Pioneers and entrepreneurs: bio/ethnographic notes towards an anthropology of urban growth

Abstract

The article discusses processes of urban growth through the lenses of situated subjects and their autobiographical narratives. The two terms which designate actors and activities related to urban growth - pioneers and entrepreneurs - rise out of ethnographic material collected through research activities involving recently established housing developments in Brasilia and Goiania. Both terms become theoretical mediators which are used to discuss ways in which urbanization and subject formation participate in complex processes of reciprocal constitution.

Urban growth; subjectivity; personification; Brasília; Goiania; pioneers; entrepreneurs