Rio De Janeiro Favela Research Articles

Anxious and depressed women's experiences of emotional suffering and help seeking in a Rio de Janeiro favela.

Taking into consideration issues such as stigma and the mental health gap, this study explores narratives of anxious and depressed women treated in a community-based primary care service in a Rio de Janeiro favela about their suffering and care. We analysed 13 in-depth interviews using questions from Kadam's study. Framework analysis studied Access, Gateway, Trust, Psychosocial Issues, and Primary Mental Health Care, as key-concepts. Vulnerability and accessibility were the theoretical references. Thematic analysis found "suffering category", highlighting family and community problems, and "help seeking category", indicating how these women have coped with their emotional problems and addressed their needs through health services, community resources and self-help. Women's language patterns indicated links between implicit social rules and constraints to talk about suffering, especially if related to local violence. High medical turnover and overload are barriers for establishing a positive relationship with family physicians and continuity of care is a facilitator that promotes trust, security and adherence. Concluding, to plan community-based primary mental health care of this population, cultural and social factors must be comprehended as well as the work health teams conditions.

Cultura cidadã: aproximação psicossocial da norma legal no contexto de uma favela carioca

In the first part of this paper, we approach the citizenship culture as it was developed in Colombia by the former mayor of Bogota, Antanas Mockus, taking into account both the conceptual structure and the methodological principles of implementation, namely, the internalization of the rule and the creation of communication strategies aimed at achieving willingly cooperation. After making a psychosocial approach of the citizenship culture in the light of the theory of the social representations, we present the results of a prototypical analysis based on free association data from a sample of 156 teenagers who live at Mangueira slum, in Rio de Janeiro, exercise that enabled us to make a socio-cultural and political reading from the fulfillment or failure of the law. Finally, as an educational proposal, we hand in the results of a participatory action research —Aventureiros—, a program of education for citizenship focused on children, based on the very Colombian methodological principles of the citizenship culture and adapted to the Rio de Janeiro favela environment.

Accumulation by Forced Removal: The Thinning of Rio de Janeiro's Favelas in Preparation for the Games

AbstractIn this article we argue that the pacification of strategic Rio de Janeiro favelas is a case of what David Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession, allowing for capital accumulation at multiple scales. Drawing on multi-year participant observation, we seek to show the particular form that this process takes as it works through Rio's social and spatial structures. Unlike the mass removals of the 1960s and 1970s, favela families have more recently been displaced through a process of thinning, in the context of a neoliberal development programme centred on a series of mega-events. Removal is carried out through a combination of threats, promises, disinformation, and the intentional generation of insecurity that together constitute a form of psychological terror.

Performing humanitarian militarism

This article investigates a case in which the Brazilian military, according to national press, “invaded” and “occupied” a Rio de Janeiro favela neighborhood under the auspices of a public security program. Rio’s “pacification” program aims to replace drug trafficking organizations’ control of favelas with Pacifying Police Units and counts on the occasional participation of the military. Based on research with military personnel and favela residents, I investigate the construction and consequences of the pairing of militarism with humanitarianism. I show how these logics are not opposed, as they might at first sound, but in practice, deeply aligned. Among other reasons, both state force and state caregiving are performances to justify military presence on the streets to audiences in and outside the favela. The visible spectacle of humanitarian militarism effaces abuses and makes light of the everyday fears and insecurities suffered by the urban poor.

“I'm Not a Leader”: Cynicism and Good Citizenship in a Brazilian Favela

This article analyzes political agency in an environment of everyday urban violence through ethnographic examination of a curious pattern in the civic life of a Rio de Janeiro favela. Residents are cynical about local leaders and civic groups, even as they lead and participate in collective activities to benefit their communities. I argue that in the context of a disappointing democracy, a violent state, and powerful drug trafficking gangs, residents’ cynicism articulates and protects a vision of good citizenship. Conceptions of the “good” are informed by ideas made salient during Brazil's redemocratization; the “good” is also enmeshed in complex ways with trafficker control. [Brazil, favela, violence, democracy, drug traffickers, citizenship, civic life]

The Dilemmas of Pacification: News of War and Peace in the ‘Marvelous City’

This article is a reflection on police work carried out in Rio de Janeiro favelas, from the viewpoint of someone who works in the field as a police manager in an effort to present the risks, opportunities, mistakes and achievements of the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs), within the process of ‘pacification’ currently underway in Rio de Janeiro. The empirical data, based on observations recorded by the author during his time as coordinator of the UPPs, serves as a counterpoint to academic research produced on the subject.

