Empreendedorismo e ativismo cultural nas periferias brasileiras = Entrepreneurship and cultural activism in brazilian peripheries

• Main Author: Livia De Tommasi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Università del Salento 2018-12-01
• Series: H-ermes: Journal of Communication
• Subjects: periphery; favelas; Brazil; entrepreneurial spirit; cultural production; suburban cultures; young people
• Online Access: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/h-ermes/article/view/19925

Entrepreneurship and cultural activism in brazilian peripheries. Periferias, favelas, hills, areas of special interest, subnormal clusters, margins. There are several expressions used in Brazil to name regions of the city in order to demarcate their alterity in relation to the "centers". Place of the fault (of services, opportunities, public policies, State), of violence, of the "plundering" in opposition to the places of the city where the social life that matters. The peripheral regions have always been seen as places of "authenticity", of cultural richness, of the sonority of samba, of popular inventiveness, of struggle and resistance. In the last decade, this positive image has been fed by the diffusion and effervescence of artistic and cultural practices (hip hop, graffiti, sarahs, theater collectives, new dance styles, audiovisual production), as well as by a discursive regime aimed at celebrating "creative" abilities and the enterprising talents of its residents. In the context of neoliberal rationality, these supposedly "resilient" virtues became the model of "good practices". In the text, I propose to describe the peripheral cultural scene and its multiple assemblages, in the context of the profound transformations that occurred in Brazilian cities in the years of the governments of the Workers' Party. In particular argument about the emergence of a new figure of worker, the cultural entrepreneur activist and his "career would run," that is, the specific ways in which his work activities and militancy decline.