Abstract: Haiti has experienced a series of United Nations interventions, most notably the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which operated from 2004 to 2017. This article examines the diverse perspectives surrounding MINUSTAH, highlighting the support it received from UN agencies and contrasting it with the resistance from social movements opposing what they perceive as foreign domination. I intend to argue here that the Haitian Revolution is a powerful discursive framework that shapes Haitian resistance against international interventions and provides a historical and future-oriented narrative that empowers Haitians to challenge foreign control. The UN’s bureaucratic mechanisms, which aim to stabilize Haiti through peace operations, stand in sharp contrast to the activists’ perspectives on overthrowing an oppressive system linked to colonialism and neoliberalism. While the UN seeks stabilization, Haitian social movements draw on the legacy of the Revolution to advocate radical change, sovereignty, and development beyond institutional channels. This analysis reveals a broader critique of Western notions of freedom, democracy, and development, advocating a more inclusive and emancipatory future for Haiti.
Abstract: This research investigates how sounds are present in the production of memories and spaces in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. Based on an acoustemological perspective (Feld 1996, 2018, 2020), I seek to understand the listening to the other and the history of how and what is heard. Starting from the Santa Marta favela, in Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone, I investigate how sounds permeate the formation of identities (Oosterbaan 2009). This research follows public events in different parts of the favela, producing an understanding of their sounds and forms of listening, vocalization, and resonance. In this article, I highlight baile de lenta, a recurring event organized on the laje of an interlocutor. I then accompany my interlocutors in spaces and events that form their memories and affective practices. The work focuses on the production of space and time through ways of creating leisure, listening, and dancing.
Abstract: Considering urban peripheries vivid and complex subjects, I articulate a key concept - sonic narratives - that may provide relevant insights into the dynamics of peripheral life. I attempt to present the sonic dimension at the research locus, Cohab Feitoria, a neighborhood in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, often characterized as working-class; it is based on the sonic dimension of the neighborhood that I explore the musical narrative of a rap crew, Mesclã. As I aim to demonstrate, Mesclã’s performances emerge as sonic narratives from Cohab, with the group facing challenges and responding through socio-musical strategies shaped by their condition as a crew from southern Brazil. Sonic narratives from Cohab dynamize life in the urban periphery, creating meaning where there are “shots from here and there,” both literally and symbolically; sounds from “here and there” also become sonic entities that reverberate the very existence of cohabeiros and the sense of belonging immersed in a sonic ethos.
Abstract: In this article, I turn to the verbal, visual and sonoric discourses of two peripheral fashion designers in their conversations with a black visual artist, proposing that the fashion they create encapsulates memory, kinship, locality and history - an interweaving that translates through the style of their productions, bringing together ethics and aesthetics. I also demonstrate that they aim at the epicentre of taste production while resisting to maintain their non-hegemonic character. With the coincidence between ethics and aesthetics and the residual character with which these creators occupy the formal fashion industry, I consider that each city produces its own ways of narrating what it means to be peripheral and its own mode of conceptualising the periphery. I suggest, therefore, that Rio de Janeiro is governed by a utopia of connections and that Rio funk provides the material for peripheral subjectivation.
Abstract: The present article discusses some of the meanings attributed to the periphery as portrayed in a film circuit in the Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. Based on ethnography carried out between 2018 and 2024, the work presented below investigates audiovisual collectives organized by the Baixada Filma movement, whose activities and productions are often described as “periphery cinema”. Taking as our starting point the problematization of this concept, we reflect upon the ambivalences and disputes surrounding the term periphery in order to highlight its polysemic uses as a category of representation and its impact on the construction of subjectivities and relationships with the city.
Abstract: The present article is a synthesis of the diffuse field of funk studies, beginning with its emergence in 1988 and moving on to 2020. Here, we offer up an analytical key to identify important shifts in the way the musical genre of funk carioca and its circuits have been academically understood over this 32 year period. Employing a review of the relevant bibliography and ethnography of the Rio funk scene that began in 2018, I demonstrate how from the 2010s onwards, an analytical inflection that I call the “technical turn” occurred in the context of the intensified repression of funk and the simultaneous expansion of computer and internet in the favelas. This contributed to increased visibility for “baile funk” DJs, who had been historically overshadowed in the market by MCs. In the digital context in which the circulation and visibility of “baile funk” expands, analyses emerge focusing on the DJ, the rhythms, techniques, technologies and the aesthetic possibilities of funk as electronic music.
Abstract: Rap emerged in the United States as one of the aesthetic, ethical, and political expressions of Hip-hop. In the 1980s, it took to the streets worldwide, being recreated in diverse sociocultural contexts. The analysis presented here examines rhyming battles in performative disputes between MCs (Masters of Ceremony) during the occupation of the urban space in the city of Marabá /PA, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. We seek to describe the processes of how rhyming battles intertwine with the underground scene of Marabá in order to highlight the importance of these relationships in street sociability. The concept of underground territorialities connects theoretical and methodological reflections on frontiers and territory, revealing modes of organization and collective occupation of urban public space.
