Mega-Events and the Neoliberal Production of Space in Rio de Janeiro

By Sam Smith
2016, Vol. 8 No. 03 | pg. 7/7 |

Conclusion: Ethical Disruptions

It is certain that more research and attention is due to the upcoming mega-events in Rio de Janeiro, as their influences play out over the coming months and years. Much of their impact upon the organization of space and the lived experience of the city is yet to come. This thesis, an examination of immanent processes of urban transformation as they are underway, if lacking the empirical depth that hindsight confers, has a particular kind of role to play.

By asking how it is that the present circumstances have come about, and beginning to frame the conditions for their contestation, I endorse a critical praxis that considers action as the ultimate ends of a scholarly engagement. I have foregrounded not only the historical precedents and spatial practices leading to the present, but also the modes through which urban infrastructural development is being actively contested. This contestation is seen to be occurring across scales in ways that rely upon developing networks of social media. As translations of experience, calls for attention on the world stage are rife with semiotic problems. Thus, the politics of recognition emerge as crucial for understanding the growth of such local, regional, and trans-regional dissent against processes of structural violence. We must recall that visibility as a category is always mediated by signs for recognition that are immanently political, and can never be taken for granted as transparent (Keane 2003).

Complicating the terms of trans-regional visibility of violence does not untie the ethnographer from the ethical implications of their engagement. As a work which challenges received notions that help to prop up powerful regimes of neoliberalism, this thesis has intended, in a minute way, to disrupt the seeming stability of those systems. By illustrating projects of modernization and development as immanently contested projects of material and imaginative spatio-temporal scale, I have hoped also to illustrate their contingency, and their capacity to change.

It is frequently the case that contemporary anthropologists advance an activist agenda, but seem left wringing their hands over the problem of involvement. Aware of our complicity, and possessing a great deal of privilege as members of a Western intellectual ‘ivory tower’, indeed, who do we dare accuse? As Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995) notes, there is a tendency to attempt to ‘suspend the ethical’ in ethnographic and theoretical practice, as a means of separating a Western enlightenment sense of morality from the topics at hand. However, it is never possible to fully remove oneself from the equation. We would do better to examine our own prejudices and tendencies alongside our findings, and place them in dialogue. I thus endorse Scheper-Hughes’ observation that the pursuit of ‘objectivity’ is better served by the recognition and explication of a moral stance than the attempt to mask or cover it.

As one of many left or radical-leaning academics writing on Latin America from afar, attempting to tread the fine line between critical distance and political urgency has constituted a significant challenge in this project. Future studies will possess the benefit of hindsight with regard to Rio’s Olympic transformations, but will no less be encumbered by the necessity of engaging with the ethical, both at the scales of urban displacement and expropriation in Rio, and in the broad-reaching cultures of neoliberalism that remain pervasive. Through engaging the disruptions of hegemonic discourses in the context of Rio’s favelas, the precariousness of diverse regimes of power and their modes of reproduction is made apparent. Casting a critical eye towards the realm of spectacle and the sanitation of the urban poor, I have hoped to contribute in a small way to the development of this awareness.


Acknowledgments

I’d like first of all to thank my parents for their endless love and support this year, and every year; thanks to Charlene, for reminding me of the light at the end of the tunnel, and for being an unforgettable professor and advisor; to LaShandra Sullivan, for providing regional expertise, humor, and invaluable feedback; to my brother, for wanting to talk about anything and everything but my thesis; to Rick Smith, for small sparks of wisdom; to Isabella Salton, for being a gracious host and friend during my stay in São Paulo; to Dario Nascimento, for showing me hidden beaches and local secrets of Rio; and to my friends at Reed, in Olympia, and in the rest of the world, for sharing with me whimsy, vigor, and summer bliss, past and future.


References

“2010 Census: 11.4 million Brazilians (6.0%) live in subnormal agglomerates.” Dec. 21 2011. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. http://www.ibge.gov.br/english/presidencia/noticias/noticia_impressao.php?id_noticia=2057=1.

Agamben, Giorgio. 2003. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Albro, Robert. 2005. “ ‘The Water is Ours, Carajo!’ Deep Citizenship in Bolivia’s Water War” In Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader. Blackwell 2005.

