Organizing precarious spaces: An Actor- Network approach on Favelas

For a considerable time the debate on space in the field of Management of Organization studies (MOS) has not had a central role (Gagliardi, 1996; Yanow, 1998; Kornberger; Clegg, 2004; Hernes, 2004; Dale; Burrel, 2008). The intention of the so-called "spatial turn" movement is to revisit the issue of spaces and materiality in the social sciences (Lefebvre, 1994; Soja, 1989; 1996; Massey, 1994), and how they are reflected in organization studies (Van Marrewijk; Yanow, 2010; Clegg; Kornberger, 2006; Dale; Burrell, 2008). Therefore, different lines of research found themselves committed to addressing the issue of organizational spaces – more specifically, in process epistemology and sociomateriality. Following this line of reasoning, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach provides a theoretical and methodological strategy to the study on how the relations between human and non-human actors are intertwined on networks, and what their effects are in terms of organization. Initially, ANT studies were focused on the production of knowledge within science and technology laboratories, and were based on ethnographic studies (Latour; Woolgar, 1979; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Sismondo, 2004). It has evolved, however, into a study tool in different fields of knowledge. As such, urban assemblages (Farías, 2011) may be considered an attempt to introduce ANT to the study of urban spaces. By acknowledging capitalism as an urban revolution set upon the expansion of urban spaces, Lefebvre's position contributed to the debate over this epistemological turning point (Farías, 2011). The way, then, the city is viewed leads to multiple ways of living in, and building, urban spaces. These ways aspire to become "laboratories" that allow or limit the sphere of activity in which designers, users, planners, people, conflicting needs and ideas are interpreted or developed (Czarniwaska, Löfgren, 2012). Creative urban spaces are not merely designer projections. Sociologists and architects speak of "projective cities" (Boltanski; Chiapello, 2005; Lee; Jacoby, 2011), and although the former focus on urban projections (Lundin; Söderholm, 1998), and the latter on cityscapes, both are closely connected. This gives rise to the idea that anthropologists conceive cities as networks (De Landa, 1994), in which a poor, anarchic selfmanagement coexists with its structures and hierarchies. We looked at a specific favela, or Brazilian slum, as a black box – a generalized impression of that favela as a phenomenon detached from the remainder of society – in an attempt to understand its precarious spaces. The attempt also included questioning the assumptions about precarity, and an organization here is taken as "a seemingly stable entity from the outside, obscuring the precarious social relations that hold it together inside" (Latour, 1987). In using the term, we will also attempt to indicate that "a network's capacity to sustain an extreme alignment of its actors is precarious; networks are said to oscillate between a status of ‘actor' and ‘network'." (Durepos & Mills, 2011). According to Mol & Law (1994), ANT provides an outlook on the concept of space that discusses many issues connected to multiple topologies, including: (i) regions, as an identifiable, homogeneous set assigned to specific limits or defined territories; (ii) networks, which create regions, are composed of immutable movables when connecting elements; and (iii) fluids – spaces in which the boundaries of places are unclear and based on unstable connections. Space, then, behaves as a "liquid continuity", and entities may be similar and dissimilar at different locations (Mol & Law, 1994). Under a different perspective, it is possible to see that the inequality parameters in peripheral urban areas, such as in Brazilian cities, can be measured from specific data: 80% of the Brazilian population, i.e., about 170 million people, live in the city, whereas 34.4% live in poor housing areas, such as places lacking sanitation coverage and/or land ownership (Abreu, 2008). In 2016, which marks the city of Fortaleza's – the capital of the state of Ceará – 290 years of existence, an urban sprawl scenario is translated into social inequalities that denounce the interests and projects which are stoked by the way its land is used and occupied. According to "State of the World Cities", a recent (2012-2013) report published by the UN, the Ceará capital is among the five most unequal cities in the world: 7% of its wealthier neighborhoods retain 26% of the total personal income, i.e., of all the wealth produced in the city. Only a few studies have used the Actor-Network Theory to discuss the issue of space, and only with management and organization approaches – in the context of Brazilian favelas, it remains unexplored. Considering this gap in the literature, this research will study primarily the MISMEC-4 Varas organization (4 Varas Community's Integrated Movement for Mental Health) and the adjacent urban areas on which it acts. The purpose, therefore, is to describe the actor networks that are active in MISMEC and its adjacent urban spaces, and to discuss the effects this organization has on the suburban neighborhood of Pirambu, located in the city of Fortaleza, the capital of the Brazilian state of Ceará.