Abstract: If peripheries are margins, here we call them edges, baixadas. Belém do Pará deals everyday with the dynamics of being urban and Amazonian, a metropolis woven by rivers that lead from tourist landscapes to its most populated neighbourhoods. Given the imaginaries established since colonial times about what it means to be and live in this region, audiovisual production today emerges as a tool to render these narratives more complex. The movement to move out from the geographic, economic and political centre of the city, a movement linked to the creativity that emerges from peripheral neighbourhoods such as those discussed here, Terra Firme and Jurunas, results in cultural productions that speak of themselves, its inhabitants and the city itself. Amid circumstances of survivals and social strategies, therefore, articulations and creations emerge that strengthen the knowledge and value the traditions of these and other neighbourhoods. As audiovisual narratives become woven, other narratives about the city are also constructed.
Abstract: In this article, I examine the Movimento Brega [Brega Movement] not merely as a musical genre, but primarily as a social, cultural, political and economic movement, historically linked to the peripheries of Recife, Brazil. Analysis focuses on the processes of subjectivation of peripheral subjects and how they articulate practices of creation, cultural agency, and political recognition in contexts of precarity, neoliberalism, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was conducted using audio-visual materials produced with interlocutors, together with contents produced by them or the media, including podcasts, social media posts, YouTube videos, journalistic articles, and official documents. Drawing on this approach, the article examines how the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of the Movimento Brega are articulated, highlighting creativity, popular entrepreneurship, and modes of resistance in the face of social inequalities and pandemic-related impacts.
Abstract: The article examines various forms of political mobilization, social participation, and community engagement present in a peripheral neighborhood of São Paulo’s East Zone. By comparing half a century of transformations, it seeks to understand the demands of local youth for spaces of sociability and leisure, and how artistic and cultural movements respond to them, producing new forms of territorial belonging and political participation. By analyzing how different forms of engagement coexist within a territory, the article examines how recent changes in urban dynamics have influenced local self-help networks, processes of political identification, and ways of appropriating and theorizing the city.
Abstract: This article considers the use of rap as a political and affective language of the peripheries in the construction of ethnographic listening in precarized urban contexts. Based on fieldwork experiences with app-based delivery workers in Rio de Janeiro and Paris, it investigates how peripheral music production articulates narratives of belonging, resistance, and dignity in work. Rap emerges not as an object of analysis, but as a shared expression and relational resource for the field, expanding the methodological possibilities of urban anthropology by recognizing the centrality of subaltern aesthetics. In dialogue with the work of Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, José Carlos Gomes da Silva, Rafael Abdala Norberto, Anthony K. Harrison and Baptiste Cléret, the article argues that an engagement with the poetic and sonorous language of rap enables the construction of an ethnography that is sensitive to the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary peripheries.
Abstract: This photo essay presents photos from an edition of The New York City 1 Train Cyphers, a series of events that promote hip-hop, street culture, and community in the Bronx, NYC. The event has two slogans: “NYC Cypher: You are entering a vibe” and “NYC Cypher, you are entering a community”. It reunites rappers, photographers, and art performers. The Bronx is considered the birthplace of hip-hop, even though hip-hop’s origins trace back to Jamaica. The key artistic elements of hip-hop culture are MCing and DJing (rap and music production), graffiti art, and breakdancing. Marginalized communities have historically used art to express their everyday experiences, making art presentations both moments of pleasure and of social resistance. As KRS-One, one of the most iconic Bronx rappers, states: “Rap is something you do; hip hop is something you live” (PQ 2019: 2).
Abstract: This article analyzes the transformations, tensions, and paradoxes that shape the cultural production of São Paulo’s urban peripheries between 2016 and 2024. Drawing on ethnographic scenes and testimonies from diverse cultural agents, it examines how disputes over visibility, conflicts surrounding funding programs, ambivalent relations with the State, and the increasing commodification of peripheral identity have reconfigured practices and discourses within what has been called the “Era da Perifa.” I argue that the pedagogical, aesthetic, and political project that characterized Marginal/Peripheral Literature and cultural collectives in previous decades has, in recent years, undergone a process of reordering. This shift is evidenced by the incorporation of entrepreneurial logics, dependence on public and private funding mechanisms, and the emergence of internal hierarchies previously rendered invisible. Engaging with authors such as Hall, Abu-Lughod, Ortner, Giddens, Reyes, Comaroff, and Wacquant, I contend that the concept of culture - often mobilized as a positive and unquestionable value - must be critically examined in its political, economic, and subjective dimensions. I argue that, although peripheral identity is now valued as a cultural brand, it remains profoundly shaped by precarization, structural racism, and everyday struggles for survival. Thus, the article seeks to understand the limits and possibilities of agency for peripheral cultural producers, highlighting tensions between recognition and capture, resistance and assimilation, community and market.
