12 The ‘Visible Hand’ of the State

Urbanization of Favelas as a Violent Abstraction of Space

Daniel S. Lacerda

Introduction

The spatial turn observed in the field of organization studies in the past decades led to an increasing production of research on space and organization that responds to calls made by ground-breaking works in the area (Baldry, 1999; Dale and Burrell, 2008; Kornberger and Clegg, 2003, 2004). The literature on space has been particularly insightful in tackling issues of organizational control (Dale, 2005; Hancock and Spicer, 2011; Hirst and Humphreys, 2013) and organizational boundaries (Fleming and Spicer, 2008; Maréchal, Linstead, and Munro, 2013; Munro and Jordan, 2013). However, extant work has focussed on interrogating in/about the workplace or spatial theories of organization as a processual activity. There has been little work on what Dale and Burrell (2008) call the organization of space across organizations—in opposition to the (internal) space of organizations—that shows the lasting effects of the organizational activity in the territory and beyond.

As discussed elsewhere in this book, Lefebvre (1991) rejected the idea of space as a simple entity occupied by physical things detached from social relations. He adopted the concept of “social space” referring to a constructed space, hence a social product, and claimed that every society produces its own space. By shifting the focus of analysis from the things in space to space itself Lefebvre provided, thus, a critical analysis of how space is both a social product and also the means for the reproduction of history. Because social space incorporates social actions, it also encompasses the social relations of production, and considering that every social relation of production should be linked to the entirety—i.e. the ‘totality’—of space, it follows that social space should never be detached from its totality.

That is a particularly important point if we consider that the application of Lefebvre’s theory is often restricted to his spatial triad, at the expense of his wider view of the political economy of space (the production of space). This limitation is understandable, since it is not simple to extract the most important ideas from such a disruptively dense work such as Lefebvre’s, but my framing of his theory will be one that attempts to do justice to the politically engaged spirit of Lefebvre’s writing, as suggested by Elden (2004). I draw on Lefebvre’s (1991) The Production of Space, which highlights the concept of abstract space in which the elements of his spatial triad are essential but subordinate concepts when considered from the perspective of the totality of the production of space. This framing reveals that the analysed social space is often linked to a particular process of abstraction operating in the development of spaces of capital accumulation.

Based on the empirical case of Brazilian favelas, which I have researched for five years, this chapter addresses this challenge of a limited application of Lefebvre’s propositions. Favelas are particularly pertinent spaces for the analysis of the production of the abstract space because they have for many years been the stage of a massive and militarized presence of the state, and consequent escalation in initiatives for the development of these territories. When I conducted my fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, the Unidades de Policia Pacificadora (UPP) (Pacifying Police Units) program had been in place for five years, although it was still considered a work in progress and challenged for various reasons—for a more detailed discussion of this see Lacerda (2016) where I focus on the failed construction of the state in the territory of favelas. These territories of favelas house poor communities and to a great extent have been traditionally excluded from public and market services, which had traditionally been limited to the so called ‘formal city’ (Davis, 2007).

The abrupt interventions carried on by the state in the UPP program transformed the everyday of many of these spaces and allowed the observation of what Lefebvre would call the abstraction of space (and the resistance to it). The characterization of abstraction as a violent process is of particular interest here (Lefebvre, 1991:289). That is certainly true because of the explanatory potential in highlighting the violence of abstraction, as pointed out by Wilson (2014: 517), “an attempt to grasp the ways in which the space of capital embodies, facilitates and conceals the complex intertwining of structural, symbolic and direct forms of violence.” But even more because of the contradictory name of the program analysed in the fieldwork (‘pacification’), which in practice replaces direct forms of violence emerging from historical struggles in the territory with indirect and concealed forms of violence imposed by the state according to the needs of the capitalist space.

Therefore, the present chapter discusses the case of urbanization of favelas in Brazil as a violent process that is inherently spatial, and examines some of the ways the violence of abstraction can be observed in practice. The main contribution offered is to analyse the process of production of the abstract space as a key argument in Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and explain its implication for the analysis of organizations. Methodologically, it also demonstrates how the category of ‘totality’ can be adopted in a contextual analysis, by linking delimited organizing practices to their context of production, in the development of urban space.

Next, I describe my theoretical argument about the importance of considering the abstraction of space as the main message in Lefebvre (1991). Then, I introduce the empirical study of favelas and present the methodology of the present research, based on participatory observation performed in a favela named here as “Mucuripe.”¹ Then, the data of the discussed case is presented highlighting the importance of the historical space for the description of the territory, and the violent intervention carried on by the state in an attempt to take over control of the territory, which I argue is a case of abstraction of space. Finally, I discuss the presented case pointing out that the violent actions promoted by the state favour the expansion of the space of capital accumulation through a process of negation of the previous social space, regardless of its content.

The Production of Abstract Space

Totality in Lefebvre

Lefebvre (1991) uses a conceptual triad to approach space as overlapping and mutually determining dimensions of the same space: spatial practices, representations of space and spaces of representation (or representational space). These three aspects are not detached but rather mutually determine each other, even though they are not coincident. This spatial triad may not constitute a coherent whole but its components are necessarily interconnected (Lefebvre, 1991: 40). To be more precise, the separation of moments for reading social space is an attempt to integrate the dimensions of space without fragmenting or superposing it a priori.

