The favela as an (un)quantifiable reality
Eugênia Motta
IntroductIon
numbers, like words, are forms of expressing and creating the existence of things (desrosières and Kott 2005); they provide a way to conceive the world through which we move, and transform it. The subjects of this text are “large numbers”
(desrosières 1993) or “public numbers” (Porter 1995) and operations involved in their production and use. As well as being one of the main modern modes of building social knowledge, large numbers are a key element of state reality, pro- viding the reference point through which various agencies are mobilized in the effort to govern (neiburg 2011; Mitchell 2002; cohn 1996). Indeed, they oc- cupy a fundamental place in the construction of the units, objects, and domains of state action, yet they are not purely state forms.1
As Theodore Porter argues, “statistics, preeminent among the quantitative tools for investigating society, is powerless unless it can make new entities”
(1994: 398). In this chapter I discuss the production of a specific entity, the 1. A version of this text was published as an article in Portuguese (Motta 2019).
favela, based on operations involved in its creation and use as a statistical reality and, therefore, as an object of a certain kind of agency. My aim is to highlight the relationship between the difficulties and obstacles involved in the quan- tification and conception of favelas as abnormal (or subnormal), problematic and dangerous. Ian Hacking calls attention to the proximity between two ways normality has been understood in the development of statistics, and affirms it is one of the most important ideas of the twentieth century. For the author: “The normal stands indifferently for what is typical, the unenthusiastic objective av- erage, but it also stands for what has been, good health, and for what shall be, our chosen destiny” (1990: 169).
Statistics are produced through an extensive chain of transformations (Thévenot 1995) that involve agreements, conventions, negotiations, transla- tions, and codifications (desrosières and Kott 2005). The processes of producing and using public numbers involve various kinds of negotiations and conflicts in which, in the effort to quantify the world, difficulties arise in collecting and clas- sifying data, and contestations flare up over their accuracy. These are the critical dimensions in the production of statistical reality that interest me. I shall ex- amine three types of oppositions to quantification, which I call resistances. They neither impede nor rule out the possibility of producing numbers, but on the contrary, form part of this always incomplete and conflictual process.
Quantification is understood here as a way of creating realities, categories, and objects of a particular kind. reality (or realities) is understood to be the ar- rangements of elements and relations that people conceive as existent, relatively autonomous and external to subjectivities, observable, tangible, and intelligi- ble—that is, it is a common reference point in both senses of the term: shared and ordinary. In adopting this approach, it not only makes sense to approach re- alities in the plural rather than reality in the singular, it is essential that we do so.
The object of the statistics discussed here are favelas, places deemed prob- lematic ever since they first emerged (Valladares 2000, 2005). The origin of these spaces dates to the occupation of hillsides in the center of rio de Janeiro at the end of the nineteenth century. Since this chapter explores the defini- tions of what favelas are, it would be somewhat hazardous to offer any kind of objective description, given that the analysis that I propose questions precisely that kind of endeavor. nonetheless, the reader must be at least minimally situ- ated. Provisionally, we can affirm that favelas are identified by distinctive land- scape characteristics, such as high-density occupation by constructions, most of which are considered incomplete (lacking paint or other coverings), along
winding, unplanned streets and passageways, and very often located on slopes and hills, although not always. They are taken to be equivalent or similar to what are referred to in the English literature as slums, informal settlements, or shantytowns.
Figure 1: View of complexo do Alemão, rio de Janeiro, 2014. Photo by the author.
The analytic proposal presented here originates in ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted since 2012 in a favela in the large region known as the com- plexo do Alemão in the north Zone of rio de Janeiro, which combines various neighborhoods considered to be favelas, though they constitute a fairly uniform urban continuum.2 My initial interest was to investigate people’s ordinary eco- nomic practices through long-term and in-depth insertion in the life of one 2. For reasons explained above, it is somewhat problematic to present statistical data with any descriptive objective in this text. recognizing the importance of statistical reality in the social sciences, however, I suspend the analysis for a moment to provide some information to the reader. According to the municipal government of rio de Janeiro, some 60,500 people live in the complexo do Alemão in approximately 18,000 households (cavallieri and Vial 2012).
family. This work revealed an intrinsic relationship between economics, family practices, and houses. The centrality of houses in the social life of the people in this community3 formed the basis for an approach that also considers houses to be analytically central. However, residents are not the only agents who act and think about their houses and the space in which they live or act in.
