A carnival designer on the periphery of Rio’s carnival: an ethnography of producing an access group parade

Um carnavalesco na periferia do carnaval carioca: etnografia da produção de um desfile no grupo de acesso

Abstract:

This article presents an ethnography of carnival production in the Gold Series of Rio’s carnival, exploring the trajectory of André Rodrigues, a black carnival designer at the Acadêmicos do Sossego school in 2022, as a guiding thread. The research reveals how samba schools in the access group, occupying a peripheral position in Rio’s hierarchical carnival system, develop collective strategies and solidarity networks to make their parades viable under conditions of extreme material precarity. While the Special Group has modern infrastructure available at Cidade do Samba, access group associations operate in precarious warehouses, depending on informal arrangements for the circulation of materials and technical knowledge. Inspired by Simone’s concept of ‘people as infrastructure,’ the analysis demonstrates how carnival workers mobilize collaborative practices that partially compensate for structural limitations, revealing both creative resilience and the profound racial and economic inequalities that permeate this cultural manifestation. The analysis shows how peripheral spaces, far from being passive recipients of imposed conditions, constitute active territories of cultural creation and resistance.

Keywords:
Carnival; Urban Ethnography; Race Relations; Cultural Production; Periphery

Resumo:

Este artigo apresenta uma etnografia da produção carnavalesca na Série Ouro do carnaval carioca, tendo como fio condutor a trajetória de André Rodrigues, carnavalesco negro da Acadêmicos do Sossego em 2022. A pesquisa revela como as escolas de samba do grupo de acesso, ocupando posição periférica no sistema hierárquico carnavalesco, desenvolvem estratégias coletivas e redes de solidariedade para viabilizar seus desfiles em condições de extrema precariedade material. Enquanto o Grupo Especial conta com infraestrutura moderna na Cidade do Samba, as agremiações do acesso operam em barracões precários, dependendo de arranjos informais de circulação de materiais e saberes técnicos. Utilizando o conceito de “pessoas como infraestrutura” de Simone, a análise demonstra como os trabalhadores do carnaval mobilizam práticas colaborativas que compensam parcialmente as limitações estruturais, evidenciando tanto a resiliência criativa quanto as profundas desigualdades raciais e econômicas que atravessam esta manifestação cultural. A análise revela como os espaços periféricos, longe de serem receptores passivos das condições impostas, configuram-se como territórios ativos de criação e resistência cultural.

Palavras-chave:
carnaval; etnografia urbana; relações raciais; produção cultural; periferia

INTRODUCTION: THE WAREHOUSE AT THREE IN THE MORNING

It was March 2022, three in the morning on a rainy Tuesday, when we encountered André Rodrigues from Acadêmicos do Sossego¹ in the barracão, the warehouse space where the floats, props and costumes of the samba schools are produced, gluing bits of acetate² onto a float partially damaged by water seeping through the roof. Covered in glue and paint, his hands moved with the precision of someone who has learned to solve complex problems with minimal resources.

‘Here we make carnival by sheer grit (na raça),’ André said, without taking his eyes off the float, which shimmered under the light of a few scattered fluorescent bulbs. Nearby, three volunteers worked in silence: one adjusted mirrors that had come unstuck in the rain, another dried the soaked sections of the structure using cloths, while a third prepared new materials to replace those that had been damaged. His phrase, uttered amid the organisational chaos of the final preparations, encapsulated not just the reality of that particular samba school, but an entire logic of cultural production within Rio de Janeiro’s carnival system beyond the spectacle itself.

Deep into the night, while the schools of the Special Group³ had already completed their work in the barracões of the Cidade do Samba, here in the warehouse shared by Sossego and Império Serrano a small huddle of exhausted contract workers (empreiteiros) and volunteers, friends of the carnavalesco,⁴ worked against the clock to ready a parade scheduled to take place in less than 48 hours. Next to us, one of Império Serrano’s floats was also receiving its final adjustments, creating an atmosphere of dual production that further added to the sensation of collective urgency. (Figure 1)

Figure 1
Workstation in the Acadêmicos do Sossego barracão. Source: authors’ archive (2022).

The scene demonstrated something fundamental about the conditions of production in the access group⁵: more than differences of scale or resources, what was in play was an altogether different way of making carnival, sustained by networks of solidarity and collective strategies for overcoming structural limitations. What we witnessed in those early hours, working as volunteers, was just one expression of a complex universe of social relations, technical practices and economic arrangements that sustain a significant portion of Rio’s carnival world.

The present ethnographic study investigates how workers in this access group, occupying a peripheral position within the hierarchical system of carnival, develop strategies that dialogue with broader dynamics of cultural production in the kind of precarious conditions observed in global urban peripheries.

The research was conducted during preparations for the 2022 and 2023 carnival seasons in the barracão of Acadêmicos do Sossego. Access to the field was negotiated directly with the carnival designer, André Rodrigues, with whom we had developed a relationship of familiarity prior to the research interests that prompted this study. His prior awareness of our anthropological interest in the carnival universe - specifically in the productive dynamics of samba school barracões - facilitated authorisation for carrying out the research.

The adopted methodology privileged a participant observation approach through integration into the mutirões (work rallies) organised by the carnival designer during the final moments of parade preparation. Over two consecutive years, we took part in approximately one month of intensive voluntary work in the barracão, a period corresponding to the most urgent phase of production when André would mobilise friends and collaborators to assist in the completion of the artistic elements of the carnival. During these mutirões, we acted as ‘extra pairs of hands’ for diverse activities: gluing acetate onto floats, assembling structures, organising materials, making final adjustments to costumes and transporting scenic elements.

This mode of ethnographic insertion established a dynamic of exchange that proved productive for both parties. For the carnavalesco, it provided additional labour during critical moments in the production process; for us, as researchers, it afforded privileged access to the practices, technical knowledge, social relations and material dimensions of carnival-making within the access group.

The Gold Series (Série Ouro)⁶ of Rio’s carnival is a paradigmatic example of peripheral cultural production. Its workers mobilise networks of solidarity and informal collective arrangements that make the parades viable even under extremely adverse conditions. These practices demonstrate how peripheral spaces, far from being merely passive recipients of imposed conditions, are configured as sites of creation, innovation and cultural resistance.

ON THE PERIPHERIES OF CARNIVAL: SPATIAL HIERARCHIES AND PERIPHERAL SUBJECTS

The Gold Series occupies a symbolic and material position of peripherality within the hierarchical structure of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, reproducing within the festive microcosm the same centre-periphery logic that organises the city’s urban space. If the Special Group represents the centre of this system with privileged access to resources, media visibility and use of the modern infrastructure of the Cidade do Samba, the Gold Series constitutes its immediate periphery: close enough to feed dreams of upward mobility, yet maintained in radically distinct material conditions. Within Rio’s carnival, there also exist other groups that parade in the North Zone, part of the urban periphery and, in this context, the periphery of the festivities themselves.

This peripheral condition is not simply geographical, although it materialises in the precarious and improvised warehouses in which their floats are produced; it is above all a relational position within the political economy of carnival, in which scarce resources and time impose on access group associations a production dynamic marked by precarity and dependency. As shown in the urban peripheries analysed by Simone (2004), the Gold Series schools develop survival strategies based on informal arrangements and networks of solidarity that partially compensate for the absence of adequate formal infrastructures.