The separation of the social space in three dimensions is particularly useful to examine the contradictions that result in spatial transformations. Whenever the elements of each of these three dimensions clash, they are redefined through the dialectical tension that exists among them. The necessary balance that exists between the three dimensions forces the transformation of the whole. Lefebvre advanced these ideas to show the violent mechanisms of the production of space that overthrow local social spaces. That is often absent in the application of Lefebvre’s theory in organization studies, but the spatial triad should be the means to analyse the production and reproduction of society as a spatial realization, and not the end in itself. It is necessary, thus, to reveal the propositions that unfold from this spatial heuristics.

In his critique of Marx’s Capital, Lefebvre points out the reductionism in political economy in restricting its analysis only to the abstract economy, whereas the reproduction of the relations of production is found in space. Lefebvre then adds that only a “political economy of space” could save this “science” by providing it a new object of analysis—the production of space—which would reveal space as the medium of installation of capitalism (Lefebvre, 1991: 104). For Lefebvre (1991), the production of space in history leads to its abstraction in a process engendered with symbolical and material violence, which associates the commodification and the bureaucratization of everyday life with the coercive role of state. This main message unfolds from the observation of social space in the context of its historical development.

One of the main concerns in Lefebvre’s work is how the relations of production are simultaneously spatial and thus how space is the means for the reproduction of social life, thus understanding space as a totality is what validates the analysis of space from within. It reinforces the separation from positivist views of social issues, rejects Cartesian dichotomies of real and ideal spaces, and shifts from the analysis of things “in space” to the interest in the production “of space” (Lefebvre, 1991: 37). As noted by Zhang (2006: 221), the manipulation of concepts advanced by most current literature applying Lefebvre’s concepts have not been careful in preserving this idea of the totality of space.

It follows that if every society produces its own space (Lefebvre, 1991: 31) and cannot be regarded as just a collection of peoples and things in space, likewise we could say that organization is not a collection of people and resources, but must be analysed in connection with the totality in which it is included, that is, its produced space. In effect, as a consequence of organizations being forged by the social relations in space, whatever features are ascribed to the nature of space will have to be applied also to organizations. For this reason, the analysis of any organizational space should be considered within the context of its totality. Ignoring totality is precisely what often fragments the modern approach to space (including in the field of organization studies), an approach strongly criticized by Lefebvre. However, although present throughout his work, unfortunately Lefebvre provides no simple and straightforward explanation of how he understands totality, and we should turn to other authors to support this explanation.

One of the authors Lefebvre established a dialogue with was Louis Althusser, whose view on society emphasized the irreducibility of its relational structure, in contrast to sociological approaches to society as a moral community. This idea is explained by Althusser and Balibar (1970), who define social formation as a “totality of instances” (p. 207). Each instance is expressed as social relations and practices within a specific structure, in other words practices are the empirical realization of the social structure in which they are included. Each structure is in itself subordinated to the dominant structure of production. Thus, the multiplicity of practices exists always within the complex unity (p. 269) that unites the different moments of production, circulation, distribution and consumption. From this stance, the Althusserian totality unfolds from an embodied expression of the whole, distinguishing it from the Hegelian view of totality as the ideal essence derived from knowledge.

It is a whole whose unity, far from being the expressive or ‘spiritual’ unity of Leibniz’s or Hegel’s whole, is constituted by a certain type of complexity. This structured whole contains what can be called levels or instances which are distinct and ‘relatively autonomous’, and co-exist within this complex structural unity, articulated with one another according to specific determinations, fixed ultimately by the level or instance of the economy. (Althusser and Balibar, 1970: 97)

Althusser and Balibar (1970) derive from these ideas the same interpretation that is present also in Lefebvre’s intellectual work regarding Marx’s discussion on the mode of production: “production is not the production of things, it is the production and conservation of social relations” (p. 269). Drawing on this same assumption many philosophers and geographers have written about space, since it is in space that other categories of analysis such as class or time are realized. Although the philosophical grounds may sometimes differ, the interpretation of totality is usually informed by the philosophical rule of Leibniz, for whom an object exists only as a representation, within itself, of the relationships to other objects.

In adopting the same relational thinking, Lefebvre also accepts the dialectics of spatial elements as constituent of a total space, although he conveys a more careful consideration of the philosophical content of space. As Elden (2004) puts it in relation to Lefebvre’s work, before being an entity, one that can be considered an abstraction of formal logic to be attributed a feature of identity, the entity has an existence in space. Lefebvre examines this argument with a particular focus on the mediating role of the human body:

In this mediation of the body’s perceived space, conceived space and lived space are not only moments to be captured by theoretical concepts, but also affect each other in the realization of social space. Each element of this triad is thus equally important in that they affect each other mutually. In other words, they are “continually and mutually informed and informing, and as such are essential in the successful negotiation of the social world” (Watkins, 2005: 220). By assuming the epistemology according to which space is manifested in totality, and that its ontological dimensions and spheres of production cannot be separated, it follows that “the physical and the theoretical and the imaginary are not separable, but are brought together through the medium of the embodied social subject who mediates both the material and the conceptual” (Dale and Burrell, 2008: 171). I will discuss next the implications of totality for the analysis of organizations, in light of their spatial (and historical) existence.

