Sociologia

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to the debate on how the ecologies of urbanization help us understand the socio-spatial changes we confront in the climate emergency. The intervention is constructed in four steps. First, it speaks to what kind of Urban Political Ecology (UPE)—or generally what I call a “spatialized political ecology”—may be appropriate for urban society. In a second step, it historicizes and spatializes the narrative by introducing an urban political ecology of landscapes. For that, the paper mobilizes the concepts of boundaries, belts, and in-betweens. The third part illustrates the transformation of postsuburban political ecologies in three rather different world regions. The last part of this paper examines what the potential is and what need for action exists in an urban society threatened and conditioned by the climate emergency and the Capitalocene. Ultimately, the paper aspires to move the debate on UPE more into the direction of making it relevant for the urban affairs of a suburban planet.

This article explores how two community-led newspapers in Maré and Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, promoted social resilience in their respective favelas during the first 6 months of COVID-19. We reviewed stories published in both newspapers and interviewed a sample of their journalists to investigate the newspapers’ responses to the pandemic’s effects, government policies (or lack thereof), and resident reactions to evolving virus-related risks during our study period. We employed Keck and Sakdapolrak’s social resilience framework to examine our data and found that the newspapers contributed significantly to the resilience of both communities during our study period. Contrary to the neoliberal view of resilience as self-reliance, these newspapers sought instead to encourage sustained collective agency and to challenge oppressive governance through generative activities and advocacy. Our findings deepen understanding of the role of community-organized activities in marginalized populations’ struggles to assert their right to the city, particularly during crises.

This article explores Rio’s housing policy transformation over the past 2 decades to reveal how it has contributed to rendering evictions and relocations possible and acceptable in the wake of mega-events. Theoretically, the article adopts actor-network theory (ANT) and the political sociology of public policy instruments (PPI) and delves into the unfolding of Rio’s slum upgrading instrumentation from 1993 to 2012. This article argues that the weakening of slum upgrading as a central policy instrument to address Rio’s housing problem together with the reemergence of housing construction as a suitable solution have contributed to the development evictions and relocations in the wake of mega-events. Therefore, the article highlights that evictions relate not only to capitalist accumulation and the neoliberal paradigm but also to other dynamics, contributing to a more nuanced account of Rio’s urban transformations in recent years.

Why do local governments produce redistributive urban policies, particularly in cities of the Global South? Present debates oscillate between highlighting these cities’ governmental problems or sustaining the enabling role of institutionalized social participation. From the standpoint of São Paulo, Brazil, this article shows a different picture. The trajectories of 27 redistributive urban programs follow a conflictive and incremental expansion and diversification of redistributive policies through time. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques indicate that program creation usually happened in left-wing administrations. Most of them were maintained after government swings, although at lower pace, due mainly to the pressure of political competition, but also on account of multi-level politics and policy routinization. Even previously discontinued programs tended to reemerge later, due to the embeddedness of civil society actors in policy communities and multi-level politics. Therefore, trajectories were explained by a combination of partisan politics and median voter mechanisms with policy production processes and actors.

Many authors agree that gentrification in Latin America depends on the intervention of the state. However, for the renovation of large urban areas that have long lacked public attention, state intervention is a pivotal driver. This comparative analysis involved fieldwork analysis and short ethnographies in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Results show variations and some common threads, namely land valorization policies, schemes designed to promote the creation of economic opportunities for upper-income investors and developers, the establishment of creative or cultural industrial hubs, investment in new transport and cultural infrastructure, city rebranding, and the use of iconic architecture. Displacement policies have been implemented in Brazil, although with limited success. In Brazil and Mexico, attempts have been made to control social behaviors within particular spaces, often in a racialized manner. We arrive at a narrative that differs from that of the Global North, which considers state-led gentrification to constitute the privatization of social housing under the hegemonic imposition of discourses of “social mixing.” The concept of state and its trajectory differ considerably in each hemisphere.

The global call for inclusive cities suggests that all residents should have equal access to the benefits of urban life. Across cities, however, displacement and lack of affordable housing segregate urban residents and limit their access to power, resources, and opportunities. Though social movement literature has long assessed how movements influence officials for reform from the outside, scholars of governance argue that civil society must act from the inside to achieve political and territorial inclusion. Here I ask whether movements confronting removals in São Paulo implement direct strategies and, if so, what are the factors that shape why movements choose direct over indirect strategies. I find that an ideology based on rights encourages direct strategies, but a radical perspective or a weak relationship with the state instead pushes movements toward activities that promote indirect influence. Networking across movements is key for increasing the capacity of movements to access new democratic institutions.

A realidade dos movimentos sociais é bastante dinâmica e nem sempre as teorizações têm acompanhado esse dinamismo. Com a globalização e a informatização da sociedade, os movimentos sociais em muitos países, inclusive no Brasil e em outros países da América Latina, tenderam a se diversificar e se complexificar. Por isso, muitas das explicações paradigmáticas ou hegemônicas nos estudos da segunda metade do século XX necessitam de revisões ou atualizações ante a emergência de novos sujeitos sociais ou cenários políticos. Este estudo busca, inicialmente, uma compreensão acerca da nova configuração da sociedade civil organizada, explicitando os múltiplos tipos de ações coletivas do novo milênio. A partir desta compreensão, busca-se explorar a diversidade identitária dos sujeitos, a transversalidade nas demandas por direitos, as formas de ativismo e de empoderamento através de articulações em rede e, finalmente, a participação política das organizações em rede.

Este artigo discute a nova divisão sexual do trabalho que resulta do processo de reestruturação produtiva na indústria metalmecânica, enfatizando seus impactos sobre as condições de trabalho e de saúde das mulheres trabalhadoras. A pesquisa de natureza qualitativa, que foi realizada em plantas de diferentes tamanhos nos setores de autopeças e eletroeletrônico, no ABC paulista e em Campinas, examinou as novas formas do trabalho feminino como resultado da introdução de novas práticas gerenciais e de inovações tecnológicas. Foram também investigadas as percepções das trabalhadoras sobre as mudanças no seu trabalho e nas suas condições de saúde, com o propósito de compreender a relação entre novas formas de organização do processo de trabalho e o aprofundamento do sofrimento psicofísico no trabalho.

Concluiu-se que o processo de reestruturação das empresas estudadas tem um claro bias de gênero na medida em que os lugares ocupados pelas mulheres na nova divisão do trabalho contribuem para aumentar a deterioração das suas condições de trabalho. Nas fábricas pesquisadas as trabalhadoras estão mais concentradas nos postos com salários menores, sob condições de trabalho ruins e sem proteção contra os riscos derivados das atividades desempenhadas. O artigo mostra que há uma nítida relação entre as mudanças nas condições de trabalho das mulheres e o crescimento de problemas de saúde e de doenças ocupacionais (como as LER e o estresse, entre outras).