Here we conceptualise the Gold Series workers as peripheral subjects (D’Andrea 2020) who, aware of their position within the carnival hierarchy, develop collective strategies of survival and overcoming. Their cultural production not only responds to precarity, but also affirms identities and resists logics of marginalisation, transforming the stigma of the periphery into creative potency. As D’Andrea (2020) demonstrates, peripheral subjects emerge from a specific territorial experience that combines five fundamental preconditions: subjection to social conditions that exist beyond individual will; the formation of subjectivities grounded in processes of territorial socialisation intertwined with racial, gendered and class experiences; shared cultural codes that produce a common language; a consciousness of belonging that allows the recognition of a shared urban position; and political action as a means of taking control of one’s own history in the name of the territory.

In the Gold Series, these characteristics are clearly manifested in the techniques and knowledge transmitted informally between generations of carnival workers, the acute awareness of their specific position within the festive hierarchy and the collaborative strategies aimed not only at survival but at overcoming adverse conditions. During one conversation in the barracão, André articulated this awareness: ‘We know we don’t have the same conditions as the big schools, but that doesn’t mean our work is worth any less. On the contrary, we have to be more creative, more united. That’s what makes us strong.’

The experience of carnival workers in the Gold Series can be comprehended via the notion of peripheral subjects, as agents who, based on their peripheral condition, develop a sense of belonging and specific forms of political action. What distinguishes these workers is precisely their capacity to transform the stigma of precarity into creative potency, enacting the movement that D’Andrea identifies as ‘from stigma to pride’ (D’Andrea 2020: 31). Carnival production in the Gold Series thus emerges as a form of ‘political art and culture’ (D’Andrea 2020: 31), in which artistic activities not only materialise the spectacle, but also themselves constitute a mode of resistance and affirmation.

The contemporary Rio carnival is organised through a complex hierarchical system of divisions that dates back to the institutionalisation of the parades in the 1930s. This pyramidal structure - in which today only the Special Group and the Gold Series parade at the Sambadrome - reflects not just differences in visibility and prestige, but above all profound inequalities in the material conditions of production. During carnival, this inequality is materialised in the uneven distribution of resources, production times and infrastructure, reproducing within the festive microcosm the same centre-periphery logics that organise Rio de Janeiro’s urban space.

As documented in the academic literature on samba schools in the access groups (Barbieri 2010, Natal 2020), nearly one hundred samba schools parade in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the precise number varying from year to year, which are organised within a complex competitive hierarchy from the top tier Special Group to the Evaluation Group.⁷ This hierarchical structure reveals a situation in which, while schools in the elite division, the Special Group, construct their parades enabled by multiple sources of financial support, including public funding, those in the Evaluation Group receive no financial backing whatsoever (Natal 2020).

Samba schools in the Special Group, even when located in geographically peripheral territories of the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, are able to effect a significant symbolic inversion of the urban hierarchies characteristic of the metropolis. Their quadras - the headquarters where rehearsals, parties and community activities are held throughout the year - function as vibrant hubs of social and cultural life, forming a metropolitan carnival circuit that connects peripheral zones and the centre.

However, this capacity to challenge urban hierarchies through pre-eminence in carnival remains a privilege of the Special Group. Schools in the Gold Series and other divisions, also located in peripheral districts, face a kind of double marginalisation that prevents them from performing a comparable symbolic operation. Their parades take place prior to the Special Group with reduced media coverage; their quadras are not included in the metropolitan carnival circuit recognised by tourism; and their communities remain invisible both within the urban hierarchy and in the symbolic economy of the festival. While the Special Group is able to mobilise carnival as a resource for affirming the cultural centrality of peripheral territories, the access group remain doubly peripheral: marginalised geographically and marginalised within carnival itself, unable to convert one position into a contestation of the other.

ANDRÉ RODRIGUES: A TRAJECTORY IN CARNIVAL’S PERIPHERY

Over fifteen years of work in carnival barracões, André Rodrigues has built a trajectory that positions him as one of the carnavalescos on the rise. Self-taught, the artist views this vast experience within carnival’s productive chain as his real training, having moved through different roles and associations as part of a learning process that combined technical practice and aesthetic experimentation. Initially recognised for his work as a costume designer, draughtsman and designer, André has developed the multiple competencies typical of the contemporary profile of the carnavalesco: mastery of float construction processes; knowledge of materials and their expressive possibilities; the ability to manage teams and scarce resources; and a narrative sensibility for translating the enredo⁸ into visual language.

His trajectory began in 2007 at Lins Imperial, a samba school in Rio’s access group, where he took his first steps in the professional universe of carnival. He subsequently worked with various Special Group associations, developing creative plans and artistic designs under the guidance of established carnavalescos. His experience in the São Paulo carnival, in turn, proved central to his formation. As a particularly decisive moment in his career, André highlights his time at Vai-Vai in 2012, a school where he was able to observe a different form of community organisation in carnival-making.

Between 2018 and 2022, he assumed the role of carnavalesco for the first time at Mocidade Unida da Mooca, presenting original enredos that began to define his own aesthetic signature: narratives that articulate history, Afro-Brazilian culture and contemporary social issues. His return to Rio’s carnival would come precisely in 2022 as carnavalesco of Acadêmicos do Sossego. After years working with samba schools with consolidated infrastructures, André was confronted with the radically different conditions of the access group: a precarious warehouse space, a reduced budget, limited time and a minimal team. (Figure 2)

Figure 2
André Rodrigues, parading as a featured performer for Império da Tijuca in 2022. Source: authors’ archive (2022).

André Rodrigues’ trajectory exemplifies broader processes of professional formation in the field of contemporary carnival-making. Unlike previous generations, who often advanced through community ties with a specific school, André represents a new profile: the itinerant carnavalesco, acquiring skills and expertise by moving between associations, divisions and even between the Rio and São Paulo carnival worlds. This mobility, while enabling the accumulation of diverse technical and aesthetic knowledge, also highlights the precariousness of labour relations in carnival where few professionals attain stable affiliations with Special Group schools. His experience traversing the Cidade do Samba and the precarious barracões of the access group affords him a singular perspective on the inequalities that structure the carnival system, making him a key interlocutor for an ethnographic understanding of these hierarchies.

During the period covered by our research, André simultaneously held the positions of creative director at Beija-Flor de Nilópolis and carnival designer (carnavalesco) at Acadêmicos do Sossego, a double commitment that proved fundamental for comprehending the networks through which materials and knowledge circulate between different schools. This double affiliation was not seen by André as a conflict of interest, but rather as an opportunity for learning and for cultivating his professional relationships. ‘At Beija-Flor I can use materials that aren’t possible in the access group. But it’s at Sossego that I can realise a project exactly as I envision it,’ he explained during one of our conversations. As creative director at Beija-Flor de Nilópolis, André was responsible for the technical design of the school’s carnival, working as part of the team led by carnavalesco Alexandre Louzada. At Sossego, performing a different role, he led the entire artistic creation from conceptualisation to the materialisation of the enredo.