Abstraction as a Historical Process

Lefebvre also explains that space in its totality can be engendered by theoretical understanding moving continuously from the past to the present. Every transformation becomes part of total space: “The past leaves its traces; time has its own script. Yet this space is always, now and formerly, a present space, given as an immediate whole, complete with its associations and connections in their actuality” (Lefebvre, 1991: 37). Hence, social space is a historical social product. Lefebvre compared the beginning of history to the natural world, in which things were part of nature and condemned to disappear, giving place to appropriated objects. But if social space is a constructed space, as such it is not neutral, but inherently political. Space carries a political content as the receiver and product of strategies and policies.

In effect, one of the aspects often overlooked in the literature of space and organization regarding Lefebvre’s theory is his concern with the role of space as the medium and outcome for the reproduction of the relations of production of the urban space. In his analysis of the political economy of space, he attests the need of the social division of labour to be manifested in space in order to endure materiality: “The study of space offers an answer according to which the social relations of production have a social existence to the extent that they have a spatial existence” (Lefebvre, 1991: 129). As highlighted by Dale and Burrell (2008: 153) Lefebvre’s approach to space has particular implications in how the enrolment of power relations in organizations transcends locality and intermingles the organizational production with the production of society. The outcome of the activity of organizations would be the production of space itself, and the analysis of space cannot be separated from the relations of production in society. In his framework for the analysis of space, Lefebvre observes in particular the production of space as a historical process, following spirals of abstraction.

The use of the term ‘spiral’ denotes a cycle of reproduction, which is not closed in itself but developed over time in the reinforcement of its features. The development from the absolute space of subjectivity to the abstract space of the technocrats is a continuous and advancing alienation from the lived. Abstract space is the dominance of the conceived, the mental and planned space. The supremacy of modern organizations in transforming society attests to the inexorability of this evolution. This logic of production is alienated from the concrete experience, of the perceived material world, in a dual sense: “as well as abstracting from it in their understanding, they then project this understanding back onto the lived level” (Elden, 2004). The concrete and abstract spaces should be linked by the lived space, and it is precisely in the alienation of this, when the conceived ideas are implemented, that space is configured as a realized abstraction. The production of abstract space of capitalism is one of the main messages in Lefebvre’s work.

The observation of how the conceived space becomes fetishized in modernity over the other spatial dimensions (lived and perceived spaces) and instrumentally applied for social reproduction coincides with the change in productive activity becoming no longer directed toward the perpetuation of social life, but centred on the reproduction of its abstract space. Lefebvre (1991) highlights the prominence acquired by the dimension of representations of space in modernity with the over appreciation of mental spaces. The scientific space, supported by Cartesian logic, emerged as the only legitimate way of apprehending space, hence ignoring the socially constructed nature of space. This epistemology is intertwined with management knowledge, adopted by the capitalist production, and reproduced globally over time.

In effect, from the very beginning, Lefebvre (1991) showed how the concept of space had evolved from the Aristotelian philosophic tradition to the Cartesian realm of the absolute. Mathematicians claimed the ownership of science, detached from philosophy, and appropriated space and time making them part of their domain. From that, we can infer that as scientific management emerged with modernity (Taylor, 1911), and appropriated many mathematical tools, it is understandable that it has inherited also its particular view of space, void of social relations in an absolute realm of mental space. Critiques of this separation are provided in the literature of space and organization following various distinct approaches, and the work of Lefebvre has been applied with different purposes, ranging from social materiality in the workplace (Conrad and Richter, 2013; Dale, 2005; Wapshott and Mallett, 2012) to the embodiment of performative space of organizations (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011; Munro and Jordan, 2013; Tyler and Cohen, 2010).

The process of abstraction finds its main setting in urban space, where the reproduction of social life is highly dependent on the commodification of space. The production of abstract space is, for Lefebvre, a process unfolding from the relentless evolution of capital accumulation. This genesis is explained in the course of science and technology seeking to master nature, and in this process destroying it. Through the creation and use of tools, space becomes both the product and locus of production, resulting in the creation of urban space, as the replacement of nature: “In short, every social space has a history, one invariably grounded in nature” (Lefebvre, 1991: 110).

