Luana Motta
Professor at the Department of Sociology at Federal University of São Carlos. Coordinator of Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Deborah Fromm
PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at University of Campinas and researcher at the Centre for Urban Ethnographies (Neu/Cebrap).
Janaina Maldonado
PhD Candidate at Hamburg University in the LFF Graduate Programme “Democratising security in turbulent times” and Doctoral researcher at German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
André de Pieri Pimentel
PhD Candidate in Social Sciences at University of Campinas and researcher at Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Isabela Vianna Pinho
PhD Candidate in Sociology at Federal University of Sao Carlos and researcher at Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Gregório Zambon
PhD Candidate in Social Sciences at University of Campinas and researcher at Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Luiz Gustavo Simão Pereira
Undergraduate student of Social Sciences at Federal University of São Carlos and researcher at Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Juliana Alcântara
Undergraduate student of Social Sciences at Federal University of São Carlos and researcher at Namargem – Centre for Urban Research.
Lucas Alves Fernandes Silva
Bachelor in Social Sciences from the Federal University of São Carlos.
Daniel Veloso Hirata
Professor at the Department of Sociology and Methodology in Social Sciences at Fluminense Federal University. Coordinator of the Centre for the Study of New Illegalisms (Geni).
Series Editors’ Preface
IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series
The IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series shares IJURR’s commitments to critical, global, and politically relevant analyses of our urban worlds. Books in this series bring forward innovative theoretical approaches and present rigorous empirical work, deepening understandings of urbanization processes, but also advancing critical insights in support of political action and change. The Book Series Editors appreciate the theoretically eclectic nature of the field of urban studies. It is a strength that we embrace and encourage. The Editors are particularly interested in the following issues:
Comparative urbanism
Diversity, difference and neighborhood change
Environmental sustainability
Financialization and gentrification
Governance and politics
International migration
Inequalities
Urban and environmental movements
The series is explicitly interdisciplinary; the Editors judge books by their contribution to the field of critical urban studies rather than according to disciplinary origin. We are committed to publishing studies with themes and formats that reflect the many different voices and practices in the field of urban studies. Proposals may be submitted to Editor in Chief, Walter Nicholls ([email protected]), and further information about the series can be found at www.ijurr.org.
Walter Nicholls
Manuel Aalbers
Talja Blokland
Dorothee Brantz
Patrick Le Galès
Jenny Robinson
Introduction
Gabriel Feltran
It’s November 2015. A white Suzuki Jimny moves slowly through the streets of Vila Mariana, a middle-class neighborhood in southwestern São Paulo. Inside, three researchers talk about the best way to get to Vila Cisper, an old working-class neighborhood in the East Zone. Vila Cisper was settled in the 1950s after a glass bottle factory was set up there. The factory belonged to Olavo Egydio de Souza Aranha Jr., scion of a family from the Portuguese nobility, who studied engineering and architecture in Europe. His employees were migrants from the Brazilian countryside, descendants of Christianized Indians or blacks freed from slavery, or even poor whites, especially Italians, who had come to São Paulo as beneficiaries of Government population-whitening policies. They were taken on by the factory as they came: mostly illiterate, no surname, no papers.
We don’t know the way for sure, so we decided to follow Google Maps directions. A cell phone fixed to the vehicle’s dashboard with the help of a plastic holder begins telling us the way to go. We continue on our way, talking about the fact that we are in a Japanese car, made in Brazil, with a cell phone from an American multinational company, powered by Google, one of the largest companies
