Territorial political dynamics in the peripheries: From the Order of Progress to the Management of the Ruins of the Present

• Grant number: 24/22889-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Isadora de Andrade Guerreiro
• Grantee: Ana Luíza Pacheco e Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s, during Brazil's period of industrial accumulation, the territorial dynamics of the peripheries were oriented by the idea of progress. These dynamics were organized around the world of work and had forms of organization that demonstrated diverse political projects focused on the future, such as those confronting the military dictatorship, which envisioned a democratic, participatory horizon aiming for expanded citizenship. With productive restructuring and the neoliberal reform of the state, changes happen in the world of work, as the reform aims to reduce the workforce by substituting living labor with dead labor, as well as advancing informality by reducing workers to mere factors of production, with what Abílio (2017) calls the "real subsumption of viração" being observed, in which even survival dynamics are captured by corporations. In this context, the present research aims to examine the political developments of the past few decades, referencing what Paulo Arantes referred to as the "New Time of the World"-a time in which the categories of "experience" and "expectation" converge so closely that the future enters the present, creating a horizon of diminishing expectations, with urgency becoming the central political category. The research seeks to analyze how such socio-economic changes, in relation to the New Time of the World and its management and control techniques, affect social imagination and political capacity. Understanding that the world of work and the idea of progress no longer organize social conflicts, this study questions what category and form could now organize these conflicts, and what role the periphery plays in the political organization of this new time. To this end, the research will conduct a situated investigation, observing these processes in an occupation located in the South Zone of São Paulo, focusing on the material dimensions and the conflicts affecting this territory, in order to understand how the diminishing expectations of the New Time alter the local imaginative and political capacity.