Desigualdades no uso corporal dos espaços públicos urbanos na América Latina

Abstract

Social science research on social inequality in Latin America emphasizes the role that residential distribution of social groups in urban space plays in the production and/or reproduction of asymmetries of social positioning there in conjunction with the acceleration of economic globalization in the 1990s. Meanwhile, spaces absolutely receptive to social diversity, such as public streets and squares in Latin American historical centers during the shop opening hours, are less studied. This paper presents the analysis of a Brazilian case, São Paulo’s cathedral square, where I gathered ethnographic data on 39 occasions (Monday and Friday afternoons) in 2013. Applying particular dialectical and phenomenological perspectives, a Lefebvrean and Goffmanian one, I aim to answer how and why the bodily use pedestrians made of this place may interfere in the (re)production of social equality in São Paulo at this point in time. From this research, secular body-behavioral and moral inequalities emerge as important issues.