Modo de vida, imaginário social e cotidiano

This article describes an action-research project which has the multiple objectives of mapping the range of home-based work in different countries, investigating the ways in which such work is embodied in local or international production chains, and developing a methodology which will facilitate the establishment of sustainable organisations of home-based workers. The article focuses mainly on Latin America and Eastern Europe, though the project is also active in India and has begun to explore the possibilities of working in China.

Cet article envisage de mettre en perspective historique l'importance jouée par le marché de la location dans l'expansion des favelas, ainsi que dans la formulation des politiques publiques. Bien que les données historiques sur ce marché dans les favelas soient rares et souvent peu fiables, il est possible de constater qu'il ne s'agit pas là d'une réalité récente. Bien au contraire, cet état de fait est, depuis le début du xxe siècle, un problème public à Rio de Janeiro. Ce travail aborde, premièrement, la présence de rapports locatifs depuis l'origine des premières favelas, puis le processus de criminalisation de la perception des loyers dans les favelas à partir du Code de la Construction de 1937. Il se penche, enfin, sur les enjeux suscités par le marché locatif dans le contexte des projets de régularisation foncière à partir des années 1980.
Resumo em inglês: This article intends to analyze, from a historical perspective, the important role played by the informal rental market in the expansion of the favelas as well as in the formulation of public policies. Although historical data about this market in the favelas are limited, and often unreliable, it is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, this is a public problem that has existed since the first half of the 20th century. This work analyses, first, the presence of a rental market since the beginning of the expansion of the favelas, second, the process of criminalizing rent collection in the favelas after the introduction of the 1937 Construction Code, and, finally, it looks at issues arising from the informal rental market in the context of land regularization projects from the 1980s onwards.
Resumo em espanhol: Este artículo pretende, en una perspectiva histórica, analizar la importancia del mercado de alquileres en la expansión de las favelas, así como en la formulación de políticas públicas. Aunque los datos históricos sobre este mercado en las favelas son raros, y a menudo poco confiable, es posible que esto no sea una realidad reciente. Por el contrario, esto es, desde la mitad del siglo XX, un problema público en Río de Janeiro. Este trabajo aborda, en primer lugar, la presencia del alquiler desde los orígenes de las primeras favelas y, a continuación, el proceso de criminalizar la colección de rentas en las favelas a partir de la promulgación del código de construcción de 1937. Finalmente, analizaremos las cuestiones relacionadas con el mercado de alquiler en el contexto de los proyectos de regularización del suelo en las favelas desde la década de 1980.

This article will consider literary representations of the poorest parts of Rio de Janeiro and the ways they are romanticised or demonised according to the writer's agenda and the target audience. The growth in favela tours and hostels seems to indicate a voyeuristic interest in the poverty and danger represented in the images of Brazil that reach outside the country. Certainly, the number and variety of descriptions of favelas range from the poetic to the horrified, but all of them testify to the fascination these settlements exercise on the outsider. Travel writing, as well as investigative journalistic accounts (both fictional and factual), will be analysed, and references made to literature and film. Of particular interest are the ways in which poverty is 'performed' for the reader/spectator of literary texts, as well as the performance undertaken by the traveller/researcher/narrator in travel and scientific literature about the favelas.

This article presents episodes of gay sex in the daily lives of people from a Brazilian shantytown (favela). It does so through a writing genre I call ‘ethnographic striptease’, which offers a picture of sexuality that is less ‘clinical’ and more similar to the form of an ‘erotic art’. This is based on the Foucauldian proposed distinction between two forms of knowledge discussed in History of Sexuality, Volume I: ‘scientia sexualis’ and ‘ars erotica’. I ask what an understanding of sexuality based more on the latter would look like. The result is presented in six concrete examples of this ethnographic form, which are provided in the article. These are followed by some personal commentaries, rather than by a ‘scientific analysis’ of them. By disrupting the boundaries of established narrative genres, the article offers a contribution towards the expansion of the ways in which human sexuality can be addressed and communicated. In a game of hiding and revealing, an ethnographic striptease offers a different look at queer sex life emerging from a large favela in Rio de Janeiro.

The concept of ‘structural violence’ dates back at least to the 1960s when it was first used by Latin American liberation theologians to refer to ‘sinful social structures characterized by poverty’ (Farmer, 2004, p. 307). A strong connection between ‘spaces of poverty’ and ‘structural violence’ is often taken for granted in most discussions around the latter concept. This article critically examines the constitution of Brazilian favelas as spaces belonging to a broader structure of urban violence. I concern myself with questions such as: what approach to the question of violence can do greater justice to the experiences and aspirations of people with whom I shared my life in one of the largest shantytowns of Latin America? The discussion explores violence as a multifaceted phenomenon in the city of Rio de Janeiro and raises questions regarding the specific type of violence that is generated by urban scholars themselves through their constitution of certain urban spaces as belonging to assumed structures of violence. People living in favelas themselves do not always appreciate or agree with the classificatory structures deployed by scholars. What is the least violent position that one can take when it comes to the study of favelas and urban violence? Based on ethnographic experiences, I come to the proposal that more desirable studies of violence should give priority to the daily experiences of people argued to be the victims in our narratives.

Based on fieldwork in Rocinha, one of the largest favelas of Rio de Janeiro, this paper discusses the formal/informal binary in relation to the city. Ethnographic material illustrates the daily relationships of businesses and lives in this favela and shows that they are clearly enmeshed in both what is usually considered the formal and the informal parts of urban life. Through the work of Beatriz Jaguaribe and Loic Wacquant in particular, we suggest that what is perceived as informal is not just a construction of the formal but also serves as a dangerous basis for policies such as the 'Shock of Order'. The informal, as the 'other' and the 'unknown', needs to be better understood ethnographically to challenge the formal/informal binary in the face of the complex hybrid relationships of the contemporary city.