The enredo of a samba school is the central narrative theme that functions as a structured script guiding all levels of artistic creation for the parade from costumes and floats to the samba-enredo that sets it to music. It represents the story the school has chosen to tell on the parade avenue and is evaluated by the jury members both for the originality and creativity of its thematic conception and for the coherence and quality of its realisation across all visual and musical elements of the performance. In the year in question, André proposed the enredo ‘Shamanic Visions’ for Sossego, based on the book The Falling Sky by the French anthropologist Bruce Albert and the Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa. At the same time, Beija-Flor de Nilópolis developed the enredo ‘Blackening thought means hearing the voice of Beija-Flor,’⁹ centred on Black intellectuality.

The 2022 carnival highlighted a long-standing contradiction within the universe of samba schools: while eight of the twelve Special Group associations in Rio presented enredos celebrating Black culture, religiosity and personalities, none had black carnavalescos heading the artistic direction of their parades. Observation of this discrepancy sparked a broad debate on racial representation, involving a range of actors from the specialised press to academics and including an organic movement of black artists and carnival professionals who advocated for greater protagonism within the creative structures of the associations. The movement transcended the question of mere visual presence in the parades to challenge the very power structures of carnival, demanding that the schools recognise and invest in talents born and nurtured within their own communities, particularly in the artistic conception of the enredos. This context of renewal and questioning of the historic erasure of Black intellectuality in carnival signalled a broader process of reconfiguration in which debates on representation sought to acknowledge the centrality of black professionals in the cultural and artistic production of samba schools.

The concept of trabalho sonhado, ‘dreamed work,’ developed by Adriana Facina (2022), provides an insight into the career aspirations of peripheral artists like André. According to Facina, this notion ‘appears very frequently in the speech of interlocutors in the field as the opposite of “slave labour” or “formal employment”’ (Facina 2022: 3), representing a form of work that combines economic sustenance with personal and collective fulfilment. Dreamed work manifests concretely in the desire to ‘make a living from work with art,’ an aspiration shared by diverse artists from urban peripheries. Facina’s (2022) analysis shows that dreamed work is directly linked to the dismantling of cultural policies in Brazil after 2016, a period during which many artists previously able to ‘live from creating culture’ were forced to return to formal wage labour to ensure survival. This forced precarisation makes evident the vulnerability of artistic and cultural labour conditions and reinforces the importance of dreamed work as both a utopian horizon and a strategy of resistance.

During a conversation in the barracão, André explained his decision to accept the invitation to become carnavalesco of Sossego: ‘I’ve always dreamed of being head designer for a carnival. In the Special Group, I’m part of a larger machine, but here I can show my complete vision. It’s difficult, we don’t have their infrastructure, but this is where I can create my art.’ His remarks foreground the constitutive tension of dreamed work: the pursuit of creative autonomy under adverse material conditions, where artistic fulfilment intertwines with structural precarity. This tension is manifested concretely in the remuneration of carnival work in the access group. André revealed that the amount he received as carnavalesco of Sossego was significantly lower than what he earned as creative director at Beija-Flor. Yet this did not diminish his commitment: ‘It’s not just about money. Here I can show who I am as an artist, I can experiment with things that wouldn’t be possible in the Special Group. It’s also a question of personal fulfilment.’ At that moment, working as carnavalesco for Acadêmicos do Sossego represented a personal investment for André, seeking to construct his own artistic individuality within the carnival circuit (Santos 2009), a recognition capable of generating mobility - that is, opening doors to work as carnavalesco for a Special Group association.

Based in the Largo da Batalha neighbourhood in the Pendotiba region of Niterói, the school occupies a doubly peripheral position: it competes in the Gold Series of Rio’s carnival and is simultaneously located outside the municipal limits of Rio de Janeiro city, effectively constituting a ‘Niterói school in the Rio carnival.’ The neighbourhood hosts three samba schools, a concentration of carnival activity that has historically given rise to one of the explanations for its toponym: Largo da Batalha (Battle Square) is said to refer to the great ‘revelry battles’ resulting from the convergence of various carnival blocks.

The distance of approximately 25 kilometres between Largo da Batalha and the Sambadrome across the Rio-Niterói Bridge adds significant logistical costs for transporting parade components, consuming a considerable portion of already limited resources. This condition of being a ‘periphery of the carnival periphery,’ located outside the host municipality, in a working-class neighbourhood of a secondary city within the metropolitan hierarchy, competing in a lower division, demonstrates how urban, administrative and symbolic inequalities overlap and mutually reinforce one another in the production of carnival marginality.

THE CIDADE DO SAMBA AND THE REPRODUCTION OF INEQUALITIES

The construction of the Cidade do Samba in 2006 marked a turning point in the history of Rio’s carnival, powerfully materialising the hierarchies of the carnival system. As Blass (2008) documents, the project arose from a partnership between leaders of the major samba schools and governmental bodies, condensing a tension between traditional and modern aspects, in which ‘the old is recreated and re-signified under different historical conditions’ (Blass 2008: 79).

The Cidade do Samba emerged as a response to structural problems that had been accumulating over decades. As Ferreira (2006) explains, since the final decades of the twentieth century, ‘the main samba associations in Rio were already using warehouses, known as barracões, for the construction of their floats and props’ (Ferreira 2006: 201), but these improvised spaces increasingly imposed limitations. The growth in both the number and the size of floats became a decisive factor in the need for new infrastructure and the Port area of Rio de Janeiro was considered ideal due to its proximity to the Sambadrome and the ready availability of large warehouses.

Schools in the Special Group occupy the modern barracões of the Cidade do Samba, each with standardised facilities of 7,000 m², advanced technical resources and adequate infrastructure. Every warehouse is equipped with ventilation and lighting systems, bathrooms, changing rooms, a canteen and even administrative offices. The flooring is uniform and suitable for the movement of heavy equipment, the electrical installations are professional-grade and a 24-hour security system is in operation. In contrast, Gold Series associations either inherited the old warehouses of the port area or operate in improvised, precarious sites, working under radically different conditions.

Barbieri’s (2006) analysis documents the conflicts that emerged after the occupation of the barracões in the Cidade do Samba, revealing how ‘the implementation and formal inauguration of the Cidade do Samba represents a substantial alteration in the social organisation of samba school parades in Rio’s carnival’ (Barbieri 2006: 2). His research shows that this transformation amplified pre-existing inequalities rather than democratising conditions of production. This unequal distribution of carnival infrastructure provides us with a paradigmatic case for analysing the relationships between materiality, power and inequality in contemporary cities. The very allocation of buildings within the Cidade do Samba followed competitive criteria that reinforced established privileges, demonstrating that, although institutional discourse promises modernisation and professionalisation, in practice these structures frequently amplify pre-existing socioeconomic disparities.

However, this process of infrastructural modernisation dramatically widened the material distance between the Special Group and the other divisions of Rio’s carnival. Schools in the Gold Series and lower tiers continued and still continue to produce their parades under the same precarious conditions that had historically characterised carnival production before the Cidade do Samba: improvised warehouses, often shared with other associations or commercial activities; low ceilings that limit the height of floats; inadequate electrical installations; lack of functioning bathrooms; and unsafe, unhygienic spaces. The creation of the Cidade do Samba thus functioned as a mechanism for reproducing inequalities within the carnival system, providing modern production conditions exclusively to schools that already occupied a privileged position in the hierarchy, while the others remained constrained by the structural limitations that the Special Group had finally overcome.

