Categories and Ideas Informing Critical Thought in Brazilian Urban Studies: Trajectories and Tensions

Abstract

This article analyzes trajectories of the categories “periphery,” “favela” and “urban social movements” in Brazilian urban studies, from the developmentalism of the 1950s to the recent neoliberal period, focusing on intellectual production from the Rio-São Paulo axis. It examines the tension between the influence of Eurocentric theoretical frameworks and conceptualizations developed from the Brazilian context. It discusses the role of institutions such as ISEB, CEBRAP and CEDEC in shaping the field, as well as the limitations of the interpretations they produced, which have frequently overlooked race and gender as structuring dimensions of urban experience. Finally, it proposes bringing together urban political economy and decolonial perspectives through the analytical triad of the coloniality, imperiality and nationality of power. This approach seeks to reinterpret the production of urban space in Brazil, highlighting how epistemic and racial hierarchies shape socio-spatial inequalities while also pointing to the emancipatory potential of knowledge and struggles emerging from the peripheries themselves.