Hierarchy, contestation and equality: The production of the political militancy of homeless people in Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to explore, through documentary analysis and ethnographic method, the debates between militants of the Movimento Nacional da População de Rua (MNPR), around value of political militancy. Starting from the analysis of national political formation booklets, I discuss the civilizing content present in these documents and, through the everyday social mobilization in Porto Alegre, RS, I analyze the ways in which such content is contested in militant practice. This scenario allows us to identify an arena in which normativity is negotiated by divergences that, rather than producing division, constitute a constant struggle for more egalitarian spaces of political expression between militants and supporters of the MNPR.