Há produção do comum no trabalho de rua?: instabilidades, conflitos e solidariedade no espaço público

Abstract

This thesis investigates the nature of street work, seeking to explore how it can be understood and interpreted to contribute to the conception of urban commons. The research examines the activity of street workers as a permanent expression of an unequal society, focusing on three instances: the visibility of the poor and black populations, the incompatibility between public space and work, and perspectives related to the constitution of urban commons. The discussion begins by addressing the colonial roots of street work and progresses to its conception as informal labor. Here, Milton Santos’s theory of economic circuits forms an important theoretical foundation that allows for a more complex understanding of the studied activity, particularly by facilitating its comprehension as a segment of the economy within popular sectors. These theoretical contributions are essential to shift towards a new perspective that considers the importance of life tactics created by the popular classes, enabling us to move away from a conception that treats them solely as victims. In the course of the development, the discussion turns to the formation of the bourgeois public sphere and its implications for the conception of public space, where the activity unfolds. The streets studied here, specifically, hold the singularity of being situated in the central region of the city, where conflicts and political actions of the state manifest. Thus, it is considered important to analyze them from the perspective of the theory of luminous spaces and slow men, in order to critically guide the understanding of this activity in a structurally racist and segregating society. How, then, can we understand what street work produces beyond the occupation of the streets, as it is often perceived? We then seek to investigate an approach to street work in its interface with the production of the common, with Verônica Gago’s vitalistic pragmatics providing important support. The methodology employed includes a feminist approach to “situated thinking,” recognizing the importance of “localized knowledge” that integrates the experiences of marginalized subjects in knowledge production. The research organizes and brings together two distinct stages: the first developed during the author’s master’s program, which analyzed the appropriation of public space by street workers in Salvador, and the second, which occurs in the development of this thesis, adapting to the pandemic context. Thus, narratives about street work are constructed, essential to highlight the understanding of the studied dynamics.