Minefield: agencies and disputes over prostitution at Parque da Luz

• Grant number: 20/04319-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2020
• End date: December 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Heloisa Buarque de Almeida
• Grantee: Ana Carolina Braga Azevedo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

With an ethnographic approach, this research project aims to understand practices and discourses stemming from two elements: (1) how a Civil Society Organization (CSO) devoted to rescuing women in situation of prostitution, in Parque da Luz downtown São Paulo,constructs and undertakes its assistance actions and abolitionist discourses about prostitution;(2) in which way women who work as prostitutes in the Park operate, in relation to perceiving, reformulating and managing these discourses and actions. Based on the theoretical literature on the subject and reflections from preliminary fieldwork, this project considers this CSO to be an organization that integrates the rescue sector in Brazil. In addition, I intend to understand these discourses and practices considering their contextual and relational character, taking into account the various theories and movements that influenced the founders for the construction of the rhetoric and actions of the CSO, as well as the growth of feminist neo-abolitionist debates in the country, and the very context of prostitution in Parque da Luz.Preliminary field research has shown that this rescue rhetoric is produced from the construction and process of adjustment of the figure of the victim of prostitution. To understand this process, it is necessary to consider and reflect upon different social positions(occupation and family configuration) that these women hold, articulated with how social differences such as race/color, class, gender, sexuality and generation are being managed in the moral discourse elaborated and operated by the volunteers in the daily life of this CSO. In addition to understanding how the CSO elaborates, manages, operates and maneuvers these vulnerabilities to build this figure of the victim, I also intend to understand how these women are producing their own narratives from the capacity of agency owned by each of them, as well as the management and operation of their own vulnerabilities to build themselves as victims figures and, thus, obtain certain benefits. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

AZEVEDO, Ana Carolina Braga. Abolitionists crossings: women in situation of prostitution have the right to dream. 2024. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.