Houses and economy in the favela

• Autor(a) principal: Motta,Eugênia
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Vibrant
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1809-43412014000100005
• topic: economy; favela; Complexo do Alemão; house

A particular house provides the thread for a description of how people manage their domestic spaces, plan for the future, earn and spend money and care for their family. The aim of the article is to reflect on the elements that modulate the economy of the favela where they live, setting out from the notion of house, taken as a complex array of people, objects and spaces constructed in relation to other houses. These relations involve interdependence, asymmetries, affects and conflicts visible through everyday exchanges, commensality and the use of money. The ethnographic approach allows us to take economic practices as a window onto the ways in which the many dimensions of social life are intertwined: economy, family practices, gender relations, morality, spatiality and temporality. The text aims to engage in a critical dialogue with views of the favela as a place of absence and of the economy as a separate sphere of life.