In the history of capital accumulation, this domination acquired different forms. That is, for Lefebvre, an inescapable mechanism of evolution in the history of the accumulation of capital, for as long as the rules of transformation are maintained. Lefebvre proposed that in capitalism abstract space was erasing distinctions of local places by reproducing social relations of the dominant space:

In that sense, Lefebvre’s abstract space should not be dismissed as simply the space that results from capitalism, for it is in how Lefebvre theorizes abstraction that concealed forms of violence become apparent (Wilson, 2014). Claiming to put forward an interpretation of Lefebvre’s work “in his own terms rather than incorporating him into a pre-existing paradigm” (2014: 517), Wilson interprets abstract space as a historical and geographical reality which results from a violent process that empties the socio-spatial reality of its content, and subjects it to economic and political abstractions of money and power. Although it proceeds from abstraction, in the history of capital accumulation abstract space realized the domination of material space, which was mediated by the appearance of the urban space. Lefebvre argues that space mediated this domination in two different stages:

In the development of urban spaces, the urban setting becomes instrumentally organized, allowing surplus value to be consumed away from its production. The history of abstraction is thus linked to the domination of spaces of production, which are displaced to accommodate the pre-conceived space of technocrats. The central spaces that dominate and subjugate are often represented by organizations that mediate the production of abstract space, and which operate by denying the content of the local space that is dominated, regardless of its previous social content. In that process the symbolic and material violence of abstraction becomes apparent. This will be illustrated next with the case of a security program in the history of the so-called “pacification” of the territories of favelas in Brazil.

Context and Methodology

Favelas (Brazilian slums) are arguably a perfectly fitting context to demonstrate the attempt to produce abstract space. Slums are a worldwide phenomenon. Various figures show the increasing presence of slums in Rio and in the world (Davis, 2007). But counting slums is not necessarily the same thing as counting favelas, and these territories need to be considered from the perspective of the construction of their space, which is revealing of particular processes of political and economic development. Likewise, ‘favela’ as a category cannot pretend to encapsulate the various specificities of the local cultural manifestations of hundreds of such territories in the city. Almost every favela started with temporary accommodation, which was then transformed and expanded over time, making favelas different amongst themselves. They are looked at here in terms of their common relations to the formal city, rather than as an attempt to define their essential condition.

Many authors agree that the emergence of favelas is usually related to a combination of factors, such as: the lack of housing in the city, poverty, and the proximity to job opportunities, among others. Figure 12.1 shows a picture of an urbanized favela, where the impression of chaos and confusion is conveyed by the intertwined wires and narrow alley, which almost divert the viewer from the vibrant cultural interventions painted on the walls and the ingenuity applied in the organization of this dense space to accommodate many residents. However, the classical and hegemonic definitions of favelas focus on the precariousness of these spaces, and they continue to be viewed through a prism of absence, in particular because of the lack of formal regulation in these territories.

Such an environment of loose institutional ties, where the regulation of space is unclear, opens the way for drug gangs to establish themselves as a sort of parallel state, for example by controlling access to the territory, creating an apparatus for collectively binding decisions and subjecting the population to their authority. The violent drug traffickers that benefited from the globally developing drug trade were particularly influential in privatising favelas. In a territory of residents largely excluded from consumption, drug traffickers provided for those who had given up struggling by legal and peaceful means, thus aggravating the problem of urban violence, even though these groups continued to represent a very small portion of the population in favelas.

As I have discussed elsewhere (Lacerda, 2015), the association of the identity of the inhabitants of favelas with criminality is to a great extent reinforced by discourses reproduced by the media and the government. Therefore, the definition of favelas is disputed, because the way they are categorized is also part of a political struggle. Over more than a century of existence, the strategies of the government and the elite to deal with favelas in Rio have gone through cycles of rejection/clearance and acceptance/urbanization. Across the century, not only the number of favelados in the city was roughly increasing but also their presence and legitimacy has been consolidated. However, the failure of the state in integrating these territories is reflected in the abiding issue of privatization of favelas by criminal organizations, which remains a key controversy. This dispute for the legitimacy of occupation and the right to the city is ultimately political, and is mediated by formal and informal (and illegal) organizations acting in the favelas.

Figure 12.1  Alleyway in a long established favela, 2013.

Courtesy of Rodolfo Abreu.

In 2008, a rare confluence of political allies occupied the three public offices, allowing a state-level security policy to have the necessary political articulation with federal and municipal levels to launch the Unidades de Policia Pacificadora (UPP) (Pacifying Police Units) program. The idea was to militarily occupy the favelas where drug traffickers had existed for a long time, building police stations (the so-called “pacifying units”) in these territories. The formal objective of the program was to regain control of the territories terminating the disputes between drug dealers, and in order for that to happen the first stage was the takeover by the elite squad. Therefore, the objective of the program was not the end of criminality or drug dealing, but to regain power and reduce the effect of armed disputes on the outside of favelas (Cano, Borges, and Ribeiro, 2012: 19). The real intentions underpinning this manoeuvre have been challenged by several authors (Fleury, 2012; Machado, 2010; Willis and Prado, 2014). This will be discussed here in light of the literature on the social production of the abstract space.

In 2014, I returned to Favela Mucuripe, where I had conducted previous work, in Rio de Janeiro, aiming to investigate the organizing space of that territory. The favela is located on the hillside, as are the vast majority of the other favelas of the city, and is roughly divided in two big communities that share the same hill. The chosen favela was a particularly rich environment because of the high number of organizations dedicated to cultural, educational and political practices. One of the main reasons for this wide range of activities was its privileged location: the favela was embedded in one of the wealthiest zones in the city. This data collection was part of a bigger project aimed at investigating what influences the organization of space of civil society organizations (CSOs) based in favelas, beyond the boundaries of their workplaces.

