Viver na tora: trabalho ambulante e estratégias de vida nas encruzilhadas da gestão contemporânea do comércio popular

• Ano de defesa: 2021
• Autor(a) principal: Araújo Filho, Tarcísio Perdigão
• Orientador(a): Rizek, Cibele Saliba
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de São Carlos; Câmpus São Carlos
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia - PPGS
• Palavras-chave em Português: Comércio ambulante; Toreros; Empreendedorismo social; Informalidade; Estratégias de vida
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Street vending; Social entrepreneurship; Informality; Life strategies
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS HUMANAS::SOCIOLOGIA::SOCIOLOGIA URBANA
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufscar.br/handle/ufscar/15420

This thesis discusses the contemporaneity of street vending, taking into account its transformations and permanences. Based on the case study of the city of Belo Horizonte, it aims to re-establish the outlook on street commerce by analyzing how labor processes are affected by the mecanisms of control. Given the production of multiple subjectivities, the research captures the configuration of the life strategies of individuals who are members of the urban popular classes in the context of contemporary capitalism. The research was based on ethnographic incursions focused on the monitoring of work routines and in-depth interviews with a biographical approach. The empirical focus was on clandestine street vendors, locally called toreros. The dispositions and forms of action of the toreros are still fundamental for the functioning of various markets At the same time they stress the enforcement procedures of regulatory policies. The study with this approach provides a perspective "from the margins" on the production of urban planning. The research analyzes the formation and operation of mechanisms that characterize the contemporary management of popular commerce, as well as the markets that they sustain and depend on to continue operating. Such mechanisms are found in urban policies that aim to "modernize" popular commerce by relocating street vendors to shopping centers created for this purpose, the shopping populares. The actors involved in this policy also claim that they would thus be converting informal workers into entrepreneurs. In this sense, state repression against street vendors plays a fundamental role in sustaining a "urban solutions" privatized market through which a multiplicity of actors extract economic and political gains. The persistence of vendors in occupying public spaces is a inherent factor of the urban growth and the capitalist accumulation. Toreros constantly seek to appropriate the circunstancial spatialities, legalities/formalities, and moralities as resources in order to legitimate their activities and remain active. The set of factors underlying the permanence of street vending in urban centers also informs about the different ways in which activities are carried out, the collective arrangements, hierarchies, and the ways in which this work is subjectively conceived by those who practice it. The analysis of trajectories allowed for the examination of narratives about work in articulation with other "struggles" engaged in by the individuals, related to other dimensions of life reproduction. Therefore, the thesis also discusses the multiplicity of rationalities mobilized by the individuals when they elaborate meanings to their "life crossroads". The matter of street commerce is constructed, finally, beyond the local scope. It constitutes a key element to understand the connections between urban planning policies, "the social question" and the mercantilization of poverty in its transnational extensions. Informality, precariousness, and poverty acquire new functionalities in contemporary context of capitalism, while the dimension of work is readjusted.