Amann, Edmund, and Baer, Werner. 2002. "Neoliberalism and its Consequences in Brazil". Journal of Latin American Studies. 34 (4): 945-959.

Amin, A. 2004. Regions unbound: towards a new politics of place. Geografiska Annaler. B 86, 33–44.

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1991. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Middlesbrough: Theory, Culture and Society.

Aquino, Jessica. and Andereck, Kathleen. Nov 14, 2012. "NGOs and Volunteer Tourism: A Look at Volunteer Tourism in Favela (Slum) Communities of Rio de Janeiro"Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ARNOVA Annual Conference, Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p581841_index.html

Arias, Enrique Desmond. 2004. "Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas". Latin American Politics &Amp; Society. 46 (1): 1-38.

---. 2006. "The Myth of Personal Security: Criminal Gangs, Dispute Resolution, and Identity in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas". Latin American Politics and Society. 48 (4): 53-81.

Auyero, J. 2010. Visible fists, clandestine kicks, and invisible elbows. Three forms of regulating neoliberal poverty. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 8: 5–26.

Auyero J., and de Lara A.B. 2012. "In harm's way at the urban margins". Ethnography. 13 (4): 531-557.

Bale, John, and Mette Krogh Christensen. 2004. Post-Olympism? questioning sport in the Twenty-first century. Oxford, Eng: Berg. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=243520.

Bazely, Oliver. August 3 2010. Favela Living: A Vidigal Viewpoint. The Rio Times. http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-real-estate/favela-living-the-view-from-vidigal/

Benmuri, Leandro D. 2012. Housing Development: Housing Policy, Slums, and Squatter Settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1948-1973. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Maryland.

Camus, Marcel, et al. 1999. Orfeu negro (Black Orpheus). [Irvington, NY]: Criterion Collection.

Brazil announces phase two of the Growth Acceleration Program” (Press Release). March 29, 2010. Portal Brasil. http://www.brasil.gov.br/para/press/press-releases/march/brazil-announces-phase-two-of-the-growth-acceleration-program/br_model1?set_language=en

Brisolla, Fabio. Transl. by Tatiana Jardim. Feb 21 2013. “Favela resident is ‘super plugged’ into the Internet, research says.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=6847

Caldeira, T.P.R. 2000. City of walls: crime, segregation, and citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Caldeira T.P.R. and Holston J. 1999. Democracy and violence in Brazil. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(4): 691–729.

Carvalho, F. S. and Benedicto, J.L.L. October 4-6, 2011. Os Jogos Olímpicos e a Copo do Mundo: Impactos nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Powerpoint Presentation. Grupo consolidado de investigación MEDAMERICA, Universitat de Barcelona.

Carvalho, Maria A.R. de et al. 1998. Cultura política e cidadania: uma proposata de metodologia de avaliação do programa Favela-Bairro. Unpublished mss. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro.

Clark, T. J. 1985. The painting of modern life: Paris in the art of Manet and his followers. New York: Knopf.

Clarke, Felicity. Jan 7 2013. “Barreira do Vasco Seeks Sanitation Improvements from Morar Carioca.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=6478

Collier S. 2005. The Spatial Forms and Social Norms of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”: Toward a Substantive Analytics. International Affairs Working Paper. New York: New School University.

Comaroff J and Comaroff J. 2001. Millennial capitalism: First thoughts on a second coming. Public Culture 12(2):291–343

Comissão de Moradores Atingidos Pela Transoeste. Dec 17, 2012. O Legado Somos Nós: A História de Francisca. Witness. Video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=02aM4yWyRB4#.

Comite Populario. “A CIDADE É NOSSA! Veja as imagens do ato noMaracanã” March 19, 2013. Comite Populario. http://comitepopulario.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/a-cidade-e-nossa-veja-as-imagens-do-ato-no-maracana/

Cosentino, Renato. Transl. by Rachel Fox et al. Feb 26, 2013. “Largo do Tanque: One More Summary Removal for the Rio Olympics.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=6980.

Davis, Mike. 2004. Planet of slums. New Left Review 26: 5–34.

Davis, Mike, and Daniel Bertrand Monk, eds. 2007. Evil paradises: dreamworlds of neoliberalism. New York: New Press.

DOW Chemical Company. October 2012. Rio Sustainable City Project. Video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ny6WRzGq1A

Duncan, Nancy. 1996. “Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces,” in Nancy Duncan, (Ed.), Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality. New York: Routledge.

