This article analyses the discourse on favelas produced by Brazilian society and consumed in the political field of local administration. The ideological conception of favelas (slums) determines the creation of public policies that reinforce the prejudicial notion of favelas. This work employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse several texts extracted from mass-media stories and press releases of the Rio government. It shows that the state of praxis reproduces the understanding of slums as a phenomenon detached from the rest of society. This alienated vision impacts on different utterances blaming the poor (analysis 1); perpetuating poverty (analysis 2); and reinforcing exclusion (analysis 3).
In the past years, Brazil has deployed a military takeover of dozens of favelas. Presenting data collected from 2012 to 2014 in one of the favelas, I argue that the process of 'pacification' is an attempt of passive revolution, which depends more on manufacturing spatial hegemony with non-military strategies than on the war of manoeuvre that is currently being undertaken.
This is developed through the articulation of the theoretical framework of Gramsci withLefebvre's perspective of the production of space, which exposes the failure to overcoming the fragile presence of state in the territory through everyday state formation.
The spatial imaginations of organisations can be particularly insightful for examining power relations. However, only recently they have gone beyond the limits of the workplace, demonstrating the role of the territory for organised action, particularly in mobilising solidarity for resistance. In this article, I investigate power relations revealed by the political economy of the territory to explain contradictory actions undertaken by organisations. Specifically, I adopt the theoretical framework of the noted Brazilian geographer Milton Santos, who recognises spatial multiplicity and fragmentation while maintaining an appreciation of the structural conditions of the political economy. This perspective is particularly useful for the analysis of civil society organisations (CSOs) in a Brazilian favela (slum), given the context of high inequality perpetuated by the selective flows of urban development. First, I show that the history of favelas and their role in the territorial division of labour explain the profiles of existing organisations. Then, I examine how the political engagement of CSOs with distinct solidarities results in a dialectical tension that leads to both resistance based on local shared interests and the active reproduction of central spaces even if the ends are not shared. The article contributes to the literature of space and organisations by explaining how territorial dynamics mediate power relations within and across organisations, not only as resistance but also as the active reproduction of economic and political regimes.
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