During fieldwork, I conducted participatory observation of the activities of civil society organizations in the territory, interviewed participants of these organizations and public representatives, and compiled documents. The twenty interviewees had a mixed background in terms of schooling, age, and type of involvement with the local organizing practices. Interviews were enriched by visual techniques: the use of timelines and drawings. The generation of data through visual methods is usually associated with interviews, which gives the opportunity for the participant to explain what is being represented. It triggers the question of how much more data is necessary to understand social relationships (Mason, 2002), and offers different entry points to the analysed data. Participants were invited to be interviewed and engage with two artistic activities: drawing and storytelling. During the first half I invited the participant to draw the favela and describe their drawing, and explain the differences between the communities, the inside and the outside, rules of living in the favela, and the main problems.

The following section presents the process of pacification in Rio focusing in the researched favela, and draws on the data collected during my research fieldwork at Mucuripe, but it includes also reference to previous research and indirect data that was compiled about the governmental programs deployed in this and other favelas.

The Case of Mucuripe

The Historical Space of the Favela

One of the first questions I asked during each interview was “If I were a Martian that had just landed on Earth, how would you describe the place where you live/work, the favela?.”² Responses of residents often related to the past:

Reinforcing the importance of one’s history in the territory, the quotations above also support the relevance of the past for understanding the present. In most interviews, participants responded to the opening question about what the favela is at the present using direct or indirect references to the past, as illustrated above: “they seized it and made their homes,” “In the past the morro was less dense,” “the favela was much more segregated in the past,” and “still today one does not love the other.” They acknowledged, thus, that their present space was not arbitrary but incorporated the content of past historical systems, which subsisted in the landscape. The past is also present today in the configuration of the territory, and I will illustrate that by examining the differences between the two communities of Mucuripe, which I will call here Itaperi and Buruti.

The power and influence of drug dealers in the territory of Mucuripe has been in place for decades. Ironically, even the integration between the communities of Itaperi and Buruti that the government had recently attempted to promote with works post-UPP (pacification) apparently had a much lesser impact than the forced integration carried out by the drug dealers in the 1990s. Victor explained how the favela was first integrated then:

Another day, at work, Victor told me how he struggled to cross from Itaperi, where he lived, to Buruti, where he studied, before the 1990s integration: “I had to run to school without being seen because people from the two communities could not even cross each other […] mate, today I work side by side with people from Buruti and Itaperi” (Field Notes, 09/04/2014). Victor referred to his colleagues from Itaperi who worked with him at the same organization in the same room, an unlikely arrangement before 1990. As contended by Victor, the separation then came no longer from the actual concrete wall, as there was “a wall which were more in people’s minds,” and prevented such interactions. The drug dealers who united Mucuripe have held, for at least 25 years, a territorial control of the favela, establishing new internal and external borders and boundaries. It became possible for example to work side by side with people from the other community, which was very unlikely in the past, thanks to the integration promoted by the drug dealers. The presence of drug dealers pervaded every social relation in the favela and their influence was also structured in the social relationships of the favela, which were compliant to the regulation of their own space.

Rules in favelas have fluid and uncertain origins, but they are nonetheless material. Some of these rules refer back to the period of drug dealers’ autocratic ruling, such as the dress codes. For example, wearing a swimming costume within the favela is not allowed, as a sign of respect for older people (although the beach is close by and wearing a swimming costume in public is a common habit amongst working-class people in Rio). While others emerged as a consequence of the type of territorial occupation, such as the requirement to claim a piece of land: be the first to fence it. Such norms are the result of regulatory frameworks adapting to the technical and informational content of the favela. While the historical construction of favelas made them a peculiar regulatory environment, the clash of the abstraction promoted by the recent event of ‘pacification’ turned Mucuripe into an even more complex organizing space.

Intensifying the Spiral of Abstraction at Mucuripe

At the end of 2009, Mucuripe received its unit of the UPP program. This involved the previous military occupation of the territory by the elite squad—which were advertised to have expelled drug dealers and seized weapons—and the later deployment of a permanent unit with nearly 200 police officers specifically trained for the purpose of peacefully occupying favelas, a new model of action for the police in Rio. Authority over the favela would no longer be exercised by drug dealers, but should finally be given to the state.

Whereas the government made a big effort to signify the pacification as the “solution” to the “issues” of favelas, its actual presence in the territory remained very much linked to the apparatus of coercion. After decades of confrontation between the police and drug dealers, the president of the residents association (ResidentsOrg) described to me how he realized for the first time that this was a different approach being conducted by the police, changing the governance of the territory:

Zico continued explaining the consequences of this change, which started a new form of governance in Mucuripe: “I had to decide whom I would obey; I told them [traffickers] that now I would only talk to the government.” This change of governance had a great impact on local organizations. However, at first this was not a negotiated process. As described above, the UPP captain addressed the president of the residents’ association invested with formal authority and informed him of the new governance rather than consulting about any change: “I do not want any information from you … it’s all set.”

Zico knew that both parties exercised their domination with violence, and to him apparently it was a matter of deciding whom to obey. But as certainly known also by Zico, the actual control of the territory needed more than violence to be effective.

