Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil’s Public Housing

Architectures of Hope examines how communal idealism, electoral politics, and low-income consumer markets made first-time homeownership a reality for millions of low-income Brazilians over the last ten years.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.By chronicling the making and remaking of material hope in the aftermath of Minha Casa Minha Vida, Architectures of Hope reopens the future as a powerful venue for ethnographic inquiry and urban development.Cover Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Part I: Introduction The Subjunctivity of Hope Hoping for the Future Part II: Infrastructural Citizenship Chapter 1. The Making of a Model Community Chapter 2. The Machine of Worthiness Chapter 3. Waiting and Hoping Chapter 4. Cartographies of Well-being Part III: Middle-Class Sensorial Chapter 5. Topographies of Consumption Chapter 6. Democracies of Hope Chapter 7. Infrastructuring Class Conclusion Notes Bibliography Inde