André Rodrigues lives this infrastructural inequality every day as he moves between the two worlds. During an interview conducted in the barracão in January 2023, he provided an ethnographically precise description of the material differences between the two spaces:

In my work as carnavalesco and artistic director in both places, at the Cidade do Samba and here in the Sossego barracão, it’s clearly apparent just how different the physical structures of the two spaces are. At the Cidade do Samba, I have an office [for private work], a larger team [of hired staff], a bathroom I can use and drinking water available all day. Here [in the access group barracão], I have to manage all these issues myself. So when I invite you, for example, to help with a mutirão [work rally], I have to think about what water you’ll drink and how we’ll provide you with a bathroom, because this space doesn’t have that kind of infrastructure.

André’s account illustrates how infrastructure - or its absence - not only shapes the aesthetic and technical possibilities of carnival production but also conditions the social relations sustaining it. In the Cidade do Samba, the carnavalesco can concentrate on the creative and technical coordination aspects of their work, taking basic infrastructure as a given. In the access group barracão, by contrast, the carnavalesco has to manage basic survival needs for the volunteer workers: providing drinking water, enabling access to bathrooms (often negotiating use of facilities in neighbouring establishments), organising meals and ensuring adequate lighting. The infrastructural precarity transforms the work of the access group carnival designer into the constant management of scarcity, diverting time and energy that could otherwise be invested in the aesthetic development of the parade.

André’s perception of this inequality is not limited to noting these material differences, but extends to a critical appreciation of the mechanisms that produce and reproduce them. In a conversation during the 2022 preparations, he remarked that the Cidade do Samba ‘solved a problem that the Special Group schools have always had, but created a situation where we [in the access group] fell even further behind.’ This observation highlights the relational dimension of inequalities: the modernisation of one segment of the carnival system, without corresponding investment in the other divisions, only exacerbates existing hierarchies. Access group schools do not merely remain; they now face direct comparison with associations possessing incomparably superior infrastructural resources, competing symbolically in a system that materially places them at a structural disadvantage.

MATERIALITIES OF PRECARITY: THE BARRACÃO AS INFRASTRUCTURE

The barracão shared by Acadêmicos do Sossego and Império Serrano materialises the contradictions of peripheral production. Passing through the large gate that provides access to the warehouse, the visitor is immediately struck by the scale of the interior space and the complexity of the activities unfolding within it. This is an environment shared by two access group associations coexisting in the same warehouse and organising their productions in parallel, albeit with some degree of spatial and material overlap.

The scene is composed of a multiplicity of float chassis at different stages of production. Some are constructed solely in wood, others still have exposed iron frameworks, even with the parade rapidly approaching. The sense of urgency is palpable. Each school has its own technical teams who, working at an intense pace, concentrate on the final adjustments needed to complete the floats.

Chassis at different stages, piles of debris on the floor, acetate sheets, broken mirrors, staples, satin ribbons, assorted fragments and swirls of dust, along with leaks forming puddles and a constant sense of urgency, reveal not merely disorganisation but a distinctive logic of production shaped by structural precarity. These material traces indicate a highly diverse repertoire of materialities composing the carnival production scene. The barracão thus becomes a field of tensions in which materials, techniques and affective relations converge in the production of the spectacle. The physical space materialises not only structural precarity but also a temporality specific to Gold Series carnival production. Unlike the Special Group, where schools begin their production cycle immediately after the previous year’s carnival, access group associations contend with a compressed schedule, determined primarily by the irregular rhythm of financial inflows. (Figure 3)

Figure 3
Parade elements in the barracão. Source: authors’ archive (2022).

The material precarity we experienced in the Sossego barracão manifests in multiple dimensions of the physical space: it is a concrete warehouse with worn walls, and the few available rooms serve simultaneously as costume storage, a workshop and, in some cases, even sleeping quarters for workers. The absence of basic infrastructure is stark: there are no adequate bathrooms, forcing workers to rely on nearby commercial establishments for basic needs. There is also no canteen or kitchen, with meals provided via externally sourced packed lunches or prepared on improvised stoves. The scarcity of drinking water adds further discomfort, often compelling the coordinators to purchase mineral water themselves to distribute among the volunteers.

Unlike the standardised barracões of the Cidade do Samba, the space lacks any functional zoning or division. Workers use improvised workbenches made of polystyrene or wood, supported on metal frames, often resting on the structures of the floats themselves under construction. The partially damaged roof allows not only ventilation but also direct exposure to rain and sunlight on the floats. We witnessed various episodes in which work had to be halted for emergency measures to protect the floats during storms, sometimes resulting in the loss of a significant portion of already applied decorations, which meant repairs and additional expense.

One particularly rainy afternoon, we observed André and three contract workers rushing to cover the floats with plastic tarpaulins. ‘Every time it rains, it’s a mad scramble,’ one of the workers remarked as we tried to secure the tarpaulin over one of the structures. ‘The worst is when it rains at night and nobody is here. We’ve arrived in the morning to find everything soaked, weeks of work ruined.’ The leaky roof was not just an inconvenience, it directly impacted both the schedule and the quality of the work.

During a nocturnal visit, we even discovered the main iron gate was loose, highlighting the safety risks to both workers and materials. André explained that they had already lost materials to theft and that surveillance relied on the occasional presence of workers who slept on-site. ‘We don’t have the money to hire 24-hour security. So we depend on this network of collective care, people who keep watch when they can.’

The spatial layout of the barracão reflects the economic constraints of the access group: with only three floats in production, Acadêmicos do Sossego is able to share the space, but this sharing does not mean adequate working conditions. The three chassis in progress occupy the warehouse, surrounded by a structural precarity that contrasts drastically with the modern facilities of the Special Group. Analysing these material conditions reveals how the hierarchy of Rio carnival is inscribed in physical space, constituting technologies of power that crystallise and reproduce historical inequalities.

The temporalities of production in access group barracões differs radically from those experienced by Special Group schools, configuring another fundamental dimension of structural inequality in the carnival system. While elite associations have roughly eight months to develop and complete their parades, beginning float production between June and August of the previous year, Gold Series schools operate under a constant state of urgency, with drastically compressed timelines that profoundly shape their production strategies and aesthetic choices.

In the access group, the production calendar inverts the logic of the Special Group: rather than the chosen theme determining the start date of material production, it is the elements available for reuse that partially shape the thematic definition. Access group carnavalescos begin their preparations by turning to pre-existing contacts with Special Group schools to acquire - through donations, purchases at modest prices or swaps -decorations, float structures, sculptures and diverse material components from the recently staged parades of these elite associations. Only after this phase of collection and selection of available materials can the enredo be definitively adjusted and production effectively commence. This temporal inversion demonstrates the aesthetic subordination of the access group to the material economy of the carnival system: while the Special Group produces ‘from scratch’ based on freely authored concepts, the access group creates ‘from the past’ of others, creatively reworking the leftover materials of the carnival elite.