Elements of Abstract Social Space

The effect caused by the impressive initial occupation by the state resounded everywhere. Soon after the pacification of the first favelas, Rio newspapers were praising the program. The role of mass media in Rio was strong and apparently compelling in the accreditation of the success of UPPs. Among the newspaper stories I compiled regarding them, many effusively celebrated the program, as can be seen from the headlines: “Benefits way beyond the Hills”;⁴ “On Rocinha Occupation, the redemption of São Conrado [area];”⁵ “Pacification in Rio will work as the model for national pledge.”⁶ This propaganda was spread over the city, and even residents reinforced this message at times.

Whereas the government made a big effort to signify the pacification as the “solution” to the “issues” of favelas, its actual presence in the territory remained very much linked to the apparatus of coercion. However, the police realized a change of representation was needed, and among this war of information they initially tried to present a new image to the residents. One of the strategies adopted by the UPP was to invite the local population for an open meeting on a regular basis to talk about the issues and build bridges with the community, who had always seen the police as hostile.

As Victor sharply pointed out, aside from the autocratic ruling, the drug dealers had previously to some extent played the role of the state in the territory before, providing even the means for a certain level of social wellbeing (such as medicines and financial support). However, they were not the state, and could not deliver many of the public services that citizens would expect in the city (e.g. “there is no water supply here”). Whereas the drug dealers could only do charity, the advertised presence of the state after UPP—the first stable and significant official presence until then—was perceived to mean that they would finally receive the same treatment as residents of any other part of the city, as Victor said: “we demanded all the shit that had not been addressed.” Although the new meetings represented a positive channel of communication with the community leaders and representatives, the actual performance of state institutions in the territory still resembled very much that of the drug dealers.

It should be noted that, unlike other favelas in poorer areas, Mucuripe did have public services available to the population (such as a school, health unit, and street lighting), but the quality and coverage of such services were still way below what was needed, much unlike the surrounding wealthy neighbourhood. After the take over from the state, a few public representatives from various secretariats were deployed at Mucuripe. However, none of them could be compared to the presence of the police force, composed of nearly 200 officers in the territory—18 officers to 1,000 habitants, almost eight times more than the city’s average, see Cano, Borges, and Ribeiro (2012: 170)—which suggested that the dominant spatial practice of the state was still violence and coercion.

In addition, after the pacification, there was a considerable increase in the number of cultural initiatives coming from the outside. During the events of the Rio+20 world summit, in June 2012, cultural presentations were organized inside Mucuripe to take the “spirit” of the conference into the favelas—as was being done at the same time in four other pacified favelas. Among the fourteen different attractions there were groups of capoeira, samba, cultura nordestina, hall dancing, poetry and even jazz and classical music, which are two very alien styles to poor communities in Brazil. No funk presentation was invited. This is surprising, since the culture of favelas is traditionally related to funk music. However, funk music has also been associated with drug cartels, and their lyrics would exalt the power of traffickers and incite violence. Funk fests were then forbidden in pacified communities, which generated many complaints by inhabitants who challenged the prohibition of their traditional funk parties.

Finally, with the improved security in the territory of favelas many market services started being offered in the ‘pacified’ territories. In effect, the UPPs considerably expanded the space of capital accumulation, by providing retail businesses access to the favelas’ internal market, and opportunities to external contractors sponsored by the state to provide services in the new territories. The number of small businesses registered in the favelas with UPPs, for example, increased by 56% in the first year of the program, as they were accessing new credit in the financial market.⁷ Even retailers’ stock share prices rose thanks to the creation of new markets in the favelas, which included 280,000 new potential consumers.⁸ The selective integration of these territories to the formal city also allowed energy companies to charge energy bills in many houses that had had illegal connections to the power network before.

This developed interest of businesses in favelas is unsurprising when we learn the extent of the mutual collaboration of the program: the initial funding for the UPP program, for example, was donated by a group of private companies (including Coca-Cola and Bradesco Bank),⁹ jointly funding of more than USD 10 million per year for the maintenance of UPPs. The spaces of capital largely benefited from the framework of legality brought to favelas by pacification, which reduced criminality outside their territories and opened up the way for a larger market within.

Discussion

As presented in the examples above, the struggle of the state in the favela was more than the attempt to control occupation and access to the territory; it was also an attempt to take over control from drug dealers to craft a different social space. Correspondingly, the previous control of the territory by drug dealers cannot be disassociated from the previous lack of control by the State. And for that reason the influence of the drug dealers over the territory would go, thus, beyond the drug trade. As a matter of fact, drug cartels had a well-established economic, political and ideological system. The mechanisms of institutional regulation used by the drug dealers were also vast. State services, such as social support and healthcare funding, which were considerably limited in the favela, were most of the time provided by the traffickers who would hinder even more the entrance of other market services as well. The influence of drug dealing in the enactment and dissolution of boundaries between communities, for example, demonstrate that it was embedded in the social space of the favela, as it had been over decades of influence shaping its historical space.

