Janice Perlman, Favela. Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro.

Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2010.

Perlman seeks to study how the macro-economic changes that Brazil experienced in the last 40
years had an influence in the evolution of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. This period coincides
with time when humankind made the shift to an urban world. The shift was characterized by the
concentration of 4 out of each 10 urban inhabitants living in shantytowns, an expression of the
urban inequality that has also brought violence, ruptures in the social contract, and environmental
damage. She studies several generations along these 40 years, seeking to understand the inter-
generational transmission of poverty, how these places have changed, and whether the gap
between them and the rest of the city has narrowed or widened.

Back in 1968-69 she selected three different favelas (Catacumba, Nova Brasilia, and Duque de
Caxias), and five unserviced subdivisions. From this research The Myth of Marginality (1976)
came out. Here she seeks to challenge the prevailing theories about urban marginality (guided by
Oscar Lewis’ works among others). “My study revealed that residents of favelas are not
“marginal” to society but tightly integrated into it, albeit in an asymmetrical manner. They give a
lot and receive very little. They are not on the margins of urban life or irrelevant to its
functioning, but actively excluded, exploited, and “marginalized” by a closed social system” (p.
14). By proving that stereotypes were just the justification for favelas’ eradication, she hoped to
encourage the granting of land tenure so they could grow into thriving working class
communities. She came back to this point 30 years later to see how they evolved during that time,
in order to understand the dynamics of urban poverty across generations. Instead of just studying
the same community, she sought to study the same individuals, so she could have a closer look of
this. “Only a panel study of the same people, their children, and their children’s children can
begin to reveal how patterns of context, attitudes, behavior, and luck play out in the struggle to
overcome the exclusion and dehumanization of poverty” (p. 15).

Main theme: History of the life and struggle of three generations in the favelas, throughout four
decades, since her first research, The Myth of Marginality in the late 60´s, until the first decade of
twentieth century.

At the beginning she introduces how she got to this theme, narrating her ethnographic research
experience, since her arrival to Arembepe (Bahia) to her later focus in migratory flow to the cities
in her doctoral research. Here is the point when she began to study favela. These migrants, facing
the situation of not having house, began to occupy the vacant lands, the hillsides, giving origin to
the favelas.

In this occasion, she focuses in a central theme: how poverty transmits generation to generation,
how inequality is still one of the most striking realities in the favela, despite the trends and
advances of these 40 years. She wanted to look for interconnections between macro - economic
transformations, economic growth of Brazil, and the every - day life of favelados. Therefore, she
studies realities of the urban poor, and whether production and reproduction of inequalities and
poverty had decreased or strengthen during the fast growth of world economy. This research was
developed in the same favelas she had already studied in the 60´s: Catacumba, Nova Brasilia and
Duque de Caxias.

Rapidly, her results of the intergenerational study revealed that social mobility had been limited,
despite of relative improve in the life of the second generation of inhabitants (Children of the first
generation she met 30 years ago). Because of that, she decided to study the third generation,
looking for a possible social mobility beyond the second one. Certainly, education and legal
housing ownership were the main positive goals of these years. However, despite of the
qualification, the rates of wages were still low, perpetuating poverty and inequalities. Despite of
legal housing ownership, and the end of evictions from favelas, violence in the neighborhoods
had increased considerably affecting the life of their inhabitants. “More amenities, and less
security”, like the case of Villa Operaria in favela of Novo Brasilia.

The book is divided is four parts:

First part: History of favelas in Rio and global urbanization in the global south.

Second part: Historical trend of three favelas.

Third part: Rise of violence, erosion of social capital and the origins of the "myth of reality", and
how lives improve or worsen in these years.

Fourth part: Discussion about poverty, urbanization and globalization, urban policy toward favela
and longtime results in the life of its inhabitants.

Her position about the changes in the public policy toward favelas: The removal of favelas and
the moving to housing project improved the life of favelados in the long run, however, results
would have been better if the investments had been made in the inhabitants, rather than
engineering and architectural infrastructure, especially in the case of Catacumba.

The permanence of marginality concept despite of the years: The myth of marginality became in
the “reality of marginality”. What a reality was now became truth: marginality enhanced in these
years, even worsening previous conditions of forty years ago. Now not only had evolved in what
she calls "the street talk", a public stereotype speech about marginal character of favelas and
favelados, but also in a form of marginality ever seen in Rio, “advanced marginality”, a concept
that Loic Wacquant had proposed to explain exclusion from the capitalist system of entire of
urban poor inhabitants in the industrial era, and Javier Auyero had already tried studying the case
of Buenos Aires. This kind of marginality is characterized by four elements: social inequality, an
absolute surplus of population, the retrenchment of welfare state and spatial
concentration/stigmatization. The first one did not coincide with the results of research. The
second one neither does. What Loic Wacquant defines as “an absolute surplus of population” is
the permanent eviction of the population from regular labor market. She concludes that is not the
case of Rio. The third one neither does. Neither four applied. There is stigmatization, but not
spatial concentration; favelas are spread for all Rio, and their population in heterogeneous, unlike
ghettos studied by Wacquant.

“This new violence may be the ultimate manifestation of the marginalization of the poor, the
reality of marginality.” (p 162)

 Disappointment about democracy.

 Limited mobility.