The actual production of floats in the access group is concentrated, at its most intense, in the month to month-and-a-half preceding Carnival. This short timeframe results from the schools’ dependence on financial resources from government funding, as well as grants from the Rio de Janeiro City and State governments, which are only released after the turn of the year, by which point the days separating the associations from their parades are already numbered. During fieldwork in 2022 and 2023, we observed how Acadêmicos do Sossego maintained only limited preparatory activities (organising received materials, minor repairs, planning) before suddenly accelerating production about a month prior to Carnival when municipal funds were partially released and the school could hire workers and buy essential materials.

In the access group’s barracões, multiple carnival temporalities coexist in constant dialogue in a materially visible way: the past of parades already performed, the present of urgent production and the future of the imminent parade. Floats, metal frameworks and sculptures from previous carnivals - both from the school itself and from Special Group associations - occupy corners of the warehouse, awaiting potential reuse, while at the centre of the space the production of the upcoming carnival rises frenetically. This spatial coexistence of different temporal layers materialises the logic of recycling elements that underpins the access group carnival: the present of production is always simultaneously a dialogue with the past (‘what can be repurposed?’) and a race against the near future ('how much time do we have left?').

During the night-long mutirões in the 2022 pre-Carnival period, this temporal compression became almost palpable. At three o’clock one Tuesday afternoon, with the parade scheduled for the following Saturday, André Rodrigues and his team were working simultaneously on multiple fronts: finishing floats, repairing structures damaged by rain dripping through the precarious roof, adapting sculptures received from another school to fit the narrative of the enredo and testing lighting effects. The short timeframe imposed a work logic that prioritised rapid and creative solutions over refined finish, function over ideal aesthetics and intensive volunteer collaboration over specialised professionals who could not be hired within the limited budget available.

This compressed temporality stands in sharp contrast to the production pace observed in the Special Group, where the extended timeframe allows cycles of experimentation, error, correction and refinement, resulting in the high degree of visual polish characteristic of their parades. As André summarised in one conversation during the preparations: ‘Here we can’t afford to mess up. Either it works the first time or we go [parade] like that anyway.’

The temporality of the access group carnival is thus one of urgency and reuse, in which the present - compressed between a material past that limits possibilities and an imminent future that pressures decisions - configures a specific mode of carnival-making. This temporal dimension of inequality, seldom addressed in carnival studies, is just as structuring as differences in financial resources or physical infrastructure, profoundly shaping the aesthetic, technical and social strategies mobilised by workers on the periphery of the carnival world.

CIRCULATION NETWORKS: DEBT AND RECIPROCITY IN CARNIVAL

The question of exchange and circulation is one of anthropology’s fundamental pillars, established as a central mechanism for understanding social relations and the constitution of collective life. From the seminal work of Marcel Mauss on the gift, which demonstrated how the acts of giving, receiving and reciprocating come to structure basic social bonds (Mauss 2003), to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s elaborations on the elementary structures of kinship, exchange emerges not merely as an economic phenomenon but as a universal principle of human thought (Lévi-Strauss 1982). This perspective reveals that the circulation of goods, people and symbols transcends mere utilitarian functionality, configuring itself as a social language that both expresses and reproduces hierarchies, alliances and specific cosmologies.

Bronisław Malinowski’s magisterial ethnography of the Trobriand Islands exemplifies the complexity of these modalities of exchange, showing how different forms of circulation - from the ceremonial kula to various forms of communal labour such as tanigogula, lubalabisa and kabutu - organise not only economic life but the entire social structure (Malinowski 1978). As Lanna (1992) demonstrates, these classifications do not define particular tasks, but rather determine specific forms of socialisation through the organisation of labour as exchange, revealing that reciprocity and redistribution constitute central mechanisms for the constitution of political power and authority within the Trobriand universe.

In the context of Gold Series carnival, these classic anthropological dynamics take on contemporary and specific contours. The informal circulation of materials between the Special Group and the Gold Series - such as fabrics, mirrors and other decorative materials (aviamentos)¹⁰ - relies on networks of solidarity based on personal relationships and bonds of trust. More than a simple exchange of supplies, this process reveals a communal logic in which sharing operates to maintain a collective ecosystem, partially compensating for the structural inequalities of the carnival.

This circulation does not occur via institutionalized or formal channels, but rather through informal networks of solidarity and cooperation, often sustained by personal and affective relationships between the members of samba school - whether workers active in both associations, friends close to the management, or administrations sharing bonds of trust and reciprocity. The geographic and administrative proximity between Niterói’s schools, such as Unidos do Viradouro and Acadêmicos do Sossego, also acts as an additional facilitator for these negotiations.

During fieldwork, we accompanied a particularly illustrative visit to Viradouro. On the occasion, André Rodrigues was selecting leftover materials from the previous year’s carnival for reuse at Sossego. At the Viradouro barracão, we were greeted by the warehouse director, who led us through the space where the school’s previous carnival materials were stored. The selection focused primarily on decorative elements in good condition that had been part of the school’s floats. ‘Look at this,’ André said, ‘with a good cleaning and a few adjustments, it’ll be perfect for our third float. The advantage is that the colours match our enredo perfectly.’

This practice represents not merely a resource-saving strategy, but a social technology of production in which creative reuse emerges as a fundamental strategy for enabling the parades. The process of repurposing and transforming materials goes beyond a simple transfer of resources: as we observed in the Viradouro barracão, each element is evaluated by the carnavalesco in terms of its potential adaptation to the new narrative context. This kind of evaluation requires not only accumulated technical expertise, but also the capacity to envision alternative solutions when direct means are unavailable.

The materials that circulate are mostly leftovers from previous Special Group carnivals that, for aesthetic or technical reasons, will not be reused by these schools. Fabrics, cords, embellishments, mirrors, ribbons, sequins and other small decorative items thus become the material base for parades in the access groups. André explained the selection criteria: ‘We don’t take just anything. You have to see if it works for the enredo, if the colours match, if the material is still in a good state. So it also involves some curating.’

This circulation not only enables the continuity of work in the access group barracões, but also helps enhance the visual quality of the floats, despite the budgetary and infrastructural constraints typically facing these schools. More than a simple exchange of materials, this process reveals a communal logic underlying the functioning of carnival, in which the sharing of resources operates as both a practical and symbolic means of sustaining a collective ecosystem.

André Rodrigues’s double commitment (with Beija-Flor and Acadêmicos do Sossego) constitutes a form of social capital converted into essential material resources. The process of acquiring and circulating these materials follows its own logic, involving not only commercial dimensions, but above all relationships of trust and reciprocity between professionals and samba schools. The coincidence of colours between some schools, such as the blue and white shared by Beija-Flor and Sossego, emerges as an important facilitator in this process, enabling more direct reuse without the need for major chromatic adaptations.

DREAMED WORK AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS

As Leila Blass (1998, 2004, 2008, 2009) observes in her pioneering studies on artistic labour in carnival production, ‘work and employment practices appear fused and intertwined in the so-called world of non-work - or the festa’ (Blass 2004: 67), inserting themselves ‘in a network of sociability, solidarity and affective bonds that refer back to the system of social relations constructed in the everyday life of a samba school’ (Blass 2004: 12). This analysis reveals how carnival workers develop labour practices that exceed a purely commercial logic, integrating affective, communal and creative dimensions.

