Sociological and anthropological productions that take the city as their object of investigation have met new approaches in Brazil, especially since the 1990s. This paper aims to discuss the recent theoretical and empirical trajectories of research proposals as their authors take the city to the spotlight. This scientific endeavor analyzes a corpus of theses and dissertations produced by students of the Sociology Graduation Program of the Federal University of Ceará, in Brazil, as such works encompass shifts and trends in predominant theories and methods of the Social Sciences in Brazil over the past two decades. They demonstrate an increasing interest for the microsociological look towards the urban, which we argue to be an effect of the influence of Anthropology in the theoretical and methodological approach of research objects. From the set of selected works, the city is composed by territories cross-cut by a strong dimension of power and conflict, as an influence of Political Geography. French Sociology and Historiography contribute with theoretical perspectives that prioritize the senses of creation and insubordination, thus attributing to the practice of diverse social actors in urban places. In the set of works, the neighborhood unfolds as a microcosm of social practices, embedded with multiple senses of belonging and spatial conflicts, which are expressive of a wider social struggle.
This article is based on an ethnographic study carried out in one of the main public spaces of a traditional upper-middle class neighborhood in the city of Fortaleza, in Northeastern Brazil. We focus on reflecting, from the case of Praça das Flores, on the dynamics of uses made of public and private investments in urban spaces, and how these are indicators of other ways of maintaining different types of capital and privileges of elites in cities in the context of global capitalism. We analyze the dynamics of privatization of the square and its green area by an important real estate developer, seeking to understand how this group mobilized private interests through an urban policy of "Adoption of Green Squares and Areas", making millionaire investments in elite and reinforcing forms of inequalities of class and race in the city, as these investments do not reach the urban areas of the periphery in equal measure.
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