A reprodução do Estigma: sobre um (des) conhecido "lugar perigoso" da periferia de Manaus

Abstract

This dissertation proposes to discuss the social processes inserted in the different stages of deterioration of the image of a certain place in relation to its set. Its objective is to understand how this dynamics occurs in a community of Petrópolis neighborhood, referred to in this text by the fictitious name "Santa Clara", where a locality of igarapé surroundings was elected the "dangerous place" in relation to the other locations of its surroundings. It proposes an analysis of the historical and social construction of this "dangerous place", understanding it rather as a product-end of a broad neoliberal societal project, whose political-economic choices allow the multiplication of precarious housing spaces in the context as a final gradation in a macro order of relations of power and force, in which one has the formation of classifiable groups, more or less acceptable, in the social world. The Bodozal, named for the "dangerous place" of the Santa Clara community, is an emblematic example of how symbolisms concretely affect the production of realities, making "truths" information that does not even require previous reflections to figure it out. From a relational analysis, we observed two groups that stood out in an antagonistic field: the residents of the upper part of the community, associated with their "good to live" area; and the residents of the alleys, in the lowland, on the fringes of the stream, residing in the "degraded" locality of the community. The representations of the "dangerous place" in question are justified by two good reasons. Firstly, due to the material conditions of precarious housing and the symbolism imputed to the idea of the "favela" to which it associates, whose mental model reports to the peripheries of the central cities of the country, a projection that makes fiction to a large extent overlap to the daily experience of the place located in the outskirts of Manaus. Secondly, the social space that represents this type of location in the context of the city of Manaus, namely, the banks of one of the igarapés intersecting the urban perimeter of the city, whose socially constructed meaning is elucidated in the course of this dissertation. The confluence of such information leads to a process of detachment and dehumanization of the image of the resident of this type of location, those read socially and in a generalizing manner as "bandits", "people who do not lend", even if the daily life of the locality does not present a proportional to the expectation it has At the same time, real conditions, a perfect scenario and script are produced for the reproduction of socially damaging practices or, more directly, for the reproduction of practices considered criminal in the present context and that are present in the locality. To the extent that this information is reinforced through communication processes, the streets of the upper part are valued, as opposed to the lowland that appears as worthless space. But if the game of distinction implies relations of alterity to obtain a privileged position in the social world, for the inhabitants of the lowland this dynamic may represent a good possibility for the escape of social disqualification. Then, just as they are judged, the residents of the lower town also judge from established criteria. Recalling the criteria of differentiation and recognition in which they try to elect the most disqualified in a local context, the territorial stigma thrown on the locality and all its concrete effects are only reinforced, paradoxically, by the same individuals who are subject to them