Special Issues by Francesca Pilo'
City & Society, 2020
H ow can urban anthropology understand rule and belonging in the city? Where is urban politics lo... more H ow can urban anthropology understand rule and belonging in the city? Where is urban politics located and how do we recognize it? In this special issue, we suggest that a focus on materiality might help us understand the relation between cities and political processes in new ways. Anthropologists have long understood cities as important political arenas and as key sites in the formation of political communities (e.g. Holston 1999). Such ethnographic work has shown how urban politics is located across diverse social spaces, from official government buildings to the space of the street, and in a range of everyday practices and more spectacular events. Urban anthropologists frequently study the role of elected officials and bureaucrats (e.g. Lazar 2007; Anjaria 2011), and increasingly also study the role of non-state actors-from social movements and corporations to churches and criminal organizationsin urban governance and negotiations of citizenship (e.g. Jaffe 2013; Lanz and Oosterbaan 2016).
Thesis by Francesca Pilo'
La régularisation des favelas par l'électricité. Un service entre Etat, marché et citoyenneté
Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées , Feb 6, 2015
With the country’s hosting of a number of major international events having refocused attention o... more With the country’s hosting of a number of major international events having refocused attention on security issues, the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro introduced a new public security policy at the end of 2008 to regain territorial control over many of the city’s favelas through the use of Pacifying Police Units (UPP). This programme has led to a partial revamp of the public authorities’ favelas integration project. Since the 1990s, development has mainly involved improving infrastructure and access roads and, to a lesser extent, land and urban regularisation. Now, however, the authorities plan to promote ‘integration through the regularisation’ of market and administrative relationships, involving various stakeholders from both the public and private spheres.
This thesis examines the integration of these favelas from a relatively unexplored perspective: that of regularisation through the electricity network, the aim of which is to transform ‘illegal users’ into new ‘registered customers’, connected to the distribution company by a meter. In particular, we will highlight the link between the public and private approaches being used in projects to regularise the electricity service in two favelas, Santa Marta and Cantagalo. To this end, our analysis will focus on studying regularisation of the electricity service using its own tools - including socio-technical (installing meters and rehabilitating the network), commercial (billing collection methods) and controlling electricity consumption tools - and examining the ways in which customers have taken ownership of these.
Research shows that regularising the electricity service tends to reshape the favelados’ relationship with the state and the market; however, this has a number of limitations: it is difficult to build contractual customer relationships based on trust; activities to control consumption advocate bringing behaviours ‘up to standard’ rather than supporting use; service regularisation tends to reproduce socio-economic inequalities rather than rise above them and these inequalities also gradually become less political. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to help improve understanding of the methods being used to integrate the favelas given the growing neo-liberalisation of urban policy.
Keywords: regularisation, electricity network, favelas, Rio de Janeiro
Articles by Francesca Pilo'
Urban Studies, 2021
This article aims to contribute to recent debates on the politics of smart grids by exploring the... more This article aims to contribute to recent debates on the politics of smart grids by exploring their installation in low-income areas in Kingston (Jamaica) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). To date, much of this debate has focused on forms of smart city experiments, mostly in the Global North, while less attention has been given to the implementation of smart grids in cities characterised by high levels of urban insecurity and socio-spatial inequality. This article illustrates how, in both contexts, the installation of smart metering is used as a security device that embeds the promise of protecting infrastructure and revenue and navigating complex relations framed along lines of socioeconomic inequalities and urban sovereignty-here linked to configurations of state and non-state (criminal) territorial control and power. By unpacking the political workings of the smart grid within changing urban security contexts, including not only the rationalities that support its use but also the forms of resistance, contestation and socio-technical failure that emerge, the article argues for the importance of examining the conjunction between urban and infrastructural governance, including the reshaping of local power relations and spatial inequalities, through globally circulating devices.
City & Society, 2020
Through an ethnographic study of a document in urban Brazil-the electricity bill-this article arg... more Through an ethnographic study of a document in urban Brazil-the electricity bill-this article argues for developing a relational and materialist approach to citizenship. It analyzes the uses and meaning of this document for favela residents, the state, and the private electricity provider, within projects to regularize illegal connections and the so-called "pacification" program, a state security policy to re-establish state territorial control. It investigates the tensions between the market-oriented processes of electricity regularization and citizenship by examining the implications of this contractual change on the way state and non-state actors and residents frame rights and responsibilities linked to membership in society. Analysis of this document reveals how citizenship framing takes specific shape in line with both state reforms and urban processes of differentiation. It shows that the bill both materializes normative ideas of "deserving citizenship" as a territorial, moral, and material process, and realizes the potential for political contestation. The article thus expands on analysis of documents as material mediators of social and political relations and proposes an understanding of citizenship as a negotiated process involving people, state, and non-state actors and objects.
