Seawall on the sidewalk, police at the door: vicinal conflicts and transformation of fun in the outskirts of São Miguel dos Campos - Alagoas

Abstract

This paper aims to understand aspects of changes in leisure and fun patterns of residents of popular neighborhoods of the city of São Miguel dos Campos, Alagoas. We take as a guiding thread the problematization of the emergence of social tensions in residential spaces that gravitate around walls of sound. Ethnographic immersion, coupled with a figurative perspective, made it clear that the memory of a quiet city had been disturbed by the presence of these devices, giving rise to increased pressure to control sound entertainment. We argue that pressures under the social regulation of entertainment evoke the destabilization of former socio-spatial solidarity, impacted by the breakdown of community ties and the progressive integration of the poorest into cultural markets. The consequences of this social process are the greater participation of the popular in spheres of cultural action felt as more autonomous in which the sense of being “individuals” points to new figurations of socio-affective interdependencies in small cities in Brazil.

Keywords

• lazer e diversão
• paredões de som
• conflitos vicinais
• controle social
• individualização.