violence and Daily Life PenglaseR. Ben

Este artículo analiza cuestiones teóricas de la economía informal e ilícita a partir del estudio etnográfico de las redes del crimen organizado en la ciudad de Río de Janeiro. El narcotráfico es considerado aquí como un segmento de la economía ilícita, cuyo funcionamiento está basado, de acuerdo con la interpretación del autor, en el uso racionalizado de la violencia, los vínculos de parentesco y afectivos, así como la corrupción.
Resumo em inglês: This article analyzes theoretical issues concerning the underground economy on the basis of an ethnographic study of the networks of organized crime in Rio de Janeiro. In this paper, drug trafficking is regarded as a sector of the illegal economy, based, according to the author's interpretation, on the rationalized use of violence, kinship and affective links and corruption.