Street commerce as a 'problem' in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

Hirata, Daniel Veloso

doi:10.1590/s1809-43412014000100004

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…It is in this sense that the notion of the condomínio aberto may be understood as typifying a middle-class desire to ‘urbanize’ the condomínio logic, thus enforcing a spatial arrangement and scopic regime that effectively invisibilize class divisions and transform public space into a staging ground of pacified and politically innocuous conviviality. Against this backdrop, it is significant that the SAVIMA members quoted street vendors as a major nuisance to be inhibited, thus chiming in with municipal policies aiming at the criminalization as well as marginalization of informal commerce (Hirata, 2014). Class background is only irrelevant as long as everybody complies with a sanitized code of conduct that quintessentially accommodates middle-class ideations of hygiene and orderliness, whereas the informal selling of drinks and snacks during the carnival season constitutes a vital source of income for thousands of working-class families.…”

Section: Securocratic Appropriations: Detecta’s Public–private Rolloutmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networked security in the colonial present: Mapping infrastructures of digital surveillance and control in São Paulo

Altenhain

2023

Security Dialogue

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The saturation of urban space with all kinds of information and communication technology–driven security devices has long since turned into a recurrent topic of both human geography and critical security studies. However, comparatively little effort has been made to analyze these technologies and infrastructures in relation to their locally specific modes of deployment. This relative failure to account for technopolitical path-dependencies may result in unilaterally positivistic descriptions, when, in fact, there is no such thing as a technopolitically and/or semantically ‘virgin’ urban fabric waiting to accommodate a new securitarian blueprint. The present article aims to address this lacuna by analyzing the introduction of a ‘smart’ surveillance system in São Paulo, Brazil. Taking as its point of departure the condomínio fechado (the ‘closed condominium’) as a locally specific urban diagram, it sets out to trace the system’s implementation along the lines of a (post)colonial topology sorting bodies and organizing circulations according to a historically entrenched pattern of social domination. Accordingly, despite its failure to significantly reduce crime rates and raise the general level of public security, the system succeeded in further normalizing a configuration in which the obsession with personal security eclipses any potential for political transformation. Its implementation thus endorses a social status quo that is both structurally violent and profoundly unequal.

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Section: Securocratic Appropriations: Detecta’s Public–private Rolloutmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networked security in the colonial present: Mapping infrastructures of digital surveillance and control in São Paulo

Altenhain

2023

Security Dialogue

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“…(p. 58) Considerando, entonces, el lugar clave que revisten les agentes de control en la forma en la que se constituye y se desenvuelve el comercio callejero, al momento de analizar la manera en la que se establece la actividad en el espacio urbano, se vuelve relevante indagar en las prácticas localizadas de aquelles agentes. Diversas investigaciones han profundizado en esta línea, preguntándose por las formas que asume el poder policial y sus modalidades de intervención sobre los grupos de vendedores callejeres (Pita, 2012;Pita y Pacecca, 2017), por la incidencia que tienen las intervenciones de las agencias gubernamentales en la conformación de los 'mercados informales' (Freire, 2012;Hirata, 2014), o por las distintas modalidades de administración, regulación y resolución de conflictos ligados al comercio callejero en el espacio público (Mello, 2011;Pires, 2010Pires, , 2011.…”

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La venta callejera en tiempos de pandemia. Disputas por el espacio público en Buenos Aires.

Belcic

2022

Bitácora Urbano Territorial

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Este escrito indaga en las dinámicas de relacionamiento entre vendedores callejeres de un barrio de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) y les agentes que se encargan de su control, en el contexto de la pandemia. En ese sentido, explora las transformaciones sucedidas tras la pandemia en las formas en la que les vendedores se establecieron en el espacio público, pero, también, se pregunta por las continuidades y vigencias de aquello que sucedía previamente. Para eso se recupera tanto el trabajo de campo realizado con vendedores callejeres durante la pandemia como el de periodos anteriores, en el marco de una investigación doctoral (en curso) de carácter etnográfico. Así, tras reconstruir las interacciones cotidianas entre les vendedores y les agentes de control, se da cuenta de las cambiantes prácticas policiales y de las acciones de respuesta de les vendedores durante el contexto de la pandemia. Además, estas relaciones se analizan con base en experiencias y procesos de más larga data que afectaron y dotaron de particulares sentidos a las formas de disputar el uso del espacio público en pandemia.

