The Regulation of the Maintenance of Community-Use Spaces in Brazilian Favelas: Interactions between Local and State Agents and Interlegality Relations

This research departs from the sociolegal studies agenda on legal pluralism in Brazilian favelas and from legal geography studies on public space regulation. Its aim is to provide new insights and explore new perspectives regarding both research agendas. It intends to answer the following research question: “how can the regulation of the maintenance of community-use spaces vary in Brazilian favelas?”. Community-use spaces are those used by local residents for daily encounters and community activities, representing important aspects of their rights to leisure and to the city. To address the research question, qualitative data from different Brazilian favelas were accessed. Part of the data was gathered from a multiple case study in a set of eight favelas located in four Brazilian cities – Belém, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. Further data was collected through participant observations as a member of the “Observatory of Social-Interest Land Regularization” (Observatório da Regularização Fundiária de Interesse Social – ORFIS), a project from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) dedicated to gather information of favelas in the city of Porto Alegre. The data were analyzed by the identification of narratives that reveal the action of norms that regulate the maintenance of community-use spaces, especially social and legal norms that attribute responsibilities and procedures to assure that squares, streets, soccer fields and other community-use spaces and structures remain in adequate conditions for the daily life of local residents. Preliminary results suggest that the regulation of the maintenance of community-use spaces vary from situations in which they are considered both by local and governmental actors as a sort of condominium spaces managed by community institutions to situations of more intricate relationships between local and governmental actors, in which they share responsibilities under the influence of social and legal norms.