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space., 2019
In cities of the Global South, universal physical access to networked infrastructures, such as el... more In cities of the Global South, universal physical access to networked infrastructures, such as electricity and water, is often presented as enabling the reduction of social and spatial divisions. Whereas most of the discussions in these cities have focused on the obstacles to networked infrastructure expansion, little attention has been paid to the increased universalization of the physical electricity network in several Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian cities. This article unpacks the discussions around the modern infrastructural ideal and its local reshaping by building on the case of Rio de Janeiro, which has achieved universal grid electricity coverage, but where strong urban inequalities remain. By focusing on electricity grid management in favelas, this article analyzes how infrastructural inequalities emerge within the network. It suggests that, in order to understand how urban inequalities are reproduced or mitigated through networked infrastructure, it is important to consider the governance aspects of managing infrastructure. It develops this argument by focusing on the multi-level and heterogeneous spaces of infrastructure governance, including both national and institutionalized arenas, and local everyday practices between local actors on the ground. This analysis shows how networked infrastructural inequalities emerge from negotiation processes in which the fragmented nature of the urban environment is embedded. Through this analysis, the article contributes to current discussions on the urban geography and techno-politics of infrastructure by highlighting the negotiated nature of infrastructural inequalities beyond the modern infrastructural ideal.
CUS Working Paper Series, 2019
Through an ethnographic study of a document in urban Brazil - the electricity bill - this article... more Through an ethnographic study of a document in urban Brazil - the electricity bill - this article argues for developing a relational and materialist approach to citizenship. It analyzes the uses and meaning of this document for favela residents, the state and the private electricity provider, within projects to regularize illegal connections and the so- called ‘pacification’ program, a state-security policy to re-establish state territorial control. It proposes to investigate the tensions between the market-oriented process of electricity regularization and citizenship by examining the implications of this contractual change on the way state and non-state actors and residents frame membership to the society. Analysis of this document reveals how citizenship framing takes specific shape in line with both state reforms and urban processes of differentiation. It shows that the bill materializes both normative ideas of ‘deserving citizenship’ as a territorial, moral and material process, and the potential for political contestation. This article thus expands analysis of documents as material mediators of social and political relations, and proposes an understanding of citizenship as a negotiated process involving people, state and non-state actors and objects.
City : analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action., 2018
In the prolific contemporary discussions on the right to the city, little attention has been paid... more In the prolific contemporary discussions on the right to the city, little attention has been paid to the multifaceted political meaning of the reshaping of city dwellers’ rights, duties and responsibilities through regularisation processes inspired by neoliberal logics. This paper fills in this gap by engaging in an analysis of the dialectical relation between the political dimension of everyday life, urban rights, neoliberal urban policies and political emancipation. We thereby break from a radical reading of Lefebvre’s notion and from a focus on political mobilisation in order to cast a new light on the debate on the right to the city. Three regularisation policies, all linked to the affirmation of a commercial or fiscal relationship to the state are considered through a cross-case analysis: the regularisation that followed the forced displacement of street traders in central Accra; an in situ process of regularisation of street trading in a Cape Town central market; the regularisation of electricity services in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, a policy that seeks to re-establish a commercial relationship with favela residents by redefining their rights and responsibilities as registered customers of a private electricity provider. We resort to an exploratory notion, the actual right to the city, to examine how these forms of administrative regularisation have reshaped urban life. We argue that these processes of regularisation convey de-politicisation dynamics, such as the fragmentation and individualisation of political identities, along with the possible re-politicisation of certain stakes, such as the strengthening of individual and collective political expectations toward the State. This tension is due to the ambiguous nature of the new social and spatial contract between State and citizens emerging from regularisation. Beyond the necessary analysis of political struggles against neoliberal policies, and the essential assessment of their impact on urban inequalities, we therefore call for a better consideration of the ambiguous and less visible political impact of processes of selective inclusion and recognition by the State on the way city dwellers envision their rights and duties.
