Between misery and power: Favelas and peripheries as a business

• Grant number: 24/18484-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Taniele Cristina Rui
• Grantee: Silvio Rogério dos Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/03051-4 - Long-standing effects of COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable families in Brazil: reflexions about inequalities, public policies and everyday, AP.PNGP.PI

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of this research is to understand a process that became evident with the COVID-19 pandemic and that refers to the transformations that have led favelas and peripheral areas to be considered as a powerful place for investments and businesses with social impact. Based on an ethnography that will focus on the groups CUFA Brasil, G10 Favelas and Gerando Falcões, the work of these groups will be investigated, how their actions are organized, as well as the impacts caused by these actions on their target audiences. Also as part of the research, a social historiography of peripheral areas will be reconstructed, investigating their transition from being "dangerous classes" to being seen as a prosperous place for businesses with social impact and a locus of entrepreneurship. In other words, the aim is to understand how the notion of "the favela as a powerhouse" is produced, as the CEOs of the aforementioned groups say. Furthermore, the aim is to analyze the political, social, economic, cultural and subjective transformations that accompany such processes. With regard to the subjectivities constituted in this process, it is of interest to this research to verify the relationships between such transformations and the effects of colonialism and neoliberalism, as well as the ways in which culture and power are articulated.