Blass’s anthropological investigation into the role of the carnavalesco in the production of parades offers us some particularly relevant insights into the organisation of artistic labour. The author documents how ‘a carnavalesco acts with differentiated intensity during all these moments, from the elaboration of a synopsis for an enredo to the assembly of a parade in the concentração¹¹ and its disassembly in the dispersão’¹² (Blass 2004: 73), constituting ‘a synthesising figure, condensing and assuming multiple functions, tasks and activities in this production in order to transform a dream into the polysemy of images, sounds and words that appear during the days of Carnival’ (Blass 2004: 73).

The figure of the carnavalesco exemplifies this reconfiguration of labour in the access group. During fieldwork, we observed André assuming functions that would be distributed among different specialists in a Special Group samba association. In addition to artistic direction, he managed the workforce, provided water and meals for volunteers, negotiated with suppliers and directly participated in the execution of basic tasks. It was common to see André simultaneously directing the decoration of the floats, attending to suppliers and resolving problems of all kinds. (Figure 4)

Figure 4
Opening float (Abre-Alas) of Acadêmicos do Sossego. Source: authors’ archive (2022).

One Sunday afternoon in the barracão, André explained this dynamic:

It’s not just a question of talent or dedication. The schools in the Special Group have the conditions required to put on a very different kind of carnival, with more time, more resources, more infrastructure.

This reality of production in the access group schools encapsulates the set of practices and strategies developed to navigate the structural scarcity of resources.

André’s work as a carnival designer and creative director warrants broader discussion in light of the concept of dreamed work (trabalho sonhado) developed by Facina (2022). This notion acquires further theoretical depth when articulated with a reflection on Brazil’s socio-historical formation, in which ‘work was instituted as punishment, as a means of subjugating those below and continues over the course of history as an important mechanism of social distinction, embodied in the opposition between manual and intellectual labour’ (Facina 2022: 4). In the context of the Gold Series carnival, this aspiration manifests in the dedication of professionals even in the face of extremely adverse material conditions and remuneration incompatible with the volume and complexity of the work realised.

As Luiz Fernando, director of the barracão at Unidos de Vila Isabel in the Special Group and carnival director of Acadêmicos do Sossego in the Gold Series, explained during a conversation at the barracão: ‘We don’t do this just for the money, but out of love for the school and carnival. If we thought purely in financial terms, it would be better to work in anything else.’ This statement exemplifies precisely the dimension of dreamed work: despite material precariousness and low remuneration, carnival work offers opportunities for expression, creation and recognition unavailable in conventional occupations open to the working class. In the accounts of both Luiz and André, carnival work is framed as an activity of self-worth and personal fulfilment.

In a more private conversation, André revealed the financial dilemmas of working in the access group: ‘As the carnavalesco of Sossego, I earn in a year what I make in three months at Beija-Flor. But there are things that can’t be measured in money alone.’ This tension between artistic fulfilment and material sustenance constantly shapes the daily life of workers in the access group. For that year’s carnival, André was investing his own money into the parade’s production. As the school’s professional carnavalesco, he was covering costs for materials, paying suppliers and covering other daily expenses involved in running the barracão.

CREATIVE MUTIRÕES: PEOPLE AS INFRASTRUCTURE

The concept of ‘people as infrastructure’ proposed by AbdouMaliq Simone (2004) offers a singular contribution to anthropological debates on circulation, significantly expanding the classical discussions of exchange and reciprocity. While traditional studies have focused on the circulation of objects, goods and symbols as the foundation of social relations - from Mauss’s analyses of the gift to the complex forms of Trobriand exchange documented by Malinowski - Simone demonstrates how the very circulation of people, practices and knowledge constitutes a dynamic social infrastructure.

Simone (2004) refers to the capacity of social actors to constitute platforms for the reproduction of social life through highly flexible, mobile and provisional collaborative practices, even in contexts involving severe material constraints. Unlike the conventional notion of infrastructure as networked physical systems (roads, pipes, cables), this perspective emphasises how people, through their everyday activities and interactions, form heterogeneous assemblages that operate without any clearly delineated ideas of how the city should be inhabited or utilised.

As in the cities of the Global South studied by Simone, carnival workers in the access group operate through flexible intersections and collaborative practices that, while largely invisible, are essential to the materialisation of the parades. While in the standardised structures of the Cidade do Samba cooperative networks are institutionalised, in the precarious barracões they take on more fluid contours, constantly reconfigured by material constraints.

The mutirões held to finish work on the floats, organised primarily on weekends, constitute a core practice in access group carnival production. Mutirões are collective, voluntary work sessions traditionally taking place on weekends in samba school barracões, becoming especially intense in the months running up to carnival. They mobilise networks of solidarity composed of family members, friends and school supporters, representing a fundamental form of labour organisation in access group carnival, where scarcity of resources demands greater community engagement. These gatherings reveal a distinctive ‘collective intelligence’ with skills flexibly mobilised according to the needs of the moment. There is no rigid division of tasks: people cluster into small groups based on their abilities and the most pressing demands with the more experienced taking on mentoring roles.

During a mutirão we observed in February 2022, André coordinated three work fronts simultaneously: one group was gluing mirrors onto the side of a float, another was attaching decorative elements to the top of another float, while a third group prepared materials to be applied later. ‘You lot over there on the mirrors, when you finish, come help on the right side,’ André instructed, moving between the groups and adjusting the work according to the needs as they arose. (Figure 5)

Figure 5
The barracão seen from the second floor. Luiz and André talk during a nocturnal mutirão. Source: authors’ collection (2022).

This dynamic revealed a specific mode of work organisation that transcends formal hierarchies. We observed situations in which people with little technical experience temporarily assumed the coordination of a particular task because they had developed a particular skill in the activity concerned. This exemplifies what Becker (2008) describes as socialisation in the ‘art worlds,’ reflecting the informal circulation of technical knowledge between volunteers and experienced professionals. Becker’s approach to art as collective action illuminates crucial aspects of this dynamic, showing how the ‘conventions’ structuring ‘art worlds’ operate not only as technical and aesthetic standards, but also as moral codes regulating networks of solidarity.

This type of collective work is a concrete embodiment of what Simone (2004) conceptualises as ‘people as infrastructure’: social conjunctions become an infrastructure insofar as they constitute a platform that enables and reproduces urban life, consolidating an experience of regularity precisely because the results of the reciprocal efforts of residents are radically open, flexible and provisional. This social infrastructure is characterised by the capacity of individual actors to move through and familiarise themselves with a wide range of spatial, economic and transactional positions. During the mutirões, we observed concrete examples of this capacity for circulation and adaptation: people arriving to help were quickly integrated into the workflow, regardless of their prior experience.

During the mutirões, food was provided collectively, with André either buying packed meals or organising vaquinhas (whip-rounds) to buy pizza. These shared meals served as important moments of socialisation and planning in which strategies for the coming days were discussed and the affective bonds sustaining the entire process were reinforced. ‘It’s not just working together, it’s living this experience together,’ explained one of the volunteers during a collective lunch. At the same time, it is important to note how, for André, the success of the Acadêmicos do Sossego carnival could be a turning point in his dream of making a living from carnival arts: in this sense, he mobilised both economic and affective resources to realise the project he envisioned.

