“‘Cycling is a political act’: controversies surrounding São Paulo’s bike lanes (2021)” by Lucas Lopes de Moraes | PhD Thesis

Abstract: “Started in 2016, this research aimed to observe and describe the disputes surrounding the implementation of a Cycling System in the city of São Paulo, involving statements and practices of cyclists and their collectives regarding São Paulo mobility. Such issues express a dispute that has gained strength and visibility from the most expressive actions of Mayor Fernando Haddad (2013-2016), who, in addition to expanding the cycling network, invested in bus lanes, reducing the maximum speed of traffic and “opening” large avenues to pedestrians. Sundays. With the election of João Dória and Bruno Covas to mayor in 2016, and their campaign proposals for “Accelerate São Paulo”, such controversies heated up. Field observations carried out during public hearings and protests allowed us to describe the way in which the daily experiences of cyclists in São Paulo are mobilized as a way to legitimize demands for the transformation of city spaces and urban mobility structures. These constant translations relate different ways of life and conceptions about the city, which demonstrate that the city is also a space of political dispute for visibility. Commuting to work, leisure activities and daily chores appear as practices that, when performed by pedalling, legitimize the presence of cyclists in the urban environment and force their passage and occupation in spaces previously segregated and idealized for the circulation of cars. Given the unfolding of these issues and the visibility they have achieved in recent years, we sought to follow these actors “as far as possible”, taking the ethnographic method as a methodological guide, describing the associations, practices and statements of cyclists and some of the collectives in São Paulo, and their dialogues with other actors involved in what has been defined as a controversy about São Paulo mobilities. A controversy mapped in the terms proposed by Bruno Latour (2012) and Tommaso Venturini (2010), because in the face of the debate for more bike lanes, for the right to mobility of cyclists and bicycles, human and non-human actors raised such visibility that they were able to question the very sedimented models of the city and what we could define as urban ways of life. In addition to the theoretical framework of Urban Anthropology, we resorted to the debate brought by the authors of the New Paradigm of Mobilities in order to debate the meanings surrounding São Paulo’s mobility and its implications for the way of life of its inhabitants.”

 

This PhD thesis, written by Lucas Lopes de Moraes and supervised by Prof. Dr. José Guilherme Magnani, was defended in 2021 as part of the PhD in Social Anthropolgy at the University of São Paulo. A copy of the dissertation is available in Portuguese on USP’s Repository.

 

Photo: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil (CC-BY-3.0-BR)

ANO

2021

AUTORES

Lucas Lopes de Moraes

EDITORES

Prof. Dr. José Guilherme Magnani