It was certainly relevant to the questions that interested me that the people with whom I conducted my research lived in a favela—for many reasons, such as the forms of economic and building regulations existing for these spaces, the stigma that they carry and even the fact that few researchers have been interested in understanding the economy of favelas. but what are favelas? or more precisely, what makes these spaces what they are? Among the numerous meanings that this word contains and ideas to which it refers, many are associ- ated with disorder and the need to act. These are central dimensions in which quantification plays a key role.
I use three different kinds of materials as empirical sources for studying the production of favelas as quantified realities. one of them is the previously cited ethnography of everyday life in a specific community. The second are the writ- ten documents produced by the brazilian Institute of geography and Statistics (IbgE)4 in different periods, which I use to establish continuities between the first formulations concerning favelas and the categories employed today in the national census, which are conducted by IbgE. Finally, I analyze the public debates that occurred in the wake of a self-census conducted by local organi- zations in the Maré region of rio de Janeiro. This case contains a deliberate and explicit articulation of the same kind of critiques of numbers that I had perceived in a more diffuse form in my fieldwork in the complexo do Alemão.
I argue that by using these different empirical sources, it is possible to produce a new approach to the multiple dimensions of producing statistical realities. The ethnographic interpretation, therefore, is not limited to descrip- tion, but refers to a proposal to depict the interconnections of diffuse practices and meanings related to social worlds that, in principle, are at some distance from each other, and where people conceive and experience favelas differently (public policy managers and residents of favelas, for example). This composition
3. The word comunidade (community) is the most common way residents in the favela where I conducted fieldwork (and many others) refer to the where they live.
4. The national Institute of Statistics was officially created in 1934 and began operating in 1936. In 1938 it became known as IbgE.
is justified by the nature of the object itself. My attempt is to investigate the production of statistical realities, a process that involves the diverse efforts, op- positions, and practical and symbolic operations involved in the creation of an unstable agreement.
The idea of resistance that I am proposing highlights the relationship be- tween dynamics that are distinct but share their presentation of oppositions and difficulties and their demand for solutions. What resists is the very object of quantification while it is being created. It is the disorder of occupied hillsides, the movement of people and houses, the favela residents themselves. Each form of resistance explored here corresponds to dissonances, and to a contraposi- tion to a crucial aspect of statistical realities: measurability, stabilization, and accordance.
The idea of resistance employed here is not directly, nor even necessarily, related to opposition pursued by marginalized persons or groups, as discussed by James Scott (1985), for instance. I do not intend to examine interpretative disputes (though they also form part of my analysis) but dissonances that echo the main and pervasive questions that favelas raise in the public domain: how to recognize the favelas and, mainly, how to measure them, and what should be measured. resistance here is whatever opposes effort, and ordered and inten- tional action.
I examine three forms of “resistance” by favelas to quantification. After a first section in which I sketch a panorama of the favelas and their historical con- struction as problematic, I examine the category aglomerado subnormal (subnor- mal agglomerate)—which is used to describe favelas in official statistics—and discuss how a particular, spatialized conception of poverty has been produced through the construction of the claim that these spaces are difficult to count.
Hence, the aim is to explore how quantification is employed to conceptualize poverty as a reality—that is, as something existent, comprehensible, and upon which it is possible and necessary to act. by comparing the place of favelas in three different censuses (1950, 1991, 2010), I intend to show the nexus between normalization of the favela as a socially broad category and the idea that these were places in which and for which it was—and still is—difficult to produce numbers.
