Stolen Cars: A Journey Through São Paulo's Urban Conflict (IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series)

__Stolen Cars__ is an innovative ethnography of urban inequalities and violence in São Paulo, Brazil. * Organized around the journeys of five stolen cars, each chapter discusses a specific theme, such as the distinctions between violent robbery and the more commercial non-violent theft or the role of national borders interconnecting illegal and legal economies * Provides an original theoretical framework for a rarely studied urban and transnational supply chain * Draws from empirical data and a combination of different methodologies to demonstrate mechanisms of urban inequalities and violence reproduction * Highlights how everyday life is entangled with structural urban transformations * Uses an ethnographic narrative to show how urban development produce various forms of illegality and violent crime STOLEN CARS Contents Notes on Contributors Series Editors’ Preface Introduction A Phone Call A Global Market Theoretical Framework: Normative Regimes Inequalities Methods: About Journeys, Tacking, and Our Collaborative Research Team A Collective Research Team Ethical Issues, Diversity, and Typical Days Chapter Structure 1 Crime, Violence, and Inequality in São Paulo 7 a.m. (Fiat Strada) 10:00 a.m. (Hyundai HB20) 5:15 p.m. (Fiat Palio) 8:40 p.m. (Ford Ka) Urban Violence and Market Regulation 2 State Reaction Police Use of Lethal Force Imprisonment The “Clearing of Public Roads” Political Legitimation 3 Designing the Market Insurance as a Mediator The Automobile Business: From the Streets of São Paulo to the Panama Papers 4 Auctions and Mechanisms Central Circuits: Insurance Companies that Sell at Auctions Some Numbers Marginal Circuits: Car Dealerships and Chop-shops that Buy at Auctions Auctioneers: Economics and Politics 5 Dismantling a Stolen Car Family, Market, Politics Between Extremes: From “Recicla” to “Sheds” Prices and Stratification 6 Regulating an Illegal Market A Brief Chronology of the Dismantling Law Old Practices, New “Political Merchandise”: The Everyday Experience of the Dismantling Law The Political Centrality of Police Officers Police Regulation and Violence 7 Not Criminals, Legislators New Laws, New Markets Illegal Markets, Microfinance, Corporate Philanthropy Action and Reaction Parallel Insurance and the Protection Market The Law that Governs the Market, the Market that Governs the Law 8 Globalization and Its Backroads A Global Market and Its Margins Connecting Markets Urban Reconfigurations North–South Urban Inequalities Conclusions Afterword: Following Cars in a Latin American Metropolis: Inequality, Illegalisms, and Formalization References Index "It's November 2015. A white Suzuki Jimny moves slowly through the streets of Vila Mariana, a middle-class neighborhood in southwestern São Paulo. Inside, three researchers talk about the best way to get to Vila Cisper, an old working-class neighborhood in the East Zone. Vila Cisper was settled in the 1950s after a glass bottle factory was set up there. The factory belonged to one Olavo Egydio de Souza Aranha Jr, scion of a family from the Portuguese nobility, who studied engineering and architecture in Europe. His employees were migrants from the Brazilian countryside, descendants of Christianized Indians or blacks freed from slavery, or even poor whites, especially Italians, who had come to São Paulo as beneficiaries of Government population whitening policies. They were taken on by the factory as they came: mostly illiterate, no surname, no papers. We don't know the way for sure, so it's best to strictly follow the Google Maps directions. A cell phone fixed to the vehicle's dashboard with the help of a plastic holder begins telling us the way to go. We continue on our way, talking about the fact that we are in a Japanese car, made in Brazil, with a cell phone from an American multinational company, powered by Google, one of the largest companies on the planet. Our conversion comes to rest on the subject of the plastic holder that allows us to attach the cell phone to the car windscreen that was made in China and bought at a São Paulo traffic light. Informal workers born in the favelas of São Paulo sell plastic supports, but so too do immigrants from the slums of Lagos and La Paz - they all sell them throughout downtown São Paulo"-- Provided by publisher

Stolen Cars is an innovative ethnography of urban inequalities and violence in São Paulo, Brazil.

• Organized around the journeys of five stolen cars, each chapter discusses aspecific theme, such as thedistinctions between violent robberyand the more commercial non-violenttheft or the role of national borders interconnecting illegal and legal economies
• Providesan originaltheoretical frameworkforararelystudied urban and transnational supply chain
• Draws fromempirical data anda combination of different methodologiesto demonstrate mechanisms of urban inequalities and violence reproduction
• Highlights howeveryday life is entangled with structural urban transformations
• Uses anethnographic narrativeto show how urban development?produce various forms of illegality and violent crime