Egozi, Arie. 9 Dec 2010. “Brazil selects Elbit's Hermes 450 UAV.” Flightglobal.com. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/brazil-selects-elbits-hermes-450-uav-350793/

Elyachar, Julia. 2005. Markets of dispossession: NGOs, economic development, and the state in Cairo. Durham: Duke University Press. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Ferguson, James.1994. The anti-politics machine: "development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

---. 2010. "The Uses of Neoliberalism". Antipode. 41 (Supplement): 166-184.

---. 2012. “Structures of Responsibility” Ethnography. vol. 13 no. 4.

"Finance". February 16, 2009. Rio de Janeiro 2016 Candidate File. Brazilian Olympic Committee. Accessed March 10, 2013. http://urutau.prodrj.gov.br

Fischer, Brodwyn M. 2008. A poverty of rights: citizenship and inequality in twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, Michel, and Michel Senellart. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan.

Freire-Medeiros, B. 2009. "The favela and its touristic transits". Geoforum. 40 (4): 580-588.

Friedman, Thomas L. 2005. The world is flat: a brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gaffney, Christopher. 2010. "Mega-events and socio-spatial dynamics in Rio de Janeiro, 1919-2016". Journal of Latin American Geography. 9 (1): 7-29.

Goldstein, Donna M. 2003. Laughter out of place : race, class, violence, and sexuality in a Rio Shantytown University of California Press.

Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave.

Greene, S. J. 2003. 'Staged cities: mega-events, slum clearance, and global capital', Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 6: 161–187.

Hall, C. Michael. 2006. "Urban entrepreneurship, corporate interests and sports mega‐events: the thin policies of competitiveness within the hard outcomes of neoliberalism." The Sociological Review 54, no. s2: 59-70.

Harvey D.1985. The urbanization of capital: studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.

---. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

---. 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53.

Haussmann, Georges Eugène, Françoise Choay, Bernard Landau, and Vincent Sainte Marie Gauthier. 2000. Mémoires. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Holston, James.1989. The modernist city: an anthropological critique of Brasília. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

---. 2008. Insurgent citizenship: disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Horne, John, and Wolfram Manzenreiter. 2006. “An Introduction to the sociology of sports mega-events.” In Sports mega-events: social scientific analyses of a global phenomenon. Horne J., and Manzenreiter,W. ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub./Sociological Review.

Huggins, Martha. 1998. Political Policing: The United States and Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press.

Jackson, Michael. 1996. They don't care about us. New York: Epic.

Jeter, Jon. 2003 “Death squads feed terror in Rio slums.” Seattle Times, October 27.

Joyce, P. 2003. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso.

Kaiser, Anna.“ Feb 7 2013. ‘The most important fight in our community is being recognized as normal people’ — an interview with Iara Oliveira of City of God.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=6768

Keane, Webb. 2003. "Self-Interpretation, Agency, and the Objects of Anthropology: Reflections on a Geneology," CSSH.

Klein, Naomi. 2007. The shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.

Kumar, Ashok. April 12, 2012. “Want to cleanse your city of its poor? Host the Olympics.” Ceasefire. http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/olympics-opportunity-cleanse-city/

Latour, B. 1988. How to write The Prince for machines as well as machinations. In B. Elliott (ed.), Technology and social process, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell.

Pirez, P. 2002. Buenos Aires: Fragmentation and privatization of the metropolitan city. Environment and Urbanization 14(1): 145–158.

Maciel, Fernanda. February 2013. “White Flow.” http://www.fernandamaciel.es/en/white-flow/

MacKay, Duncan. Dec 6, 2010. “Wikileaks document expose US fears for Rio 2016 Olympics.” Inside the Games. http://www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/summer-olympics/2016/11270-wikileaks-document-shows-us-fears-for-rio-2016

Marinho, G. and Flor, K. 2013. “The Favela Today is the Soul of Business.” Rio on watch. Accessed March 10, 2013. .

Marinho, Roberto. Transl. Rachel Fox. Dec. 4, 2012. “The Story of a Family From Morro da Providência.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=6104

Mazzarella, William. 2003. Shoveling smoke: advertising and globalization in contemporary India. Durham: Duke University Press. McFarlane C and Rutherford J (2008) Political infrastructures: Governing and experiencing the fabric of the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(2).