Disregarding the reasons that led to the emergence of drug dealers, or the particularities of the local violence founded on the absence of the state, the program of pacification was implemented not in terms of an objective proposal of services to the local population, but operated negatively by denying the content of the dominated territory. In that sense, it relates to abstract space. The state performed the direct violent action needed by the production of abstract space (Lefebvre, 1991: 280), based on the coercion of the military to support further actions of symbolic and more concealed violence enacted with the instrumental use of space. In the case of favelas, this violence can be explained in terms of the three different domains of: conceived (media reports), perceived (police occupation) and lived (cultural interventions) social space.

The propaganda illustrated in the quoted newspapers, was an important tactic for controlling the arena of representation of space. Controlling the legitimate representations of space (conceived space) was one of the main instruments used by the state. Instead of properly involving local civil society organizations to unify social forces, the government of Rio relied initially only on the power of propaganda and mass media, and lacked much of the necessary initiatives involving civil society, in order to assure the engagement of local residents in the construction of new representations of space. In other words, rather than territorialize the intended transformation, they reproduced inside and outside these territories their own representation of space—a favela pacified by the police—which had been conceived away from the everyday life of individuals.

In terms of perceived space, it should be noted that, because it is the site of legal and illegal trade, in favelas the control of territory is a very valuable resource. The domain of the territory enables one to decide which spatial practices (perceived space) can be performed, and thus means owning symbolic capital for concessions. My data suggests that the impact of the pacification on Mucuripe’s residents is undisputed: most timelines had the implementation of the UPP unit as a significant event in the territory, and UPP was the fifth most cited term in every interview after community, people, houses and favela, occurring on average once every four minutes. However, this presence begs the question of what kind of practices were changed by the state in the territory. At Mucuripe, the implementation of pacification focused on spatial practices mainly restricted to violence and coercion, as suggested also above by the disproportionate number of police officers. Thus, with rare exceptions the involvement of civil society was to a great extent decided in offices of state representatives outside the favela (in higher ‘spatial scales’) and reproduced in the territory in hierarchical impositions that did not consider their local organization.

Finally, at Mucuripe the number of cultural interventions from the outside became more common after the pacification. By replacing the previous “content” of space with one that can be “grasped” by abstraction (Lefebvre, 1991: 306), the manipulation of culture plays a major role in the domination of space, as demonstrated by the pervading presence of culture in Lefebvre’s articulation between the conscious and unconscious, which is depicted in the representational space (lived space), of symbols and images. In Mucuripe, artistic interventions of funk music were widely associated with drug dealers and the violence that would come from favelas. In effect, lived space is largely the space of resistance to planned and regulated space, where symbols marginalized by the central space are embodied (Zhang, Spicer, and Hancock, 2008). This motivated both their marginalization and the crafting of alternative cultural spaces. For that reason, the consumption of culture legitimized by the ruling class—such as the musical rhythms allowed in the Rio+20 summit—produced social signification by reproducing the kind of cultural manifestation that was adherent to the socialization of the formal city, while excluding others.

These three elements analysed above show that a new, abstract space was being crafted at Mucuripe. This is a space that overlooked local spatial practices other than military coercion; one that conveyed its spatial representation hierarchically through the media based on the ‘norm’ of the formal city; and that controlled which cultural events were allowed, thus censoring undesirable representational spaces. Here, it is important to recall Lefebvre’s concept of abstract space as the result of processes of abstraction, and not simply the space of capitalism. The symbolic violence of abstract space is dependent on prior direct forms of violence by the state (Lefebvre, 1991: 280), such as the military occupation in Mucuripe and the resulting changes in representation and practice. The government in Rio operated then as the bearer of abstract space by ignoring any existing substance in the territory of the favela and trying to impose the norms that were necessary for the expansion of capitalist space into the favela. The new conceived relationships tried to empty the existing cultural values and replace them with the violence of a bureaucratic state, such as the reconstitution of what were deemed to be legitimate cultural expressions, forbidding funk fests. This instantiates the definition of state proposed by Lefebvre (1991) as a “realised abstraction” born of violence (p. 280).

The analysis of the data presented above reveals, thus, the connection between the violence of state and the expansion of spaces of capital accumulation. Lefebvre (1991: 281) underlines that the constitution of the state is not independent of the relations of production, and originates from the violence of homogenization that subordinates various aspects of social space—such as culture, education, and legislation. Lefebvre also adds that in the history of capital accumulation the violence of the state cannot be separated from the instrumental space of the ruling class’s hegemony. The production of the abstract space is always a violent process, and in modernity this abstraction happens in the balance of the class struggle with the materiality of the state, for “it was here, in the space of accumulation, that the state’s ‘totalitarian vocation’ took shape” (Lefebvre, 1991: 279).

Hence, following the vocation of the state to materialize in space the ruling class’s hegemony, I would suggest that the major integration that the UPP program was sponsoring according to the data above was the integration of the favela to the formal market. Businesses now had free access and favela residents could now offer services to outsiders. Favela residents did not acquire the formal status of citizens, but consumers (although to an extent they have always been both); in that lies the opportunity for the production of the abstract space of capitalism (Lefebvre, 1991). Whereas the market operates through an ‘invisible hand’, the creation of its space depends on the ‘visible hand’ of the state.

