Estrutura social

No presente artigo investigo o universo do futebol em suas interdependências com outras figurações sociais, políticas e culturais. Com foco na atuação das torcidas organizadas, em especial dos Gaviões da Fiel, baseio-me em uma etnografia que fiz nos protestos ocorridos durante as últimas eleições do Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, realizadas em 25 de novembro de 2023. Recupero no percurso interpretativo a tradição da Democracia Corinthiana para testar a noção de performances político-torcedoras, sublinhando as estratégias traçadas e empregadas pelos torcedores corinthianos, no presente, a fim de driblar as barreiras institucionais que se lhes apresentam, como a ausência de direito a voto nos assuntos do clube. Em diálogo com as sociologias eliasiana e goffmaniana, bem como com a antropologia brasileira das práticas esportivas, a pesquisa apreende um torcer que se vale e se apropria da cidade, ocupando-a espacial e simbolicamente, para além dos limites da arquibancada. Os resultados que alcancei sugerem que as performances político-torcedoras são ações e expressões coletivas de descontentamento acerca de hierarquias e desigualdades existentes tanto no universo do futebol quanto em outros âmbitos sociais. 

Este artigo propõe analisar a articulação entre as esferas de poder local e o poder público, a partir de uma descrição etnográfica da organização social e de como, nesta, se estrutura a autoridade política local. Nesse processo de construção da autori­dade local, na praia do Aventureiro, Ilha Grande - RJ, o poder político e a autoridade le­gitimada pelos moradores estão diretamente ligados à posse dos barcos e dos campings mais prósperos. Os donos de barco no Aventureiro assumem, nesse contexto, o papel de representantes legítimos do povoado na negociação com órgãos da Prefeitura e do Esta­do, na defesa dos direitos dos moradores, assumindo um papel de representação da or­ganização doméstica (em famílias e grupos vicinais) nas relações políticas com o Estado.

Privilegiar a análise das representações sociais significa reconhecer sua importância teórico-metodológica como estratégia de conhecimento do social. Considerando a temática da qual se ocupa, o artigo explicita a pertinência da Teoria das Representações Sociais como possibilidade de análise do fenômeno da violência contemporânea, assumindo ser impossível compreendê-lo sem se interrogar sobre sentidos, valores e crenças que estruturam e presidem a vida social. O texto ressalta a importância de que políticas públicas de segurança levem em consideração significações e sentidos, de natureza subjetiva, expressos nas Representações Sociais, elaboradas e produzidas não apenas pelos integrantes da área de segurança pública mas, igualmente, por aqueles que direta ou indiretamente se beneficiam ou sofrem as consequências de seus acertos ou desacertos, ou seja, a sociedade, em seus distintos segmentos. Em outras palavras, através da utilização de evidências empíricas, aponta-se a pertinência de inserir a temática das representações sociais e de seus conteúdos no horizonte das preocupações dos formuladores de política. O Distrito Federal é o universo empírico que dá suporte às análises realizadas.    

Based on a study of urban interventions in the city of Rio de Janeiro conducted in the context of the 2016 Summer Olympics, this article investigates how contemporary dispossessions relate, contribute, or do not contribute to the expansion of capitalist accumulation. To do so, I first define 3 types of dispossession: (a) redistributive dispossession; (b) expanding dispossession via capitalization and proletarianization; and (c) expanding dispossession via commodification and proletarianization. The first is only a redistribution of already produced surpluses, and the other 2 expand the accumulation of capital by converting means of production or subsistence into capital or commodities and increasing the availability of labor power. The theoretical distinction between different types of dispossession guides the analyses of spatial restructuring in the wake of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

We aim at assessing neighborhood effects on the socioeconomic integration of poor individuals living in three shanty towns of Salvador, Brazil. Grounded on semi-structured interviews, we demonstrate that the spatial proximity of Nordeste de Amaralina to affluent gated communities fosters the interviewees’ economic integration. However, mechanisms of social segmentation impede cross-class interactions. In the peripheral São João do Cabrito, the interviewees’ confinement to the local social context along with the absence of positive social references produce their social isolation and constrain their economic integration. Yet in the peripheral Fazenda Grande II/Jaguaripe I, the shared use of urban services by socially dissimilar groups provides an opportunity-enriching environment for the lower echelons. We discuss two mechanisms that account for neighborhood effects: changes in the support structures and the impact of crime. Concluding, we advocate for a multidimensional approach to neighborhood effects, capable of attending to the interrelatedness of micro, meso, and macro-social factors.

