Fazendo cidade de dentro dos muros: a política dos condomínios da Barra da Tijuca

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the urban politics of community life in Barra da Tijuca and its large residential condominiums. Based on an ethnographic effort, I follow the intermediary institutions and social actors responsible for neighborhood policy, and I delve into the various institutions and associations to investigate how problems are addressed within the varied scales of problematization that arise in the daily lives of neighborhood residents. From the house to the block, from the block to the condominium, from the condominium to the neighborhood, and from the neighborhood to the city, the problems here serve as the guiding thread for reflecting on how daily life and community participation are contested in the terrain between the quotidian and the ceremonial. What I call a “condominium politics” encompasses all of these dynamics, stemming from a logic specific to the urban form of the condominium, which transcends its walls and produces a specific model not only of urban policymaking but also of sociability and determined lifestyles. Based on the three pillars of "walls, middle classes, and urban policy," the thesis delves into the specific case of Barra da Tijuca, a "condominium neighborhood," to consider a more general urban phenomenon present in large cities in Brazil and other countries. Considering not only my role within my field, but also the role of my interlocutors in these deliberative spaces, the thesis proposes a sociologically positive approach to the object of condominiums and their multiple dimensions, both physical and symbolic. In this effort, the characteristics of ambiguity and mediation emerge as central elements in the various spheres of Barra da Tijuca's condominium politics, from the boundary between public and private, to the positions of residents, public authorities, intermediary institutions, and the researcher himself. The thesis addresses a specific political form and culture, but one that represents a comprehensive logic, a way of making a city from within the walls, yet one that determines the production of the city in general.