Mellen, Tom. “Rousseff slams 'failed' neoliberal doctrines.” Jan. 21 2012. http://morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114697

Mendes, Wilson. June 25, 2012. “Moradores do conjunto habitacional Bairro Carioca, em Triagem, terão transporte na porta de casa.” Globo. http://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/moradores-do-conjunto-habitacional-bairro-carioca-em-triagem-terao-transporte-na-porta-de-casa-5306411.html

Merrifield A. 2002. Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City. New York: Routledge.

Mier, Brian. 2013. Rio Militarises Its Favela Slums in Preparation for the 2014 World Cup. Vice Magazine (online). Accessed March 8, 2013. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rio-militarizes-its-favela-slums-in-preparation-for-the-2014-world-cup

Mollo Maria L.R., and Saad-Filho, Alfredo. 2004. “The Neoliberal Decade: Reviewing the Brazilian Economic Transition.” http://actuelmarx.u-paris10.fr/m4mollo.htm#_edn1

Morris, Rosalind C. 2001. “Modernity’s Media and the End of Mediumship? On the Aesthetic Economy of Transparency in Thailand.” In Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. [Durham, N.C]: Duke University Press.

Neri, Pricila. August 13, 2012. The Debating Chamber - Brazil residents face evictions ahead of 2016 Olympics. Witness. http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/the-debating-chamber/brazil-residents-face-evictions-ahead-of-2016-olympics-witness/

Novelli, J.M.N., Galvão A. 2001. "The Political Economy of Neoliberalism in Brazil in the 1990s". International Journal of Political Economy. 31 (4): 3-52.

Nuijten, Monique. 2013. “The perversity of the ‘Citizenship Game’: Slum-upgrading in the urban periphery of Recife, Brazil.” Critique of Anthropology vol. 33 no. 1 8-25.

Oksala, J. 2011. Violence and Neoliberal Governmentality. Constellations, 18:474–486. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2011.00646.x

Oliveira, Ney dos Santos.1997. Race, class and the political mobilization of the poor: ghettos in New York and favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholoars.

---. 2002 “Direito dos negros: distribuição racial, pobreza e moradia na região metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro,” in Anais XXI Encontro e VI Congresso Arquisur. Salvador: Faculdade de Arquitetura, Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Padilha, José, et al. 2008. Tropa de elite (Elite squad). [New York, N.Y.]: Weinstein Co. Home Entertainment.

Perlman, Janice E. 2010. Favela: four decades of living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ponce, Leonel. July 10, 2011. “Cable Car System Crowns Urban Revitalization Project in Rio de Janeiro's Alemão Favelas” Inhabit. http://inhabitat.com/cable-car-system-crowns-urban-revitalization-project-in-rio-de-janeiros-alemao-favela-complex/pac-alemao-rio-de-janeiro-infrastructure-01/#sthash.ui6naw9N.dpuf

Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: women factory workers in a global workplace. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press.

‘Relatório da União acusa operação policial no Rio de "execução sumária"” Folha Online, January 11 2007. Relatório da União acusa operação policial no Rio de "execução sumária" http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u341949.shtml

‘Rio de Janeiro: Gearing up for the Games.” (Advertising Supplement) 2011. Foreign Policy. Peninsula Press. www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/brazilnew.pdf

Rio Lei Organica do Município. [Lei Orgânica (1990)] 2010. Rio Lei Orgânica do Município. - 2. ed. rev. e ampl. - Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Estudos da Procuradoria-Geral do Município.

Rio Prefeitura. “Today, Tomorrow, and Forever.” Cidade Olímpica. Accessed March 5, 2013. http://www.cidadeolimpica.com.br/en/today-tomorrow-and-forever/

“Rio to Stage 2016 Olympic Games.” October 2 2009. BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/8282518.stm

Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press.

Roche, M. 2000. Mega Events and Modernity. London: Routledge.

Rodgers D. 2012. "Haussmannization in the tropics: Abject urbanism and infrastructural violence in Nicaragua". Ethnography. 13 (4): 413-438.

Salles, Walter, et al. 2003. Cidade de Deus (City of God). [São Paulo, Brazil]: O2 Filmes.