The paper examines the impact of neighborhood effects on individuals’ socioeconomic integration in two peripheral shanty-towns and in three favelas located in Brazil. In the peripheral São João do Cabrito, the individuals’ embeddedness in a homogeneously poor region fosters their social isolation; yet, in Fazenda Grande II/Jaguaripe I, the population’s socioeconomic heterogeneity attenuates neighborhood effects. The individuals’ functional integration vis-à-vis their wealthy surroundings declines toward the periphery of their neighborhood, their chances of integration being conditioned by the shared use of public space, and the surrounding gated com-munities’ degree of spatial isolation. We discuss three mechanisms that explain neighborhood effects: changes in the support structures, the impact of crime, and territorial stigmatization. We conclude that individuals’ chances of integration mainly depend on the spatial distribution of employment and urban services, rather than on their proximity to affluent neighborhoods.

This paper evaluates the compatibility of public–private partnerships (PPP) for housing in Brazil with the notion of the right to the city, enshrined in the Constitution. A 3-year investigation of the country’s first housing PPP, Casa Paulista, located in downtown São Paulo city, informs the analysis. Drawing from the international debate on the right to the city and its application in Brazil, I offer a definition of the term that transcends the notion of rights-based policy, and implies urban dwellers’ appropriation of urban production and city space. While failing to scale up centrally located housing delivery, the PPP facilitates a new housing regime marked by the decreased ability of citizens, particularly grassroots movements, to appropriate housing production, directly contradicting the right to the city ideal. Finally, I describe an outcome from this new regime—an ad hoc and opaque system of public land allocation for PPP housing developments.

In the Global South, the notion of the right to the city has increasingly been used to challenge the effects of uneven development on vulnerable informal residents. Yet, under a neoliberal spatial regime, acknowledging rights of informal residents does not necessarily lead to increasing access to the opportunities that cities produce. The article documents a contradictory process of,simultaneously, institutionalization of rights and implementation of profit-driven urban investments associated with 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. It is based on local-level, case-specific analysis of a dispute around the mega-event mobility investments and the demands of residents of Lagamar— a low-income, informal community in Fortaleza— adopting participant observation methods during a 3-year field research period. The case illustrates how Brazilian right to the city policies have gone beyond the mere recognition of land rights of informal residents, yet they have fallen short of addressing the needs of the urban poor, highlighting the role of mega-event investments in this process. The contradiction of simultaneously expanding and eroding the rights of the urban poor in Brazil has given room for manipulative state practices that I have called “undoing the right to the city.”

What affects police killings of denizens in the cities of developing democracies? Brazil is one of the countries with the most casualties from police lethality, yet deaths from police interventions vary greatly across its cities, as well as over time. Since most of its police forces are formally responsive to state-level governments, the political dynamics at this government tier are essential to comprehend urban policing — and its resort to deadly violence. I argue that subnational political competition explains whether state-level governments can implement reforms to reduce police lethality. I illustrate this argument through a within-case, cross-case comparison of the city-states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro since re-democratization in the 1980s. While lower fragmentation and partisan continuity at the state-level government enabled and consolidated reforms that mitigated police violence in São Paulo, higher fragmentation and turnover inhibited reforms and increased police lethality in Rio. Building on interviews with subnational politicians and police officers as well as statistics on police killings, this paper helps spark an urgent conversation in urban studies on police violence in the urban Global South and expands the police reform literature by developing a theory of how politics influences police violence.