Second, I contrast the domicile, a statistical category that fixes and stabilizes persons and residences with “houses” as lived by favela residents. The endeavor to construct the residence as a discrete unit, fundamental to the construction of demographic statistics, contrasts with the constant movement involved in the
production of homes, as lived by favela residents. These spaces are difficult to count precisely because there is instability and movement within them.
Finally, I discuss the resistance that emerges through the explicit contesta- tion of this census data by the arguments and justifications for a “self-counting”
carried out by local organizations. The statistical realities produced by official agencies are described by ordinary people engaged in local organizations as false, the methodology used is considered inadequate and to be based on preju- dices and stigmatization. Producing their own numbers, organizers of the local census argue, entails challenging the way that favelas are publicly perceived and treated by state agents.
FAVElAS AS A ProblEM SIncE tHEIr orIgInS
The category favela is difficult to define. It is employed daily by all kinds of people, including public administrators, as a self-evident reality and can be used in a purely descriptive form. It would not be an exaggeration to say that practi- cally all of rio de Janeiro’s residents and most brazilians have an idea of what a favela is. The word is used routinely without any need for additional description or explanation. despite the naturality of its usage, the word contains multiple meanings and many concrete places exist whose categorization as favelas is open to discussion and dispute, given that the category associates landscape with vi- olence and insalubrious conditions. derived words like favelado, which refers to “a favela resident,” are commonly used with a negative moral connotation.
Favelado may be used as a strong term of accusation, implying that the person is badly educated and violent.5 to favelizar a location, for instance, generally implies allowing or inciting urban deterioration and impoverishment.
The end of the nineteenth century saw the first clusters of houses made from cheap and reusable materials, built on hill slopes close to the center of rio de Janeiro. According to the narrative that became widespread and per- sists until today—an origin myth according to lícia Valladares (2000)—the first such place to be occupied was called the Morro da Favella (Favella Hill).
The existence of a space with houses made from precarious materials, built in a
5. Favelado does not always have a negative meaning. Activists from local organizations in favelas strive to affirm their identity in a positive way through its use. Some researchers use the term to describe residents.
disorganized form on lands that did not officially belong to the people who had built on them, soon became a public issue. over time the word favela became more widely used and transformed into a generic term for a kind of urban form, associated with concerns about their alleged ugliness and insalubrity, and for supposedly harboring dangerous people.
More than a century later, rather than vanishing, as had long been the goal of public policies, rio’s favelas have grown in number and size, and today much of the city’s population lives in this kind of space. They continue to be a major theme of public debate, and are omnipresent themes in election campaigns and activities, for instance. Favelas were and continue to be seen publicly and treated by governments as a “problem” that needs to be addressed (Machado da Silva 2002). Paradoxically, one of the main arguments repeatedly used in support of intervention is that these are spaces where the state has always been absent.
In the twentieth century, various solutions were discussed and executed in relation to what was called the city’s “cancer,” ranging from proposals in the 1960s and 1970s for their complete extinction through demolition of housing, to the 1980s and beyond through urbanization programs and the installation of infrastructure (burgos 1998).The association with poverty began early on; stud- ies almost always focused on poverty and the place to study urban poverty was the favela (Valladares 2000, 2005).
The most recent modality of problematizing favelas began in the 1980s and became more firmly established in the following decade. The emergence of armed groups that controlled drug trafficking and favela territories led to a new and unique configuration of crime in rio de Janeiro (Misse 2002, 2007). These places became perceived as the loci responsible for producing “urban violence”
(Machado da Silva 2010). The dismantling of entire favelas, the implementation of urbanization projects, and investment in welfare policies still remain part of government actions for favelas, but they are accompanied practically and sym- bolically by the alleged need for police action.