Sassen, Saskia.1991. The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

---. 2000. Cities in a world economy. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press.

Scheper-Hughes N and Bourgois P (eds). 2004. Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA:

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.

---. 1995. "The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology". Current Anthropology. 36 (3): 409-440.

Schwambach, Karin. 2011. Mega-events in Rio de Janeiro and Their Influence on the City Planning. 15th International Planning History Conference.

Steiker-Ginsberg, Kate. March 22 2013. “Vila Autódromo Under Pressure from City to Accept Resettlement Housing.” Rio on Watch. http://rioonwatch.org/?p=7832

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. Friction: an ethnography of global connection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Twine, France Winddance. 1998. Racism in a racial democracy: the maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

“UPPs do Jacarezinho e de Manguinhos serão inauguradas nesta quarta-feira.” Jan 15 2013. O Dia. http://odia.ig.com.br/portal/rio/upps-do-jacarezinho-e-de-manguinhos-ser%C3%A3o-inauguradas-nesta-quarta-feira-1.535901

Vanwynsberghe, R., Surborg, B., and Wyly, E. 2012. When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x

Vargas, João. 2006. "When a Favela Dared to Become a Gated Condominium". Latin American Perspectives. 33 (4): 49-81.

---. 2012. "Gendered antiblackness and the impossible Brazilian project: Emerging critical black Brazilian studies". Cultural Dynamics. 24 (1): 3-11.

Walker, Lucy, et al. 2011. Waste land. [London]: Almega Projects.

Zaluar, Alba and Marcos Alvito (eds.). 1999. Um século de favela. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fundação Getúlio Vargas


