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| Author(s): |
Renata Alves Sampaio
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2012-03-08 |
| Examining board members: |
Ana Fani Alessandri Carlos;
Amelia Luisa Damiani;
Cibele Saliba Rizek
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| Advisor: | Ana Fani Alessandri Carlos |
| Abstract | |
This thesis attempts to propose a movement of theoretical thinking. This movement begins with a proposition or acknowledgment: the relevance of the notion of urban violence for understanding the contents of the urban problematic that the modern world announces. The investigation, however, has revealed the limits of the phrase urban violence, defined by and confused with in the social sciences in general the idea of criminality. This identification (violence with criminality) poses obstacles to a critical analysis of the urban, obscuring the path towards an understanding of the essence of the social practice that is supposedly grasped by the notion of urban violence. Acknowledging these limitations, the reflection shifts to a second moment of the research: that of coming to terms with the inadequateness of the notion of urban violence for revealing the relations between violence and urban problematic. This brings us to the subject of this research. Considering that our key questions could not be answered with the notion of urban violence, an analytical inversion emerged as necessary. Moving beyond the notion of criminality, the aim of this research is to cast light on the emergence of a violence that is linked with and has roots in the processes of production of the urban space and reproduction of the relations of production. We intend, thus, to bring into focus not urban violence, but instead the very process of urbanization as a process that is essentially violent. In order to do so, we have identified three access points to the violent aspects of urbanization, with the aim of revealing intentional and socially damaging forces that are embodied in the urban. Firstly, we have considered the role of private property as one of the bases of urbanizations violence. We have attempted to understand the extent to which violence is materialized in the processes of expropriation and segregation structurally linked with private property as the basis of urbanization. Secondly, we have highlighted the states role represented here by urban planning in the production of urban space and in the reproduction of market exchange relations whose immanent content is violence. Finally, we have tried to demonstrate how a number of constraints posed by capitalist urbanization translate, at the level of everyday life, into manifestations of the violence closely linked with this process. While we have not defined a case study, we have set out with an investigation of a spatial fragment in Sao Paulo: Jardim Panorama and the neighboring development Parque Cidade Jardim, located in Morumbi district, in the western section of the city. By articulating totality and particularity, we have tried to bring to light the contents of capitalist urbanization, centering our analysis on one of such contents (violence). Violence is certainly neither the only nor the primary aspect of the urbanization process, but it is certainly relevant for grasping the production of urban space from the perspective of its critical foundations. (AU) | |