Politics of the Periphery: Governance and Elections in Brazil's Urban Margins

Based on more than two decades of ethnographic engagement with the urban margins of Brazil, this book offers unique and detailed insights into the "politics of the periphery".Providing a long-term analysis of the residents of the periphery of the city of Recife and their interactions with state representatives and institutions, it contributes to a better understanding of the politics of marginalized populations around the world.Politics of the Periphery takes theorizing beyond state-oriented and Eurocentric approaches and offers scope to understand politics and the state from the urban margins, from the places where an ever-increasing part of the world's population lives.Critiquing approaches that see politics of marginalized populations as an expression of deficient citizenship, as informal politics, or as protest against the authorities, Martijn Koster shows how the politics of the periphery combines resistance with compliance as well as indifference, intertwining formal procedures a