Endnotes

  1. I.e., Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus; [1959]); Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad; 2007); Cidade de Deus (City of God; 2002)
  2. I.e. Waste Land (2011), a look at a favela in Rio built by catadores (trashpickers)
  3. I.e.,“Rio Sustainable City Project(2012). The video was produced by DOW Chemical Company, a major sponsor of the 2012 London Games and a contractor for present infrastructural development projects in Rio.
  4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a popular console video game, features a sequence in which players raid a favela, shooting ‘terrorists’ and arms dealers.
  5. I.e., Michael Jackson’s controversial music video “They Don’t Care About Us.”
  6. I.e., Arias 2004, 2006; Caldeira 2000; Carvalho 2011; Fischer 2008; Freire-Medeiros 2009; Gaffney 2010; Holston 1989, 2008; Goldstein 2003; Nuijten 2013; Oliveira 1997, 2002; Perlman 2010; Scheper-Hughes 1992, 1995; Schwambach 2011; Twine 1998; Vargas 2006, 2012; Zaluar 1999
  7. The role of the Olympic bid as mode of jockeying for geopolitical status of Rio as a city, and Brazil as a nation, are apparent in a leaked memo from Lisa Kubiske,Deputy Chief of Mission of the United States Mission in Brazil. Rio’s status is here produced not only by concrete economic forces, but also through the production of its reputation and perceptions of ‘primacy’ (Mackay 2010). Citing then president Lula’s remark that Brazil has ended its ‘street dog complex’, newly assured of its status as an important country, the memo remarks on the importance of IOC recognition of a city and a nation for perceptions of its ability to ‘deal with the global financial crisis’ and to compete with North American, European, and Asian cities who lost the Olympic bidding process, itself a long and cost-intensive process for the competing nations.
  8. As I later illustrate, the APO is made up of a group of businessmen and politicians, appointed by the IOC to oversee the entirety of the Olympic process. This includes the distribution of national and municipal funds, marketing of the events, and coordination with state-controlled military police securitization.
  9. The consistent use of female images as the font of Brazilian eroticism portrays part of a broader culture of patriarchy machismo, in which the interests and sexual preferences of heterosexual males are seen to take political precedence.
  10. A woman working as a live-in maid at my hosts’ house in São Paulo explained her carioca origins as the source of her distinct mannerisms, appearance, and accent, as compared to paulistanos. A degree of related civic chauvinism was apparent on the part of my middle-class hosts. Once when I had difficulty understanding the maid, mainly due to my poor Portuguese, their daughter interjected, “She’s carioca;, of course no one can understand!” This comment in fact probably had much more to do with class, and this woman’s origin in Rio’s favelas, than it did the intelligibility of carioca accents in general, as much of the national news and media is based in Rio and bears its vernacular and accent.
  11. Related videos feature children of varying ethnic backgrounds and gender, iconizing Brazilian nationalist discourse of ‘racial democracy’.
  12. Mazzarella (2003) suggests that the rise of global communications technology in the twentieth century has been key to the production of novel forms of branded commodities, designed to iconize specific places of origin within a universal circulation of goods and images. The effect of Olympic events as branded entities has also been coincident with the rise of ‘Olympic TV’ as a ‘sharable global community experience’ that includes a sense of ‘simultaneous co-presence’ (Roche 2006:34).
  13. Collier (2005:35), in his analysis of post-Soviet engagements with capitalist markets in the early 1990s, points to the importance of distinguishing ‘neoliberal technical mechanisms’ from a broader political-economic project, which takes the form of structural transformations (‘marketization’) or the ‘political orientations and goals of key actors’. The post-socialist context presents a compelling comparative locus for studying the diversity of cultures of capitalism.
  14. The term morador means in Portuguese ‘resident’, or ‘dweller’. It is a term those living in favelas frequently employ to describe themselves.
  15. According to Ney dos Santos Oliveira’s studies of a favela in Niteroi, just outside of Rio de Janeiro, whereas Niterói has about 70 percent white and 30 percent black residents (“including self-denominated blacks and browns”), the favela has about 70 percent black and 30 percent white residents (Oliveira 2002; in Vargas 2006).
  16. This exclusive focus might seem to suggest that favelas are the only zones experiencing securitization, gentrification, and violent upheavals based in the conflicting motives and goals of powerful elites with those of the urban poor. However, it is not my goal to marginalize the experiences of the urban poor that do not reside in favelas. I find the term useful as a common identifier of the neighborhoods I study, and a marker for the specificity of particular localities that I wish to foreground in this thesis.
  17. The term ‘favela’ is also considered in some contexts to be a pejorative term. The the use of “morro (hill), communidade popular (popular community), or simply communidade” are common alternate terms used for the favelas by those who live within them (Perlman 2010).
  18. Perlman (2010) argues that the meaning of ‘becoming gente’ is fluid, and an indicator of urban status relations that beyond simple differences in economic earnings. It is used as a term of respect in diverse contexts (i.e. ‘gente boa’; a good person). She suggests, “Being gente is not a static state. It is a relational condition that may vary for a single person over time…It is part of the urban condition of the underclass, a way the affluent distance themselves from those less fortunate and reinforce their sense of being above the rules” (2010: 319)
  19. If organized by a group such the Landless Workers Movement (MST), as has often occurred in other cities, it may be termed an ocupação or invasão - occupation or invasion.
  20. Mega-events in the neo-liberal era have entailed urban displacements of astonishing scale. A report by the center on housing rights and evictions (COHRE.org) claims that prior to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, 720,000 urban poor were forcibly relocated in connection with the events; they place the number of peripheral residents in Beijing displaced in connection with the 2008 Olympics at around 1.25 million.
  21. While photos from these investigative journalists’ reports are strategically framed to tell a certain story, I include them here as (situated) tokens of the material conditions of evictions and demolition.
  22. The film portrays her life after the forced removal, where she is shown as taking on extra work (including 18 hour days) in order to make up for the loss of the home. The precise nature of the city’s compensation of her home is not treated – we as the viewers are left to surmise that whatever the promises made, they have not prevented her from having to undergo hardship including the loss of their family’s downstairs carpentry business. She and her husband, after living with family for three months, have since built a new home together in Fontela, in a different area of the city.
  23. Friedman’s innovations were first tested under the rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, leading to sweeping free market reforms that had devastating economic effects on millions of Chilean poor (Klein 2007:7), alongside the despotic use of state violence.
  24. Harvey (2001:285) emphasizes the necessity of getting beyond the use of space as merely a ‘metaphor’ employed to describe the ‘new cosmopolitanism’ of a globalized world, critiquing Shapiro (1998) as guilty of a kind of banal reduction of the importance of actively produced geographies.
  25. This marked the beginning of a long streak of violence that included the bombing of a shopping center as well as the 2009 downing of a police helicopter.
  26. In recent weeks, the privatization of the Maracaña has been placed under increased doubt under public pressure and allegations of corrupt bidding processes. Its fate is currently uncertain (May 2013).
  27. A classic challenge to the universality of formal economics occurred in the post WWII formalist-substantivist debate. This debate pitted classical economic theory against Polanyi’s conception of markets as ‘embedded’ within locally specific social forms (see Graeber 2001).
  28. These discourses were also in play in the 2007 Pan-American games, and occurred in many ways in contradiction to empirical evidence of event practices. Gaffney(2006: 24) writes, “Ironically, the majority of the facilities built for the Pan 2007 were constructed on wetlands in Barra de Tijuca. The majority of the housing and sporting infrastructures were built on concrete pylons that had to be sunk 45 meters into the subsoil. Additionally, the highway and subway projects envisioned for the Olympics will pass through existing neighborhoods and under park space, lessening water quality and disturbing natural habitat. The majority of Rio’s Olympic installations will be built on the wetlands of Barra de Tijuca.”
  29. Vargas (2006:70) also points to the potential fruitfulness of transnational, diasporic alliances formed through social media, in this case with former U.S. Black Panther militants in which contact “has had a transcendental quality that has generated optimism and confirmed the Afro-Brazilians’ will to endure the struggle” (2006:70).

