"Um lugar muito de branco": performances de classe e raça na Praça das Flores em Fortaleza

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Antônio Fábio Macedo de
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC)
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/59123
• topic: Discriminação racial - Praça das Flores (Fortaleza, CE); Praça das Flores (Fortaleza, CE) - Relações raciais; Espaços públicos - Praça das Flores (Fortaleza, CE); Classe média - Aspectos sociais - Praça das Flores (Fortaleza, CE); Pessoas brancas - Identidade racial - Praça das Flores (Fortaleza, CE)

In this research, we approached the behavior of the middle and upper classes in one of the main public spaces in the city of Fortaleza, Praça das Flores in the Aldeota neighborhood. We observe their ways of appropriating this territory with a focus on performances of class and race that are incorporated by those who frequent this space. We focus on the analysis of symbolic meanings associated with a set of representations and practices that structure forms of consumption in the square, especially after it has become, since 2016, the object of private investments by real estate capital. In methodological terms, we took as a basis the participant observation carried out between July 2020 and January 2021, conducted through the practice of sports with groups in the square and its surroundings; interviews with regulars, and research of content posted on online social networking sites, seeking to understand how this urban space is portrayed in the profiles of individuals on Instagram, in publicity articles from the government and private companies that invest in the region. We base our analysis especially on the theoretical contributions of Bourdieusian sociology articulated to the field of critical studies of whiteness to think about the incorporation of certain class habitusalso in a racialized perspective. Throughout the research, we identified that the investments made in Praça das Flores and its surroundings, do not reach in equal measure in the periphery neighborhoods, and reflect power relations that reinforce barriers of socioeconomic and racial inequalities in the city's public spaces. By analyzing the main consumption practices in the square and the interviews with practitioners, we realized that the elites and the white middle class appropriated this territory in a racialized way as symbolic capital through different performances of incorporation of “whiteness”, subtly reaffirming the maintenance of their privilege spaces in the city.