Illicit Authority and Its Competitors: The Constitution of Governance in Territories of Limited Statehood

This article examines how governance in territories of limited statehood (TOLS) subjected to ‘illicit authority’ is constituted and whether non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could emerge as viable alternatives. Accordingly, it first proposes a constitutive framework for analyzing how an indeterminate actor-type assumes authority in TOLS, stipulating that public or private actors can institutionalize governance by asserting primacy in three contexts: coercive violence, socioeconomic security, and social legitimation. Second, Rio de Janeiro's favelas provide an empirical basis for investigating authority in TOLS, demonstrating that illicit authority derives from relative preeminence within the three contexts and thus enables the institutionalization of endogenous social order. The third section evaluates the feasibility of establishing NGO governance in TOLS by drawing empirically from ongoing state-led ‘pacification’ efforts in Rio's favelas. The pursuant analysis exposes NGOs' comparative disadvantage in the context of violence and thus proposes three ‘hybrid structures’ enabling NGOs to overcome this violence deficit. The conclusion indicates that primacy within the three governance contexts allows illicit authorities to establish institutions that sustain governance. NGOs, meanwhile, must first overcome their violence deficit to help enact competing institutional arrangements, reduce violence, and enhance human security in TOLS.

Violence, Citizenship, and Religion in a Rio de Janeiro Favela

Across Latin America armed groups have come to dominate large sectors of social, political, and economic activity in poor and working-class communities. While scholars have noted the importance of religion in offering individuals and communities protection from violence, there has been relatively little study of the place of religion in contemporary armed activity in the region. This paper looks at the role of religion in the governance practices of an armed group in one Rio de Janeiro favela. The article will show that religious activities in this context provide an important arena in which mem- bers of the armed group can discuss autonomous and collaborative strategies to address security issues in the city. Most critically, religious discourse provides space to move discussions of politics in this community away from issues of citizenship and rights and into a discussion of justice and the distribution of resources among poor communities. Rio de Janeiro has experienced signifi cant criminal violence since the mid- 1980s. During this period the city has faced a rolling security crisis in which vio- lence has diffused from the state into the hands of various armed actors, leading to questions about the meaning of citizenship in the city. Indeed, a host of scholars and policy makers have characterized favelas as parallel polities set apart from the city as a whole (Arias 2006, 6-8). Confl ict in Rio reached its peak in 1995, when there were 67 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. A slow but long-term decline in homicides has occurred since then, with the number falling to 23 per 100,000 in 2011. Nevertheless the city re- mains a highly violent place characterized by ongoing engagements between an imperfect police force that often takes bribes from the very criminals it claims to be fi ghting, and drug traffi ckers that dominate the favelas (shantytowns), where perhaps a quarter of the city's 6.3 million inhabitants live. Poor and working-class Rio residents have developed a wide variety of strate- gies to deal with the complex political and social situations they confront. These have included organizing through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in- stead of offi cial associative groups and reducing their general involvement in lo- cal civic affairs. Others have sought protection by joining Evangelical religious communities, which, in the context of urban violence, provide a social circle that seeks to remove itself and the families associated with it from the wider problem of drug abuse that many believe accompanies much gang activity. Indeed, today Rio de Janeiro is nearly one-quarter Evangelical, with high concentrations in the

Reality in miniature: the Morrinho Project as a community-based and site-specific artwork from a Rio de Janeiro favela

This article discusses Morrinho, a grassroots artistic project from a Rio de Janeiro favela (slum or squatter settlement) that visited several prestigious, international art events. The project started without artistic intentions, as a form of children's play, but developed into a successful organisation that combines artistic and social goals. The article shows how the project was incorporated into the world of High Art, arguing that its common interpretation often gives a simplified view. It then presents an alternative reading based on the complex sociological position of the project's participants as well as their mature and reflective artistic representation. Crucial in this argument is an interdisciplinary approach that combines a sociological understanding of the project's favela context, knowledge of relevant art-historical debates and a first-hand understanding of the present functioning of the project. Based on this approach, the article discusses the position which the Morrinho Project occupies in the debate surrounding the increasing amount of community-based art projects that aim to combine artistic achievements with a direct, socio-political relevance.

