Abstract
“This project examines how democracy is being recreated in poor urban neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro as civic organizations respond to the abandonment of the state during the pandemic. Across Latin America, the CO VID-19 pandemic provoked a new phase of governance. Where once states governed poor, primarily Black and brown urban residents through violent and disjunctive democratic practices, the formal government has now retreated from these communities, leaving residents to govern themselves. News stories of civic organizations in urban slums have proliferated as community-based organizations attempt to help starving and sick residents, locate and distribute resources, educate residents about the virus, and keep the neighborhood functioning. A new form of democratic governance is emerging: rather than make demands of the state, disillusioned civic actors are instead “becoming” the state. Given this new paradigm, this project asks: How is democracy being reconfigured in abandoned urban neighborhoods? What new forms of governance and citizenship are being created? How are these political forms gendered and racialized? The project will focus on Cidade de Deus, a “favela” in Rio de Janeiro that had the first reported favela COVID-19 case. It builds upon a mixed-methods, participatory action research project conducted between 2020 and 2021 on the impact of the pandemic on local residents. In this new study, we will carry out focus groups and interviews with civic leaders, recipients of aid, private funders and local government actors to explore emergent forms of autonomous governance and how these are is shaped by gender and racial dynamics.”
Principal Investigator
Anjuli Fahlberg
Assistant Professor, Tufts University