In the Remains of Progress

Utopia and Suffering in Brazilian Popular Entrepreneurship

Series: 

Author:
Henrique Costa
This book proposes an ethnographic approach to popular entrepreneurship based on the experience of the wageless life in Brazil. It starts from the historical premise that self-employment is at the heart of the popular way of life, whose main characteristic is the desire for autonomy. In turn, the global discourse of self-realisation carries a strong attempt at modernisation aimed at young people, but which is also capable of embarrassing older people. From the shopping streets, social entrepreneurship and Pentecostal cults, this process is giving shape to political conflicts that are redrawing the sense of community in São Paulo, the country's largest city.
Copyright Year:
2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-71184-6
Publication:
02 Dec 2024
Hardback
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-71185-3
Publication:
05 Dec 2024
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Henrique Costa is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo, holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the State University of Campinas, and was a visiting scholar at the Centre of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Foreword

Acknowledgements

List of Maps

Introduction: In the Remains of Progress
 1 Wageless Life

 2 Structure of Feelings

 3 Questions of Approach

 4 Book’s Guide


Part 1
Ethnography
1 The Sun Shines for Everyone: The New Peripheral Middle Class
 1 Utopia in Paraisópolis

 2 Middle Class in the Quebrada

 3 Through Generations

 4 Possible Goals

 5 Strugglers

 6 Recognition

 7 Onwards


2 Between Lights and Shadows: Stories of Suffering and Religiosity
 1 Guiltless World

 2 Us and Them

 3 Mistrust

 4 Prosperity

 5 Family Ties

 6 God Willing

 7 Uncertainty

 8 Know-How


3 Mirages: Utopias of Modernity in Social Entrepreneurship
 1 Anti-capitalist

 2 Social Impact

 3 Two Sides of the Bridge

 4 Spreading Wings

 5 Powers

 6 Competence

 7 Peripheral Subject


Part 2
Structure of Feelings
4 Reconfigurations
 1 Family, Community and Social Classes

 2 Social Entrepreneurship and the Classless Society

 3 From Precarious Labour to Popular Entrepreneurship


5 Utopia and Suffering
 1 Self-Management and Therapeutic Narrative in Two Exemplary Cases

 2 The Guiltless World and Its Deconstruction


 Conclusion: The Moral Economy of the Brazilian Wageless Lives

 References

 Index


The book is aimed primarily to social sciences scholars interested in popular economy in the Global South, ethnographical approach. it is also accessible for a larger audience, like undergraduate students.
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