The violent hand of the state was needed in the favela especially to confront a likewise violent organization that was already entwined with the space of the favela: the drug dealers. In other words, in the process of bringing the abstract space of capitalism into the favela, the state had to impose first its violent apparatus over the apparatus of violence of drug dealers. However, the violence of drug dealers was entangled with the territoriality of the favela already. They produced space while acknowledging the previous layers of territorial formation and restricted their actions to the interests of their local trafficking activity. As a consequence, residents accommodated the pattern of violence promoted by drug dealers in their everyday life, and organized the social fabric according to—or despite—the conditioning features of trafficking (Cavalcanti, 2008). In contrast, police officers treated any resident as a potential suspect, and did not respect the existing social space. One example of this treatment was the killing of a local dancer, shot dead by the police in a frustrated operation in the favela during the period of my fieldwork.

This event, considered by most favela residents as the assassination of one of their own, triggered anger among many people, who stated that they could not differentiate the role of the police in terms of how much more or less violent than the traffickers they were, but in the different way how they imposed their norms with no respect for the local codes that characterized their social space. The police were mediators of an outsider state imposing new places in Mucuripe, by trying to enforce the legal frameworks of the formal city (such as the payment of energy bills). The signification of these new places, erasing local distinctions and reproducing social relations of the dominant space, followed the production of abstract space as described earlier through the enacted changes in social space, which entangle more concealed forms of violence that are operated through the instrumental use of space.

These spatial elements explain and contextualize the actions of various organizations operating in the territory, such NGOs that provide education and social security in the territory, which had to accommodate old and new constraints in space. In effect, many categories of analysis could have been examined here, such as the alternative structure of work, the organising practices that engender materiality, or the partnerships enacted by the cooperation between public and private organizations in the favela. However, had the totality of the produced space not been considered, the analysis of these organizations would have been considerably narrow, as it is arguably the case in many studies of non-profit and also business organizations. As I have argued in this chapter, approaching the totality of space through the analysis of the associated political economy is enlightening for it explains the conditions in which other categories operate. In effect, these categories always exist in space and should not be considered detached from its historical production.

Concluding Remarks

As I have discussed in this chapter, the power of the drug dealers in favelas, which operated in a spatial scale that could influence the whole territory of the favela, produced an oppressive organization with strong influence in the everyday life of individuals and organizations in Mucuripe, but this power only existed in constant dialectical tension with the formal city. The attempt to overrule this power and impose the authority of the state onto the space has created bigger tensions, because it was formed by violent actions that denied the social content of the favela space. The present analysis argued that this process is associated with the spiral of abstraction described by Lefebvre as an inescapable process in the history of capital accumulation. The production of abstract space can only happen through the dissolution of old relations of the historical space, which was attempted in Mucuripe through the program of pacification, implemented by the state to promote a hierarchical intervention in the territory of Mucuripe in order to integrate it into the space of consumption.

It should be noted that I am not claiming in any way that the favela had been ‘absent’ from market relations or state programs before, and that the program of pacification had reversed that agenda, or all the less that favelas had been detached from the urban space. Rather the contrary. Observation in favelas reveals, as it did before, market relations typical of a society organized around capitalist production, and also the presence of the state, although in different ways according to the favela. Even though there was no absolute rupture with what had gone before, there were considerable and material transformations taking place, and such transformations (as observed in Mucuripe during this fieldwork) were put in context considering two important assumptions. First, favelas had a marginal role in the organization of the urban space, mainly as the containment of cheap labour, as the agenda of the state had always reinforced. Second, the development of the urban space as a whole could not happen without the development of favelas, and the case analysed in this chapter showed attempts to promote the abstraction of these spaces oriented to the needs of its centre, i.e. in the outsider spaces of capital accumulation.

From that stance, the chapter shows that the organization of the territory is the outcome of conflicting processes of territorialization, such as the deployment of a massive police force in a favela where basic public services are still not adequately delivered. In that context, the norms that guide the production of space in favelas become disputed and contradictory, denying important features of its historical space, illustrated in this chapter through the three moments of social space: new representations of the favela by means of propaganda, the control of spatial practices with new activities in the territory, and the attempt to control cultural expressions that reflected the space of representations. As a result, I argue that this process should be considered a violent and late attempt to fully integrate favelas in the abstract space of capital accumulation, following the process described by Lefebvre. The historical space of favela subsisted entangled with the territoriality of the drug dealers at Mucuripe.

This case is ontologically attached to the concept of totality, which is often left aside in the literature of space and organization. For this reason, this analysis contributes to organization studies in highlighting the importance of analysing the relations between organizations with their surrounding space: understanding how historical transformations affect the present organizational space; how contemporary events construct and organize space across organizations; and how organizations mediate the construction of the territory by reproducing or resisting the abstraction of their space. Scholars of organization can relate, for example, the problematic imposition of abstract managerial knowledge to marginal spaces (Cooke, 2006; Dar, 2007; Dar and Cooke, 2008; Mir, Mir, and Srinivas, 2004; Srinivas, 2008) to the inescapable violence of abstraction produced by the expansion of spaces of capital accumulation. These elements of the relation between organizations and their surroundings might be particularly important for civil society organizations, since these organizations generally do not follow abstract modes of rationality based only on efficiency and financial outcome.