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Paper short abstract

This paper contrasts two circuits of popular economies in the peripheries of Brazil's metropolitan areas. While one operates through the political autonomism of the poor and collective resistance, a rising digital circuit promotes neoliberal adherence and individual asceticism.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on the panel’s inquiry into polarization, this paper analyzes two antagonistic circuits currently disputing the meaning of popular economies in Brazil. The first, grounded in my previous ethnography of street vendors, operates through a logic of "autonomism of the poor". Here, informality functions as a refusal of traditional wage labor and a mechanism for collective political friction, where workers occupy urban space to demand rights and permanence.

Conversely, a second circuit is rapidly gaining ground, fueled by digital platforms. Analyzing the discourse of "financial influencers" from São Paulo’s peripheries, I identify a rising subjectivity of "neoliberal adherence". This circuit reframes survival strategies not as resistance, but as transitional entrepreneurship. It promotes a radical "asceticism of the hustle"—characterized by extreme frugality, the rejection of social ties, and the depoliticization of poverty—aimed at individual accumulation and an eventual exodus from the territory.

By contrasting the "political autonomy" of the street with the "neoliberal asceticism" of the screen, I argue that the popular economy is gaining further complexity and heterogeneity, with important political implications. In the two poles that I analyze, one circuit seeks to politicize the territory and another seeks to capitalize on the self. The urban political implications are manifold, from urban social movements to electoral political dynamics.