Drawing on a five-year-long ethnography among city planners, architects, street-level bureaucrats, politicians, market and bank representatives, community leaders, and past, present, and future beneficiaries, Moisés Kopper tells the story of how a group of grassroots housing activists rose from oblivion to build a model community. He explores the strategies set forth by housing activists as they waited and hoped for-and eventually secured-homeownership through Minha Casa Minha Vida's public-private infrastructure. By showing how these efforts coalesced in Porto Alegre-Brazil's once progressive hotspot-he interrogates the value systems and novel arrangements of power and market that underlie the country's post-neoliberal project of modern and inclusive development.
Read more