Medo e violência na cidade: imagens, discursos e sociabilidade nas praças de João Pessoa - PB

摘要

The present work analyses and discusses the sociability in the culture of contemporarycities focusing on the theme of fear and violence in the daily life of squares in the city ofJoão Pessoa-PB. We analyse the relations between places in town and make correlationsof history and setting of neighborhoods with the process of urban growth, including recentinterventions of public authorities in their public spaces. We observed in this dynamicssocial attitudes and actions that range from a desired peaceful coexistence to socialexclusion. Thus, we discuss, based upon the imaginary vision, that the squares exist as alocus of equality, citizenship and political, and, also, as a space for everyone, despite theexistence of symbolic forces working towards segregation and privatization, ruled in fearand violence. We aimed to investigate the different symbolic logics from the issue of fearand violence that allows the exclusion and the inclusion of groups and individuals in thequotidian use of public spaces of contemporary cities. We believe that the social action isdemarcated by violence ant its corollary, the social fear, and operates based on the logicof a relational game always confrontational but experienced in different forms accordingto the social segment or group under study. We used a qualitative and quantitativemethodology relating data and statistical analysis with categories created for theunderstanding of subjective factors. Our analyses combined ethnographic elements,periodics research and images of the city and its spaces, with the contribution of a surveythat allowed comparisions of five squares of neighborhood based on the daily life underinvestigation. Our proposal was to deepen the investigations related to the public space ofcontemporary cities, expanding the look on João Pessoa and its cultural dynamics with ananalysis of discourses, images, the collective imaginary and the social appropriation of thespaces based on fear and violence. The research accomplished in different areas and theanalysis of images and speeches published in newspapers reports, books, advertising etc.allowed the approach of differentiated patterns of sociability in the same urban process.The neighborhoods in study are indeed spatially and economically distanced and theprocess of creation and construction of squares occurred in very different ways in therespective location. We defend the thesis that neighborhood community squares providereinvigorated spaces and public spheres in the urban process and in the dynamics ofsociability in the cities. These squares are also social spaces par excellence for theperception of the logic of individualism and segregation so marked by fear and violence incontemporary cities