More than half of city dwellers worldwide, roughly 1.6 billion people, currently live in poverty. In Brazil, for example, 51.7 million people reside in favelas (i.e., urban slums), a figure equaling 36.6 percent of the country's total urban population. Though each favela community is unique, like impoverished communities elsewhere, most residents confront a lack of state resources (e.g., hospitals, schools, urban infrastructure) and rarely participate significantly in political processes. Far from devolving into massive, anarchic urban sprawls as one might expect, however, these communities uphold a striking level of social stability and political structure: researchers consistently report that social and political order is maintained in Brazilian slum communities, even when official governing bodies have no visible presence. Still unknown is how and why a majority of favelas, despite the limited presence of a visible governing authority, continue to function like any other Brazilian neighborhood. This doctoral dissertation research queries how governance (i.e., the coordination of complex social systems and steering of societal development) is produced and maintained in spaces where the institutions of government appear to be essentially absent. Through a case study of a favela in a midsized city in northeast Brazil (Fortaleza), and relying upon a mixed-methodological research design (e.g., semi-structured interviews, focus groups, participant observation, archival research), this doctoral dissertation research seeks to explain the paradox of governance in ungoverned spaces.
By introducing urban development research to theoretical contributions of research on governance, this study will help to not only resolve existing debates over social cohesion in non-governed areas, but also to provide greater clarity and substance to two dynamic social science traditions. For political theory, it will bring empirical transparency by considering a case (urban slums) that is being duplicated in thousands of cities across the globe. And for urban development, it will move beyond the confines of Brazil's more studied urban agglomerations, joining primary data with a theoretical investigation to understand socio-political order in one of the world's most rapidly growing communities. This research helps to explain political stability in slum communities and, even more importantly, will provided insights on what sorts of pragmatic measures might alleviate the effects of widespread poverty.
This award is co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.
