Paper short abstract:

In considering the constellations of actors from the garment small businesses in São Paulo as collective economies dealing with unpredictability, the paper explores how different interlocutors create contradictory socialities to cope with the challenges of such industries.

Paper long abstract:

In the routine of the small businesses within the clothing production in central areas of the city of São Paulo, numerous actors are involved in its multifaceted processes. Accounts from some participants of these industries reveal that in the concreteness of their daily affairs much of their decisions and activities are embedded in the unstable and ever-changing conditions of complex and convoluted manufacturing settings. The decentralised arrangement of the multiple stages of textile fabrication, clothing design, sewing, washing-up, finishing, ironing and packing, for instance, contingently assembles and disassembles an assortment of entrepreneurs, employees, professionals and casual workers that navigate the volatility of the day-to-day demands of fashion cycles and fiercely compete among themselves.

Although pervaded by circumstances considered to be of informal and illegal nature, such a sector has been historically accommodating national and international populations arriving in São Paulo that otherwise would not find other opportunities in the metropolis.

In considering the constellations of actors from the garment production of small businesses in São Paulo as collective economies organically dealing with unpredictability, the paper explores how different interlocutors at times create contradictory socialities, building relations of neighbourhood or activism or resorting to senses of kinship, cronyism and ethnicity, to cope with the challenges posed by the dynamics of the clothing industries. In this line, the paper also intends to problematise straightforward criminalisation of certain practices in these industries, nuancing essentialised portrayals and spending efforts to reach an ethical ethnographic approach that does not commit epistemic violence towards research participants.