TEMPORALITIES OF URGENCY: THE CONCENTRAÇÃO AS AN EXTENSION OF THE BARRACÃO

The final days intensify the sense of precarity: contract workers (empreiteiros)¹³ split between multiple schools, volunteers arriving after long workdays, materials receiving the finishing touches on the eve of the parade. This compressed temporality is not just the result of financial constraints, but constitutes a structural feature of peripheral production, where a constant sense of urgency requires extraordinary commitment from workers and dissolves the boundaries between personal life and artistic creation.

The pace in the barracão was intense in the days leading up to the parade. The sounds of hammers driving nails, iron being welded, technical adjustments being discussed, loud music energising the space and the endless comings and goings around the three floats being finalised could be heard constantly. The atmosphere was one of urgency and collective endeavour. In many cases, the empreiteiros working in the barracões of the access group schools also provided services to Special Group associations, splitting their teams between both fronts.

This overlapping of commitments made the cumulative fatigue visible. The workers’ faces showed the physical, psychological and emotional exhaustion resulting from their total dedication in the final moments leading up to the parade. A welder who was working simultaneously for Sossego and a Special Group school arrived at the barracão one afternoon showing clear signs of burnout: ‘Since Monday I haven’t slept more than three hours a night,’ he reported while preparing his equipment for yet another shift.

On the Sossego side, as well as the contract workers hired at the last minute to complete the work on the floats, there was also a strong presence of André’s friends and volunteers. Even after completing their workdays in other occupations, these collaborators made themselves available to help, driven above all by bonds of friendship. Their contribution was essential to ensuring the delivery of a carnival that, in the year in question, marked André’s debut as a carnavalesco in Rio de Janeiro, following his debut in the São Paulo carnival.

This first parade signed under his name as carnival designer had a strategic importance for his career trajectory. It was a highly visible showcase with the potential to open doors to future invitations, including from Special Group schools, contributing to his professional consolidation as a carnival designer. André was acutely aware of the pressure: ‘It’s my first opportunity as a carnavalesco. If all goes well, I might receive bigger invitations. If it goes badly, I might not get another chance anytime soon.’

After an entire carnival cycle, the day of the parade had finally arrived. We reached the concentração on Avenida Presidente Vargas - a major arterial road in central Rio de Janeiro where the samba schools assemble before the parades - at around nine in the morning. The floats had already been removed from the barracão and stood parked along the roadway, a space usually full of cars and buses heading into the city centre, awaiting final adjustments before the parade. It is common for these structures to arrive in the early hours of the morning and remain there throughout the day until the moment they enter the Marquês de Sapucaí. This extension of the production process to the very last minute reveals how time in the access groups is simultaneously scarce and elastic, demanding from workers a constant capacity for adaptation.

As soon as we arrived, we searched for André, who was coordinating the group of volunteers that day. He assigned tasks according to the most urgent needs of the floats. By that stage, the work was already limited to finishing decorative touches. Each of us was assigned to a float and tasked with specific duties, such as attaching buoys, mirrors and other decorative elements which, as well as enhancing the visual aesthetics of the floats, were also intended to prevent the loss of points from the jury.

Throughout the day, we circulated between different floats and roles, rotating through different manual tasks with the shared aim of ensuring a visually consistent finish - a process also referred to as truque (literally, ‘trick’). At one point, we paused the work to have lunch. Notably, both lunch and the water consumed throughout the day were provided by André for the volunteers, a group of around six people composed of his friends, all of whom had some connection to carnival. These individuals formed part of the network of community collaboration that André had built around himself. (Figure 6)

Figure 6
André, Luiz and the volunteers in the concentração. Source: authors’ archive (2022).

The process known as truque - adjustments and finishing touches performed in the concentração itself - takes on much broader dimensions in the access group than in the Special Group. As one of the costume decorators working at that moment explained: ‘Truque has always existed in all schools, but it’s more intense in the access groups because we don’t have the time or infrastructure to finish everything in the barracão. A lot of things have to be sorted out right here, on the spot.’

The practices involved in finishing the floats in the concentração offer an insight into what Gell defines as the tortuosity of technical processes. Truque emerges not just as an adaptation to the lack of time and infrastructure, but as a set of specific technical knowledge developed within the context of the access groups. The need to resolve structural and aesthetic problems under even more precarious conditions demands an expertise capable of rapidly assessing the possibilities for intervention, prioritising tasks and implementing solutions with the available resources.

The management of scarcity is also evident in the mobilisation of the labour force. While in the Special Group each float is supported by specialised teams, in the access group schools this work falls to volunteers and components¹⁴ of the school itself. It was only around six in the evening that we left the concentração, returning home to prepare and later heading back to the Sambadrome area, where we would take part in the parade. This exhausting routine reveals how the carnival spectacle is continuously produced up to the very last moment, with workers completely exhausted by an intense production cycle that only effectively comes to an end when the school enters the avenue.

ART, TECHNIQUE AND ENCHANTMENT: THE CARNIVAL FLOATS

Rio de Janeiro’s carnival floats are central expressive elements in the ritual narrative of samba school parades, functioning as immense objects that mediate between different chains of meaning. Maria Laura Cavalcanti (2006b) argues that while the samba-enredo condenses the theme by selecting only certain topics for its composition, the floats expand on it, punctuating the school’s passage with the visual development of all the suggested topics. The floats imbue the represented elements with an almost human life, addressing the spectators, while human beings themselves become ‘composite elements of the float,’ transformed into signifiers in the service of a chain of meanings structured by the allegorical motif (Cavalcanti 2006b).

Carnival production in the Gold Series can be understood through Alfred Gell’s (2005) reflections on the relationship between art and technique. For the author, art forms part of a vast technical system he terms a ‘technology of enchantment,’ whose aim is to provoke fascination and enchantment and to exert psychological influence on people. The arts are ‘those forms of social relationships which make it socially necessary to produce, distribute and consume goods and services using ‘technical’ processes’ (Gell 2005: 45).

This perspective sheds new light on carnival labour in the context of the access groups. For Gell (2005), the power of fascination exerted by an art work resides less in its visual properties than in the technical processes it embodies and in the complex social relations involved in its production, circulation, and reception. In the case of the Gold Series floats, this conception allows us to understand how, even when produced under extremely precarious conditions, they are still able to generate significant effects on the audience. The ‘technology of enchantment’ in the access group carnival manifests precisely in the ability of carnavalescos and artisans to transform recycled, repurposed and low-cost materials into visually striking floats. The technical knowledge and accumulated experience of these professionals constitute what Gell (2005) would call a ‘technological magic’ in which the gap between means and ends produces astonishment and admiration.

As observed in the floats of Acadêmicos do Sossego, the final result often conceals the improvised processes and material limitations that shaped their production, generating the sense of enchantment in the audience that characterises the carnival aesthetic experience. During the parade, we witnessed audience reactions that made this ‘enchantment’ clearly evident: applause, cries of admiration, photographs being taken. A float constructed from repurposed materials and improvised techniques produced the same visual impact on the public as floats created under more favourable conditions.