The tangled webs of electrical wires, a symbol of the favelas, are also the sign of an electricit... more The tangled webs of electrical wires, a symbol of the favelas, are also the sign of an electricity service that remains profoundly unequal and uncertain in Brazilian cities. Francesca Pilo' considers the varying quality of electricity distribution in Rio de Janeiro, and shows how this network contributes to dynamics of urban fragmentation that go beyond the simple dichotomy between shanty towns and prosperous neighborhoods.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2017
This article takes the contemporary transformation in electricity access in Rio de Janeiro’s fave... more This article takes the contemporary transformation in electricity access in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas as a starting point for a broader review of the relationship between the right to the city in informal settlements and the neoliberalization of the electricity service (introduction of full cost recovery and ‘the user pays’ principle). It examines the socio-technical process through which contractual customer relationships have been established or restored through regularization of the electricity service in two favelas,
namely, the installation of meters and networks. I suggest that applying a science and technology study perspective to the right to the city helps explore both the materiality and the spatial dimension of power and politics and, in so doing, provides an insight into some of the forms of mediation that help reshape recognition, urban practices and the favela dwellers’ position within such an essential service. Our analysis shows how the means of recognizing these city dwellers ‘by the network’ are materially and symbolically reshaped by commercial processes. The question then is whether this right to the city, which is being reshaped by commercial processes, will be the source of new inequalities or new politicizations.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12489/abstract
O processo de regularização de acesso aos serviços de energia elétrica em aglomerados informais é... more O processo de regularização de acesso aos serviços de energia elétrica em aglomerados informais é frequentemente descrito como uma “transformação de consumidores em clientes” (USAID,
2009). Na maior parte dos casos, tal transformação consiste em implementar medidas de redução das perdas comerciais e redefinir a relação comercial através de medidas técnicas, comerciais e de
eficiência energética. Dentro do contexto das transformações políticas nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro onde foram instaladas as UPPs (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora), este artigo explora o processo de
regularização da energia elétrica, concentrando-se nos aspectos das ações de eficiência energética implementadas pela companhia de distribuição do serviço, a Light. O objetivo principal deste artigo é mostrar como esta forma de reconfiguração de infraestrutura é implementada através de lógicas comerciais que, por sua vez, têm consequências na maneira como as medidas de economia de energia são promovidas. Inicialmente o artigo apresenta dois diferentes corpus de literatura cuja articulação permite uma compreensão da relação entre infraestrutura, práticas de consumo e políticas públicas de eficiência energética. Em seguida, o artigo propõe uma análise das ferramentas usadas pela companhia e das percepções das famílias. O artigo argumenta que as medidas adotadas pela companhia de distribuição de eletricidade aparecem para enfraquecer a compreensão dos consumidores sobre seu próprio consumo. O artigo destaca então alguns limites de uma abordagem comercial para a economia de energia e as contradições de sua política.
Francesca Pilo’ (2016): ‘Co-producing affordability’ to the electricity service: a market-oriente... more Francesca Pilo’ (2016): ‘Co-producing affordability’ to the electricity service: a market-oriented response to addressing inequality of access in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, Urban Research & Practice,
DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2016.1154101
User involvement in service organisation is seen as a potential means of improving and resolving service delivery issues. The aim of this article is to review a market-oriented project involving electricity customers in the favelas – defined here as an example of ‘co-producing affordability’ to the service – in order to enhance understanding of the diverse collaborative arrangements in service delivery in the South. By examining the part played by the institutional stakeholders involved in the project and the partial dissatisfaction that arose among users, this article will highlight the limitations of this approach for addressing disparities in access to services.