Flying for the Very First Time: Mobilities, Social Class and Environmental Concerns in a Rio de Janeiro Favela

This article aims to be a contribution towards an understanding of the interplays between subjective, situated and normative justifications for traveling and the imaginary of class and global warming in Brazil. Taking as its empirical reference the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, it focuses on how people who are having the opportunity to travel by plane for the first time accommodate three interrelated issues: their willingness to experience an energy intensive way of travelling, their affective and material realities, and their awareness about the changing of the world’s climate. The article concludes with some reflections on how to reintegrate global knowing with local meaning around travel and climate change.

Building Interfaces Between State and Community

An important dimension of the research process in the case of Rio de Janeiro's favelas was linking the research to policy dialogues on public security. This briefing note explores some of the issues that emerged through these dialogues. These include the paucity of legitimate community representatives, the way that the government uses information, and the importance of time and timing in building policy dialogues. In order for there to be a productive dialogue with policymakers at the municipal, state, or other level, interlocutors between the favelas and government institutions are also key.

The Myth of Personal Security: Criminal Gangs, Dispute Resolution, and Identity in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas

This article examines the politics of how drug traffickers resolve disputes and maintain order in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Much popular discourse and some scholarly studies argue that drug traffickers play a major role in controlling crime and minimizing conflicts there. This article shows that traffickers enforce community norms under a variable political calculus in which well-connected and respected residents are less likely to be punished for rule violations than are individuals who are marginal to the life of the community. This allows many favela residents who conform to local norms to feel a degree of control over their own safety, a myth of personal security in otherwise violent neighborhoods.

The Myth of Personal Security: Criminal Gangs, Dispute Resolution, and Identity in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas

AbstractThis article examines the politics of how drug traffickers resolve disputes and maintain order in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Much popular discourse and some scholarly studies argue that drug traffickers play a major role in controlling crime and minimizing conflicts there. This article shows that traffickers enforce community norms under a variable political calculus in which well-connected and respected residents are less likely to be punished for rule violations than are individuals who are marginal to the life of the community. This allows many favela residents who conform to local norms to feel a degree of control over their own safety, a “myth of personal security” in otherwise violent neighborhoods.

Choreographing people's power in Argentina: Documentaries of the crisis and the New Wave in Latin American Cinema

The amazingly choreographed opening sequence of the Brazilian film Cidade de Deus (2002) follows teenage photographer Busca-pé through the alleys of the Rio de Janeiro favela City of God as he chases a chicken until he is trapped squarely between a line of heavily armed police and a host of more heavily armed drug lords during the gang wars of the 1990s. The camera then whirls around Busca-pé as he shrinks back to the child of the 1960s in the early days of the city.1 We accompany him on his life journey through three decades in which the government-sponsored housing project deteriorates into the infamous slum that survives only by drug trafficking, so that by the end of the film, when we are back in the globalised present, we are thoroughly familiar not only with all of the characters who are about to shoot at us from the gang side, but also with the logic and ethics of the drug economy from which these fascinating individuals have emerged.

The Metamorphosis of Marginality in Rio De Janeiro

Both the theoretical concept and the social reality of marginality have been significantly transformed since the 1960s, but Helen Safa's final comment above, that “[the poor] remain an integral part of the nation,” remains as true today as it was when I lived in Rio de Janeiro's favelas in 1968–69. As I argued in The Myth of Marginality, favela residents were tightly integrated into society, albeit in an extremely perverse and asymmetrical manner. They worked in the least desirable jobs, under the worst conditions for the lowest pay; participated in the political life of their communities and city (to the extent permitted within the dictatorship) to little or no benefit; and contributed to the cultural and social life of the city without recognition. Peter Ward's introductory summary above lays out the context and parameters of my earlier work. Now, thirty-five years later, I am engaged in an intensivere-study, interviewing the original study participants, their children, and grandchildren. As we have data on the parents of the original interviewees, this enables us to look at propositions of marginality over four generations.