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“…If the regulation of informal commerce has long been an issue for the government, there has been an effort to shift the way such activities are perceived by transforming street vendors in small entrepreneurs. In contrast with the repression strategies commonly used to deal with informal commerce, the entrepreneurial logic innovates by fostering certain business practices, building partnerships between the public and private sectors and creating programs to promote workers' stability through the possibility of formalizing their enterprises (Hirata 2014).…”

Section: The Enterprisation Of Informal Commercementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, anyone who strolls down Brás can witness counterfeit goods being traded at informal malls, and most of the transactions are carried out without the issuance of invoices. In practice, the negotiation of political merchandise shifted scales: it is now a wholesale commodity (Hirata 2014) whose costs are often embedded in rent prices. This gives a better sense of security to traders of illegal goods, even if the dimension of illegibility (Das & Poole 2008) of such negotiations remains the same.…”

Section: Feirinha Da Madrugada's Enterprisation Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Problem and Power: Informal Commerce Between Repression and Enterprisation

Rangel

2019

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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More often than not, the idea of 'informal commerce' is associated with precariousness, informality, illegality, and poor product quality. This is the common representation of this market historically and systematically built based on everyday conversation, official discourse, and the media, which also tends to reinforce the aspects of insecurity and disorder of the spaces and marginality of those involved to describe it. Based on interviews, media coverage, and ethnographical observation of business practices carried out by a group of traders, the objective of this paper is to analyze the transformations this market has gone through in recent years and reflect upon the reasons for, and the effect of, new regulatory strategies that were put in place. I shall discuss this transformation in light of the concept of enterprisation of informal commerce (i.e., the application of enterprise models to such business activities), which have been transforming spaces, regulations, and even workers' conducts, perceptions, and expectations. I hereby argument that regulatory strategies have been set forth based on a double narrative that responds to both economical exploitation interests and the discourse against certain illegal activities, and that this resulted in a process of labor gentrification.1 Once a predominantly rural area, Brás turned into a working-class neighborhood, then a center for Italian immigration, and afterward a destination for intense migration from the northeast of Brazil, which gave rise to one of Latin America's largest and most important informal markets. Factories fled from Brás in 1970, which led to fewer job opportunities, reduction in population, physical deterioration, and abandonment of industrial barns. Thanks to the permanence of clothing manufacturers in the area, this shift resulted in the intensification of economic activities related to services, wholesaling, and retail. There was also an increase in the number of street vendors, who took advantage of the great circulation of people between train, metro, and bus stations. This is a quick overview of how Brás came to be. For practical reasons, I opted for keeping this description short, even though I believe knowing its history is important to understand the current setup and dynamics of the informal commerce in the area. For additional information regarding the neighborhoods' development, refer to the following references: For a historic background of Brás as a prominent industrial district, see Torres (1981); for the impact of Italian immigration in the area, see Andrade (1994); for the migration from the northeast of Brazil and its relation to the informal commerce, see Gomes (2006). 2 In 2017, the homicide rate in Brás was 38.76 per 100,000 inhabitants overall and 133.45 per 100,000 inhabitants for youngsters.This makes it the subdistrict with the highest number of homicides in São Paulo, according to Rede Nossa São Paulo's Inequality Map. However, Brás' population density is among the smallest in the city, which makes it necessary to r...

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Street commerce as a 'problem' in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

Abstract: The aim of this article is to describe how street commerce that has come to be seen as a 'problem' in two major Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro and

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

Networked security in the colonial present: Mapping infrastructures of digital surveillance and control in São Paulo

Networked security in the colonial present: Mapping infrastructures of digital surveillance and control in São Paulo

La venta callejera en tiempos de pandemia. Disputas por el espacio público en Buenos Aires.

Problem and Power: Informal Commerce Between Repression and Enterprisation

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