globalization, employment and poverty in metropolitan Brazil: the lower circuit of the urban economy in São Paulo, Fortaleza e Belém

Author(s)

Marina Regitz Montenegro

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2012-03-07

Examining board members

Maria Laura Silveira; Maria Mónica Arroyo; Marcio Antonio Cataia; Heitor Frúgoli Junior; Saint Clair Cordeiro da Trindade Junior

• Advisor: Maria Laura Silveira

Abstract

Cities host different social and territorial divisions of labor that can be explained by distinct nevertheless interdependent logics. Juxtaposed in the built environment, multiple forms of production and consumption are performed with various techniques and forms of organization. According to Santos (1975), these coexisting divisions of labor comprehend circuits of the urban economy. As a totality, the city can be understood through the dialectical and inseparable relationship between the upper and the lower circuits, whose activities are distinguished according to the different degrees of technology, capital and organization (SANTOS, 1975; SILVEIRA, 2007). In this study, we seek to analyze the process of expansion and renovation of the lower circuit in the Brazilian metropolises. Starting from the realities of the cities of Sao Paulo, Brasília, Fortaleza and Belém, we search to unveil the dynamics that characterize the lower circuit in the period of globalization and to reveal the different regional features embodied by this circuit in the Brazilian territory today. To the extent that the contents of the period of globalization install themselves in places with varying degrees and through different connections, the form that the scientific, technological and informational space reaches the regions produces poverty in different ways and implies, in turn, a distinct reformulation of the lower circuit according to each region and city. (AU)