Abstract Production in visual arts by crack users, who reside in or frequent Cracolândia, as well as artistic interventions by activists and professionals who work with these people, have been present at least since 2014. Through description and analysis of the Birico collective, the purpose of this work is to understand how the emergence of an art world in Cracolândia was brought about, founded on its own characteristics and relations with the territory. To this end, throughout June 2021, we conducted an ethnographic research in the municipal area occupied by the Teatro de Contêiner Mungunzá in which we were able to interact daily with people from the different entities and collectives housed in the containers located on the land. We were able to observe how the Birico collective emerges, under the risks and difficulties imposed by COVID-19, in which the ‘law of the birico’, that came from the streets, with its imperative of exchange and refuge, was able to foster the ‘logic of the collective’ among activists who are also artists. An art world was able to emerge in São Paulo’s Cracolândia because this territory attracted activists dedicated to working with art, which ended up generating two movements: artists towards Cracolândia and crack users towards the arts.
Abstract: The present article examines how a street art project led by young people of African descent in the Bairro da Torre neighborhood of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area has contributed to challenging the historically negative perception associated with this territory. For decades, both media and institutional narratives have portrayed the neighborhood as a no-go area linked to crime and marginalization. Drawing on ethnographic research, the present article analyzes the ambivalent role of street art as a tool for urban regeneration and for contesting territorial stigma, seeking to symbolically dissociate the neighborhood from imaginaries of violence. At the core of our analysis is the way in which these artistic interventions have been used by local authorities as an urban governance strategy to “clean up” public spaces by removing actors and social practices deemed “dangerous,” thereby reinforcing social control and facilitating the expansion of gentrification.
Resumen: A lo largo de las últimas décadas, diversos grupos activistas, que se autodenominan colectivos, han surgido promoviendo acciones colaborativas a través de expresiones artísticas, performances e intervenciones urbanas. Estos colectivos resignifican los territorios mediante la creación artística, la crítica social y la movilización comunitaria. Este artículo analiza el papel de los colectivos audiovisuales en la construcción y redefinición de territorios periféricos, a partir de observaciones etnográficas realizadas en Río de Janeiro (Brasil) y Medellín (Colombia), se explora cómo colectivos como Crua y la Corporación Carabantú transforman territorios no sólo físicos, sino también simbólicos, a través de sus prácticas en torno al audiovisual. Al establecer un diálogo entre la antropología y la geografía crítica, y fundamentándose en conceptos como territorio, redes escalares y disputas simbólicas, el artículo destaca cómo estos colectivos desafían narrativas dominantes, fomentan nuevas formas de sociabilidad y crean mapas alternativos de visibilidad.
Resumen: Este artículo investiga una experiencia de producción cultural en la Baixada Fluminense, región metropolitana de Río de Janeiro, Brasil, concebida por una de las autoras a partir de un enfoque autoetnográfico e interdisciplinar que conecta debates de lingüística aplicada, antropología y educación. A partir de historias y memorias compartidas, reflexionamos sobre las prácticas de literacidad que surgen en un sarao callejero organizado por jóvenes periféricos, y su posterior traslado a tres escuelas públicas. Esta producción es entendida como modo de resistencia política, afirmación de identidades y reconfiguración de territorios. Argumentamos que estas prácticas constituyen literacidades y culturas de supervivencia que cuestionan dicotomías como escuela y calle, centro y margen, vida y muerte. Estas actuaciones narrativas operan en la construcción de significados sobre los sujetos y los lugares que ocupan, abriendo vías para imaginar otros futuros y diferentes formas de estar en las ciudades.
Abstract: This article presents an ethnography of carnival production in the Gold Series of Rio’s carnival, exploring the trajectory of André Rodrigues, a black carnival designer at the Acadêmicos do Sossego school in 2022, as a guiding thread. The research reveals how samba schools in the access group, occupying a peripheral position in Rio’s hierarchical carnival system, develop collective strategies and solidarity networks to make their parades viable under conditions of extreme material precarity. While the Special Group has modern infrastructure available at Cidade do Samba, access group associations operate in precarious warehouses, depending on informal arrangements for the circulation of materials and technical knowledge. Inspired by Simone’s concept of ‘people as infrastructure,’ the analysis demonstrates how carnival workers mobilize collaborative practices that partially compensate for structural limitations, revealing both creative resilience and the profound racial and economic inequalities that permeate this cultural manifestation. The analysis shows how peripheral spaces, far from being passive recipients of imposed conditions, constitute active territories of cultural creation and resistance.
Abstract: The present article analyzes convergences in the representation of violence and conflict in the peripheries of Brazil and France by looking at a selection of films. We juxtapose scenes from said films to reflect upon both the process of peripheralization of one of the centers of capitalism and on the similarities and differences this process has with a peripheral society. In this way, we discuss how societies as different as Brazil and France can produce films narratives with similar languages and structures. The hypothesis is that if cultural products converge, we can assume that convergent social processes also exist, even if these also demonstrate profound differences. Our analysis of these scenes reveals possible approximations between France and Brazil arising from the manifestation of periphery elements in a central capitalist country. Based upon this, we draw conclusions about the present state of generalized war within the global capitalist system.
