CLAS Fall 2006 - Caldiera- The Writing on the Wall
Source: socrates.berkeley.edu:7001
Topic: Graffiti
Sort Desciption: graffiti art for its VIP clients as an example of. its socially responsible practices. Pichação, on the other hand, has remained a. clandestine movement. ...
Content Inside: 48 “D isjunctive democracy” and its spatial manifestations form the overarching themes in anthropologist Teresa Caldeira’s work. In her talk, Professor Caldeira outlined three separate “narratives” that describe ways in which urban space — particularly public space — is produced, organized and contested in São Paulo. The first narrative is one of self-segregation by elites (and increasingly, the middle class), who live, shop and work in fortified enclaves with walls that separate them from the rest of the city. The next two narratives both come from São Paulo’s hip-hop movement and re-appropriate the walls built by the elites as a vehicle for self- expression and contestation. Graffiti adorns the city’s walls with sophisticated artwork, while pichação tags São Paulo’s buildings with elaborate calligraphy. The first narrative described by Caldeira is one that she developed at length in her seminal book City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. The city’s elites have increasingly segregated themselves by building enclosed residential and commercial spaces, protected by walls, armed guards, and state-of-the-art security systems. The author argues that these fortified areas reproduce the inequality and violence that precipitated them. In fact, inequality is a distinct value used to market such enclaves to an ever more frightened population. The segregation of the elites has occurred alongside two other phenomena, the democratization of Brazil and a sharp increase in the incidence of urban violence. As traditional forms of social organization, such as labor unions, have decreased in their importance, other vehicles for fighting social inequalities have emerged, such as NGOs and cultural and artistic movements. Professor Caldeira’s more recent research deals with São Paulo’s hip-hop movement and the ways in which young, mostly black males have asserted their i ...
caldeira pichacao