The most recent interventions in favelas have been projects developed as part of the federal growth Acceleration Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento: PAc)6 and the installation of Police Pacification units (Unidades
6. The PAc was a federal government program essentially designed to fund large infrastructure projects. created in 2007 during the first Workers Party (Pt) and lula administration, it was one of main vectors of economic growth during the 2000s and one of the chief banners of dilma rousseff ’s first presidential campaign.
de Polícia Pacificadora: uPP).7 These programs represent the two main ways state governments perceive favelas, through the themes of poverty and violence. The first creates a focus on urban infrastructure and corresponding “social” policies.
The second sparked a new security policy.
In discussing the construction of favelas as a statistical reality, I show one aspect of their production as localities where order must be established. consid- ering that the statistical reality is the main device used in the planning and im- plementation of state actions, examining its construction entails analyzing the technical and moral foundations of the government of spaces and persons. nev- ertheless, this process is not pacific, but involves various kinds of oppositions.
FroM tHE FAVElA to tHE SubnorMAl AggloMErAtE:
PoVErty AS A SPAtIAlIZEd rEAlIty
In this section I analyze the uses of the categories favela and subnormal agglom- erate in IbgE documents relating to three censuses: the 1950 census, the first to
“see” favelas; the 1991 census, the first to use the term “subnormal agglomerate”;
and the most recent census, conducted in 2010.
The 1950 census was the first national survey to include the population of favelas. The IbgE prepared a specific document analyzing the information col- lected in these locations, in which it identifies the difficulties involved in collect- ing and classifying the data:
In the favelas, the building-household survey generally proceeded in the same way as in other areas, but entailed different kinds of tasks that required additional efforts to be achieved. The terrain to be covered is not always easy to access, in- deed it often demands hard work for the surveyor to gather data for the entire area. (IbgE 1953: 18)
7. The uPPs were a program of the rio de Janeiro state government to which the Military Police are subordinated. The declared objective was to enable close-range community policing as a strategy to contain armed conflicts in the favelas. For some time, in most of the favelas where they were installed, the uPPs led to an effective reduction in gun battles, but gun battles have returned to being near daily occurrences. About the uses of the category of “pacification” in different historical moments in brazil, see oliveira (2014).
The document also highlights the difficulties in proposing an objective defini- tion. The IbgE’s approach was based, therefore, on places considered favelas by
“social consensus.” based on this research, the institute proposed the following definition for these spaces:
Hence, included in the conceptualization of favela were human agglomer- ates that possess, totally or partially, the following characteristics:
1. Minimal proportions—groups of buildings or residences formed by units gen- erally numbering higher than 50; 2. Type of habitation—Predominance in the grouping of small houses or shacks, rustic in type, constructed primarily from tin or zinc sheeting, planks or similar materials; 3. Legal status of occupation—
unlicensed and unsupervised constructions on lands belonging to third-parties or of unknown ownership; 4. Public improvements—Absence, either entirely or partially, of a sewerage system, electricity, telephones and piped water; 5. Urbani- zation—non-urbanized area without street paving, numbers or signs. (IbgE 1953: 18)
This definition presumes the concrete existence of the favela as a real phenom- enon, which can be technically and objectively characterized through data col- lection and field observations.
In 1991 IbgE included the category “subnormal agglomerate” in the census as a type of “census sector.”8 both categories are referred to as “operational.” In other words, they are used in the data collection phase rather than the logical and analytic organization of the information. A census sector is an area defined by the capacity of a single census worker to carry out all the activities related to data collection within a certain time interval. The definition of the subnormal agglomerate is as follows:
The special sector defined as a subnormal agglomerate is a group composed of at least 51 (fifty-one) residential units (shacks, houses . . .) most of which lack basic public services, and occupy or had occupied, until recently land belonging 8. “The census sector is the territorial unit established for the purposes of registration
control, formed by a continuous area, situated in a single urban or rural block, with a size and number of domiciles that enables its survey by a census officer. Hence, each official will proceed to collect information with the aim of covering the census sector designated to him or her” (IbgE 2010 census guide: http://censo2010.
ibge.gov.br/materiais/guia-do-censo/operacao-censitaria.html).