Symboles des favelas, les entrelacements de fils électriques apparents sont aussi celui d'un serv... more Symboles des favelas, les entrelacements de fils électriques apparents sont aussi celui d'un service de l'électricité qui reste profondément inégal et incertain dans les villes brésiliennes. En s'intéressant à la qualité de sa distribution à Rio de Janeiro, Francesca Pilo' montre comment ce réseau participe des dynamiques de fragmentation de l'espace intra-urbain, au-delà de la simple dichotomie entre bidonvilles et quartiers favorisés. Malgré le caractère universel du service d'électricité (en termes de couverture territoriale et d'accès physique généralisé), le réseau centralisé à Rio de Janeiro n'accomplit que partiellement sa fonction de fourniture d'un service homogène sur un territoire donné qu'il contribue ainsi à solidariser et à égaliser (Dupuy 1985). Les fils électriques visibles dans les favelas semblent être un premier révélateur d'un « réseau éclaté » (Kooy et Bakker 2008) et suggèrent la présence d'un processus de fragmentation urbaine par le réseau (Graham et Marvin 2001) 1. Dans le contexte des villes brésiliennes, la précarité du réseau électrique à l'échelle intra-urbaine n'a été que rarement analysée comme un vecteur possible de fragmentation socio-spatiale 2 (une exception étant l'étude de Zanotelli et Galvão (2011)), et peu d'attention a été accordée à la question sensible de la qualité de fourniture (coupures et oscillations du débit), généralement abordée comme l'une des conséquences d'un réseau physiquement détérioré. Or, dans la ville de Rio, l'analyse des facteurs techniques, institutionnels et politiques qui déterminent les niveaux différenciés de la qualité de fourniture d'électricité en ville – régularité et continuité de l'approvisionnement – permet pourtant de préciser des dynamiques de division spatiale de la ville. 1 Nous faisons ici référence à un débat dans la littérature sur les services urbains, notamment autour de la thèse du splintering urbanism avancée par Steve Graham et Simon Marvin (2001). Selon ces auteurs, à la suite de réformes de libéralisation des services en réseau, on assisterait à une désintégration des infrastructures confortant les dynamiques de fragmentation socio-spatiale des villes. À l'épreuve d'études empiriques, cette thèse rencontre pourtant plusieurs limites (voir les travaux du LATTS à cet égard, entre autres Jaglin (2005) et Coutard (2006) et le numéro de Geoforum intitulé « Placing Splintering Urbanism », 2008). Sans pouvoir ici rentrer de manière approfondie dans ce débat et de sa pertinence dans le contexte brésilien, nos recherches semblent montrer que les formes différenciées de gestion du service d'électricité après les réformes du secteur électrique brésilien (années 1990) suivent et confortent le processus de fragmentation déjà à l'oeuvre (voir Pilo' 2015). 2 Notion qui renvoie à des situations urbaines qui se distinguent par leurs formes éclatées, leur hétérogénéité et leur manque d'articulation aussi bien fonctionnelle que visuelle (Navez-Bouchanine 2002).
Books chapters by Francesca Pilo'
The Politics of Urban Resettlement
Book: Urban Resettlements in the Global South, 2021
This chapter analyses a pilot resettlement program in Lomé, capital of Togo, that embodies a new ... more This chapter analyses a pilot resettlement program in Lomé, capital of Togo, that embodies a new approach to urban renewal in this small West African country. Instead of a traditional approach to resettlement based on the violent physical eviction of city dwellers from so-called strategic areas for urban modernisation, this program entailed a resettlement process centred on negotiations between city dwellers and the state based on forms of compensation and “soft constraints”. These included the delivery of a plot of land on the outskirts of Lomé with water and electricity infrastructure on which city dwellers could build new houses, as well as financial compensation for resettlement. We argue that governmentality is visible in this resettlement process and functions through the reordering of urban space and the reshaping of power relations not only through domination, but also through the promotion of self-control, discipline, and responsibility. This chapter contributes to wider debates on the governing of everyday life and its political dimensions.
Goncalves S. R., and Pilo' F., 2017, From Favela to Comunidade, and beyond. The taming of Rio de Janeiro
Since the end of the nineteenth century, favelas have been a striking reality of the city of Rio ... more Since the end of the nineteenth century, favelas have been a striking reality of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Despite the popularization of the use the term suburb in the city of Rio de Janeiro since the period in reference to popular neighborhoods along the rail line, the term favela has gained much more notoriety. Unlike the suburb, this refers to distant neighborhoods, the term favela, as we shall see, is associated with certain irregularity of land ownership and urban constructions and can be located in central areas.
