Technologies and subjects of participation: The political mobilization of street vendors in porto alegre, Brazil

Abstract

© 2019, Centro em Rede de Investigacao em Antropologia. All rights reserved. Technologies of direct participation in democracy, such as Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budget, produce symbolic, political, and economic effects whose reach cannot be assessed exclusively by the engagement of collective actors in institutional spaces of participation and decision-making. Drawing from ethnographical evidence, this article reveals how new political sub-jectivities arise as low-income organized groups engage with these participatory devices. These groups reclaim established protocols of expression and retool this rhetorical capital into repertoires of action useful in other arenas of mobilization, thus crafting links with the government. I problematize the repertories of participation and demonstration deployed by a group of street vendors in search of economic viability, in the aftermath of their forceful resettlement into a low-income shopping mall in the city of Porto Alegre (Brazil). Special attention is given to the ways jargons, idioms, and participatory languages gain traction and travel among leaders and communities mobilized for rights in the interstices of the state.