Suggested Reading from Inquiries Journal

Both gangs and police in Rio de Janeiro seemingly operate irrationally in an extended conflict, as it is highly unlikely that the state will make drug dealing legal, and it is also unlikely that gangs would be able to destroy... MORE»
Advertisement
Davis sees no economic potential in slums. He dissents with Herman De Soto’s argument that the formal recognition of land ownership for slum dwellers will fuel a cycle of improvement as dwellers can now secure loans based on property ownership, arguing that doing so will only increase division between “owners”... MORE»
South Korea's rapid urbanization began in the 1950s and greatly increased the urban population as well as the country's economy. However, the development has been highly damaging to the environment surrounding high-density metropolitan areas such as Seoul. With cutting-edge technology and modern science, green methods of urban development... MORE»
This study provides an overview of the international development field's attention to urbanization. Despite cities being proven the largest hubs of development for the industrializing world, patterns in urban areas often... MORE»
Submit to Inquiries Journal, Get a Decision in 10-Days

Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines.

Representing the work of students from hundreds of institutions around the globe, Inquiries Journal's large database of academic articles is completely free. Learn more | Blog | Submit

Follow IJ

Latest in Anthropology

2021, Vol. 13 No. 04
While the history of ethnography in Russia dates back to the Kievan Rus era, modern ethnographic production in Russia developed in the 17th century and expanded during the late 18th and early 19th centuries as interest in folktales and in the lives... Read Article »
2020, Vol. 12 No. 11
This paper explores the spatial expression of the female gender in early Mesopotamian cities from c. 2334-1595 B.C.E. Gender in Mesopotamia has been widely studied socially but not spatially, and here I aim to provide a consideration of gender through... Read Article »
2020, Vol. 12 No. 11
Many natural history museums use the categories of “cultural” and “natural” as a means of separating exhibition content. This article challenges this practice and the inherent paradigm that supports it. By dismissing the... Read Article »
2020, Vol. 12 No. 09
Since the European invasion of Latin America in the sixteenth century, the concept of indigeneity has been inherently political. In what can only be described as an ongoing ethnocide, colonial powers did everything they could to stomp out the rich... Read Article »
2020, Vol. 12 No. 02
On November 20th, 2018, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that the Female Genital Mutilation Act 1996, which federally prohibits female genital mutilation (FGM/C) in the United States, was unconstitutional within the context of a case that has presented... Read Article »
2019, Vol. 11 No. 02
The issue of “comfort women,” sex slaves utilized by the Japanese army during World War II, is treated in this paper as a collective memory in the consciousness of South Koreans. Differing narratives of this historical event, and the... Read Article »
2018, Vol. 10 No. 12
The study of DNA and genetics has always been a large mystery to many scientists. The current Ancient DNA (aDNA) research on human history is more complex than what can be inferred from modern DNA research. Scientists and researchers are constantly... Read Article »

What are you looking for?

FROM OUR BLOG

7 Big Differences Between College and Graduate School
How to Select a Graduate Research Advisor
5 Tips for Publishing Your First Academic Article