Valladares (2006) and Gonçalves (2013) have retraced the history of the construction of the term favela, showing that the long and cumulative process systematically associated favelas with unlawfulness, classifying them as precarious land invasions where buildings ignore regulation. This definition had deep repercussions in the daily life of the population, which demonstrates the power of the law to appoint different social realities and to institutionalize a specific classification of society´s structure. It is, therefore, an act of identification that, according to Anselm Strauss, requires the subject to be placed within a category and the act of appointing to provide a guideline to the action (Strauss, 1997: 38-41). The fact that favelas are generally identified as informal, marginal and illegal spaces has permitted a uniform statecraft for those areas, indiscriminately considering the area and its dwellers a risk to the city and to society. The present article aims to analyse the actual different public terminologies that are used to name the favelas. First we discuss the process of construction as an official concept for the favelas; we then question the gradual use of the term comunidade (“community”) that is utilized to designate the favelas; last, we analyze the current efforts of the City to promote the term comunidade urbanizada (urbanized community), distinguishing certain favelas from others.
In book: Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid Geographies of the Electric City, Chapter: 4... more In book: Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid Geographies of the Electric City, Chapter: 4, Publisher: Routledge, Editors: Andrés Luque-Ayala, Jonathan Silver, pp. 67-85
https://www.routledge.com/Energy-Power-and-Protest-on-the-Urban-Grid-Geographies-of-the-Electric/Luque-Ayala-Silver/p/book/9781472449009
Providing a global overview of experiments around the transformation of cities' electricity networks and the social struggles associated with this change, this book explores the centrality of electricity infrastructures in the urban configuration of social control, segregation, integration, resource access and poverty alleviation. Through multiple accounts from a range of global cities, this edited collection establishes an agenda that recognises the uneven, and often historical, geographies of urban electricity networks, prompting attempts to re-wire the infrastructure configurations of cities and predicating protest and resistance from residents and social movements alike. Through a robust theoretical engagement with established work around the politics of urban infrastructures, the book frames the transformation of electricity systems in the context of power and resistance across urban life, drawing links between environmental and social forms of sustainability. Such an agenda can provide both insight and inspiration in seeking to build fairer and more sustainable urban futures that bring electricity infrastructures to the fore of academic and policy attention.
La régularisation du service d’électricité dans une favela « pacifiée » de Rio de Janeiro : outil de construction du « consommateur responsable » ?
La transformation des comportements des ménages en matière d’énergie constitue de plus en plus un... more La transformation des comportements des ménages en matière d’énergie constitue de plus en plus un volet des politiques actuelles de maîtrise de l’énergie. Souvent, la conception des dispositifs visant à atteindre cet objectif repose pourtant sur une idée « naïve » : il est considéré que l’introduction d’une nouvelle technologie moins énergivore, ou la communication d’une information spécifique (étiquetage, prescription..), aurait pour effet leur adoption par le public destinataire et permettrait un changement de comportements attendus (Zélem 2010). L’efficacité de ces mesures se heurte en réalité à la complexité des enjeux socio-économique et culturels liés aux changements des pratiques. La construction du changement est d’autant plus délicate dans la mesure où, comme nous le rappelle Eric Pautard, parler de maîtrise de l’énergie évoque l’idée de négociation informelle entre l’Etat gestionnaire et les usagers : « la sphère politique ne peut constater des limites de son action face à des usagers qui revendiquent leur autonomie et s’opposent aux tentatives d’ingérence perçues comme intrusives » (Pautard 2007, p. 1).
Dans une démarche de compréhension des processus d’adoption ou de rejet du changement en matière de maîtrise de l’énergie, cet article vise à explorer cette « négociation informelle » dans « la rencontre entre les projets et les destinataires » (Zélem 2010, p. 17) dans le cadre de programmes de maîtrise de l’énergie à destination de « communautés à faibles revenus » au Brésil. En particulier, cet article s’appui sur une enquête menée entre 2010 et 2011 dans la favela de Santa Marta où un programme de maîtrise de l’énergie a été développé au sein d’un projet plus large de régularisation de branchements clandestins. Pour reprendre le vocabulaire mobilisé par l’entreprise de distribution d’électricité en charge de la mise en œuvre de ce dernier, il s’agissait de favoriser l’émergence de « consommateurs responsables » en termes de maîtrise de l’énergie. Par l’analyse des outils déployés et de leur réception par les usagers, nous montrerons comment les mesures adoptées semblent non seulement affaiblir la compréhension des usagers quant à leurs modes de consommation mais également, de manière paradoxale, les encourage à consommer davantage.
Interview by Francesca Pilo'
Como as relações de poder entre a população das favelas, o Estado e o mercado foram reestruturada... more Como as relações de poder entre a população das favelas, o Estado e o mercado foram reestruturadas através da regularização do fornecimento de energia elétrica no Rio de Janeiro a partir de 2008, depois da instalação das UPPs? Esse é o ponto de partida da tese de Francesca Piló que analisa a integração das favelas no território urbano focando na articulação entre lógicas públicas e privadas existentes nos projetos de regularização dos serviços de eletricidade nas favelas pos-UPP. Piló tomou como estudo de campo as favelas de Santa Marta e Cantagalo para tecer uma análise histórica das políticas publicas de gestão do acesso à energia elétrica e debater a associação de serviços urbanos e cidadania, e a neoliberalização das políticas urbanas. (....)
Conference Presentations by Francesca Pilo'
Anthropologists have long understood cities as important political arenas and as key sites in the... more Anthropologists have long understood cities as important political arenas and as key sites in the formation of political communities that are not limited to systems of representative democracy. This work has shown how urban politics is located across diverse sites, from official government buildings to the space of the street, and in a range of everyday practices and more spectacular events. In recent years, increasing attention has gone to the role of non-state actors – from social movements and corporations to churches and criminal organizations – in urban governance and negotiations of citizenship. This workshop seeks to extend this work by exploring the role of non-human entities in urban politics. Drawing on the " material turn " in anthropology and related disciplines, we are particularly interested in analyzing how citizenship is assembled through relations between humans and various forms of urban technology, infrastructure, housing, biophysical flows, nonhuman animals, and consumer products. We want to understand when, how and why urban matter becomes political, and urban politics become material. The workshop addresses the following questions: What insights can be gained by directing ethnographic attention to the socio-material coproduction of urban politics, and the practices and norms that are central to this process? What role do different material entities play in enabling, limiting and mediating forms of political community? How are different objects – from walls and roads, to water networks and utility bills – central to political subject formation, both within and beyond the nation-state? This international workshop brings together academics from anthropology and related disciplines working on the relation between the urban and the political, with the aim of showcasing a diverse range of examples in different cities in the North and the South in order to provide a fertile ground for knowledge exchange for the understanding of urban material politics in different urban contexts and discuss current and new directions in the study of the urban material politics.
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Special Issues by Francesca Pilo'
Thesis by Francesca Pilo'
This thesis examines the integration of these favelas from a relatively unexplored perspective: that of regularisation through the electricity network, the aim of which is to transform ‘illegal users’ into new ‘registered customers’, connected to the distribution company by a meter. In particular, we will highlight the link between the public and private approaches being used in projects to regularise the electricity service in two favelas, Santa Marta and Cantagalo. To this end, our analysis will focus on studying regularisation of the electricity service using its own tools - including socio-technical (installing meters and rehabilitating the network), commercial (billing collection methods) and controlling electricity consumption tools - and examining the ways in which customers have taken ownership of these.
Research shows that regularising the electricity service tends to reshape the favelados’ relationship with the state and the market; however, this has a number of limitations: it is difficult to build contractual customer relationships based on trust; activities to control consumption advocate bringing behaviours ‘up to standard’ rather than supporting use; service regularisation tends to reproduce socio-economic inequalities rather than rise above them and these inequalities also gradually become less political. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to help improve understanding of the methods being used to integrate the favelas given the growing neo-liberalisation of urban policy.
Keywords: regularisation, electricity network, favelas, Rio de Janeiro
Articles by Francesca Pilo'
namely, the installation of meters and networks. I suggest that applying a science and technology study perspective to the right to the city helps explore both the materiality and the spatial dimension of power and politics and, in so doing, provides an insight into some of the forms of mediation that help reshape recognition, urban practices and the favela dwellers’ position within such an essential service. Our analysis shows how the means of recognizing these city dwellers ‘by the network’ are materially and symbolically reshaped by commercial processes. The question then is whether this right to the city, which is being reshaped by commercial processes, will be the source of new inequalities or new politicizations.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12489/abstract
2009). Na maior parte dos casos, tal transformação consiste em implementar medidas de redução das perdas comerciais e redefinir a relação comercial através de medidas técnicas, comerciais e de
eficiência energética. Dentro do contexto das transformações políticas nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro onde foram instaladas as UPPs (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora), este artigo explora o processo de
regularização da energia elétrica, concentrando-se nos aspectos das ações de eficiência energética implementadas pela companhia de distribuição do serviço, a Light. O objetivo principal deste artigo é mostrar como esta forma de reconfiguração de infraestrutura é implementada através de lógicas comerciais que, por sua vez, têm consequências na maneira como as medidas de economia de energia são promovidas. Inicialmente o artigo apresenta dois diferentes corpus de literatura cuja articulação permite uma compreensão da relação entre infraestrutura, práticas de consumo e políticas públicas de eficiência energética. Em seguida, o artigo propõe uma análise das ferramentas usadas pela companhia e das percepções das famílias. O artigo argumenta que as medidas adotadas pela companhia de distribuição de eletricidade aparecem para enfraquecer a compreensão dos consumidores sobre seu próprio consumo. O artigo destaca então alguns limites de uma abordagem comercial para a economia de energia e as contradições de sua política.
DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2016.1154101
User involvement in service organisation is seen as a potential means of improving and resolving service delivery issues. The aim of this article is to review a market-oriented project involving electricity customers in the favelas – defined here as an example of ‘co-producing affordability’ to the service – in order to enhance understanding of the diverse collaborative arrangements in service delivery in the South. By examining the part played by the institutional stakeholders involved in the project and the partial dissatisfaction that arose among users, this article will highlight the limitations of this approach for addressing disparities in access to services.
Books chapters by Francesca Pilo'
Valladares (2006) and Gonçalves (2013) have retraced the history of the construction of the term favela, showing that the long and cumulative process systematically associated favelas with unlawfulness, classifying them as precarious land invasions where buildings ignore regulation. This definition had deep repercussions in the daily life of the population, which demonstrates the power of the law to appoint different social realities and to institutionalize a specific classification of society´s structure. It is, therefore, an act of identification that, according to Anselm Strauss, requires the subject to be placed within a category and the act of appointing to provide a guideline to the action (Strauss, 1997: 38-41). The fact that favelas are generally identified as informal, marginal and illegal spaces has permitted a uniform statecraft for those areas, indiscriminately considering the area and its dwellers a risk to the city and to society. The present article aims to analyse the actual different public terminologies that are used to name the favelas. First we discuss the process of construction as an official concept for the favelas; we then question the gradual use of the term comunidade (“community”) that is utilized to designate the favelas; last, we analyze the current efforts of the City to promote the term comunidade urbanizada (urbanized community), distinguishing certain favelas from others.
https://www.routledge.com/Energy-Power-and-Protest-on-the-Urban-Grid-Geographies-of-the-Electric/Luque-Ayala-Silver/p/book/9781472449009
Providing a global overview of experiments around the transformation of cities' electricity networks and the social struggles associated with this change, this book explores the centrality of electricity infrastructures in the urban configuration of social control, segregation, integration, resource access and poverty alleviation. Through multiple accounts from a range of global cities, this edited collection establishes an agenda that recognises the uneven, and often historical, geographies of urban electricity networks, prompting attempts to re-wire the infrastructure configurations of cities and predicating protest and resistance from residents and social movements alike. Through a robust theoretical engagement with established work around the politics of urban infrastructures, the book frames the transformation of electricity systems in the context of power and resistance across urban life, drawing links between environmental and social forms of sustainability. Such an agenda can provide both insight and inspiration in seeking to build fairer and more sustainable urban futures that bring electricity infrastructures to the fore of academic and policy attention.
Dans une démarche de compréhension des processus d’adoption ou de rejet du changement en matière de maîtrise de l’énergie, cet article vise à explorer cette « négociation informelle » dans « la rencontre entre les projets et les destinataires » (Zélem 2010, p. 17) dans le cadre de programmes de maîtrise de l’énergie à destination de « communautés à faibles revenus » au Brésil. En particulier, cet article s’appui sur une enquête menée entre 2010 et 2011 dans la favela de Santa Marta où un programme de maîtrise de l’énergie a été développé au sein d’un projet plus large de régularisation de branchements clandestins. Pour reprendre le vocabulaire mobilisé par l’entreprise de distribution d’électricité en charge de la mise en œuvre de ce dernier, il s’agissait de favoriser l’émergence de « consommateurs responsables » en termes de maîtrise de l’énergie. Par l’analyse des outils déployés et de leur réception par les usagers, nous montrerons comment les mesures adoptées semblent non seulement affaiblir la compréhension des usagers quant à leurs modes de consommation mais également, de manière paradoxale, les encourage à consommer davantage.
Interview by Francesca Pilo'
Conference Presentations by Francesca Pilo'