‘Finished’ proves to be a particularly complex notion in the carnival universe. Floats are composed of layers upon layers of decoration, in an endless process of re-signification and finishing, only momentarily suspended when they enter the avenue. Carnival production thus takes shape not as the outcome of linear planning, but as a surface of ongoing technical and creative negotiation. This characteristic becomes intensified in the context of the access groups where completion of the floats lasts until the final moments before the parade. During the concentração, we observed how decorative elements continued to be applied just minutes before the school entered the avenue - mirrors being glued, ribbons adjusted, elements repositioned. This continuous production up to the very last moment exemplifies what Gell describes as the complexity of artistic technical processes.

The materiality of the Gold Series floats reveals specific creative strategies developed to navigate budgetary constraints. We witnessed the transformation of seemingly simple materials like polystyrene, laminated paper and satin ribbons into elements with a striking visual impact.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CARNIVAL: INEQUALITIES AND RESISTANCES

The experience in the barracão of Acadêmicos do Sossego allows for a broader reflection on the political economy of Rio’s carnival, revealing how hierarchies between divisions are materialised and reproduced through a multiplicity of mechanisms. The schools of the Special Group, organised under the Liga Independente das Escolas de Samba (LIESA), finance their parades through a range of revenue sources: commercial contracts, television broadcasting rights, income generated from ticket sales and public subsidies.

For the 2022 carnival, each Special Group school received 1.5 million reais from the Municipal Government as a cultural incentive. In addition, these schools benefit from significant revenues derived from commercial contracts, including sponsorships, the sale of costumes, licensed merchandise and television broadcasting rights. The contract between LIESA and the Rede Globo broadcasting network, periodically renewed, secures substantial sums that are distributed among the schools according to criteria such as audience ratings and final rankings.

By contrast, the Gold Series schools, affiliated with LIGA RJ (Liga Independente do Grupo A do Rio de Janeiro), produce their carnival parades with considerably fewer resources, especially when it comes to television and commercial agreements. While the municipal subsidy represents roughly ten per cent of the total budget of Special Groups schools, this revenue accounts for between seventy and eighty per cent of the resources available for Gold Series schools.

With regard to the municipal subsidy, each Gold Series school received 800,000 reais for the 2022 parade, an amount that may appear substantial, but which must cover the entirety of production under far more challenging conditions. André explained how these resources are managed: ‘Eight hundred thousand sounds like a lot of money, but when you break it down, you have to pay the carnavalesco, the workshop director, contract workers, materials, rent for the barracão, fuel, meals during production. In the end, you have to work magic.’

The remaining schools, which parade along Estrada Intendente Magalhães¹⁵ under the coordination of the Superliga Carnavalesca do Brasil,¹⁶ operate with even fewer resources. This financial and organisational hierarchy is vividly materialised not only in the infrastructure available for parade production, but also in the capacity to hire specialised professionals, acquire quality materials and ensure adequate time for the development of projects.

The system of promotion and relegation between the Rio’s carnival divisions is formally presented as a meritocratic mechanism in which artistic performance determines the mobility of the schools. However, ethnographic research has shown how this system operates on profoundly unequal material bases, making fair competition virtually impossible in practice. As a competitive ritual structure - analysed by Barbieri (2010: 197), based on the work of Cavalcanti (2006a) and Turner (1974) - carnival reveals three significant liminal positions: ‘entry into the group of “major schools,” with the visibility and structure desired by samba practitioners; arrival at the Marquês de Sapucaí; and entry into the universe of samba schools.’

The networks of solidarity identified through research have an ambivalent character. While they constitute effective strategies of resistance to precarity, enabling the survival of access group schools, their very existence reveals and somewhat naturalises the insufficiency of formal mechanisms of funding and support for these organisations. As Luiz Fernando reflected: ‘We help because we know how difficult it is, but ideally each school would have the means to produce its carnival parade without having to rely so heavily on this network of favours.’

The circulation of materials and professionals between schools in different divisions, while essential to the viability of the access group parades, ultimately introduces and maintains a logic of dependency that hinders the autonomous development of smaller schools. This dependency is not only material but also symbolic, insofar as it reinforces the peripheral position of access group schools within the carnival system.

FINAL REMARKS

The sixth-place finish achieved by Acadêmicos do Sossego in the 2022 carnival, the best result in the school’s history, deserves to be analysed within the broader context of its conditions of production. This outcome, regarded as a success by the school’s community, demonstrates how strategies of adaptation and networks of solidarity can compensate to some extent for the structural limitations faced by access group organisations. The achievement held special significance for André, representing recognition of his work as a carnavalesco and validating the strategies developed during the process. In the following year, Beija-Flor de Nilópolis promoted him to the position of carnavalesco, forming a duo with Alexandre Louzada.

The ethnographic analysis of carnival production in the Gold Series reveals how precarity paradoxically intensifies what Gell (2005) calls the ‘enchantment of technology.’ The technical solutions developed to navigate material constraints, sustained by networks of solidarity and informal strategies of resource sharing, constitute a complex system of knowledge and practices that not only partially make up for severe structural and financial limitations, but also contribute to the effectiveness of floats as objects of visual impact. This scenario highlights both the resilience of carnival professionals and the profound inequalities that shape the festival.

The networks of solidarity we identified display an ambivalence that warrants deeper reflection. On one hand, they constitute effective strategies of resistance to precarity, enabling the survival of access group schools; on the other, their very existence reveals and to some extent naturalises the insufficiency of formal funding and support mechanisms for these organisations. This ambivalence is characteristic of peripheral cultural productions in general, which simultaneously demonstrate the agency and creativity of marginalised actors while exposing the unequal and precarious conditions imposed on these territories.

This study shows that samba schools in the access groups, far from constituting mere appendages of Rio’s carnival structure, comprise privileged sites for understanding contemporary urban dynamics. The experience of Acadêmicos do Sossego demonstrates how these schools develop creative survival strategies that go well beyond the simple reproduction of the Special Group’s model of production on a smaller scale. While effective in enabling the realisation of the parades, these strategies should not be romanticised or naturalised, as they also express a structural inequality that calls for attention and intervention.

The case of the Gold Series carnival illustrates how peripheries, far from being homogeneous or passive, are configured as territories under constant negotiation, where social actors creatively mobilise limited resources, technical knowledge and networks of solidarity to produce cultural expressions of significant aesthetic and social impact.

More than an ethnographic account of a specific space, this inquiry seeks to understand the dynamics of cultural production under precarious conditions through the world of the barracões of access group samba schools, as well as some of the utopian possibilities that emerge from them.

The sustainability of the spectacle as a whole depends on the capacity of its organising institutions to guarantee minimum conditions of production for all schools, irrespective of their position within the hierarchy. While the role of networks of solidarity is fundamental in the contemporary context, it should not obscure the need for more equitable policies of resource distribution among Rio’s carnival divisions. This issue reflects broader debates on cultural policy and the right to the city, echoing the demands of peripheral cultural movements for recognition, resources and autonomy.

This question transcends the specific universe of carnival, constituting a fundamental challenge for the construction of more just and democratic cities in which the right to cultural production is guaranteed to all citizens, regardless of where they live. The research points to the need for cultural policies that recognise and strengthen peripheral cultural practices in their specificities, without romanticising precarity or naturalising inequalities, as a condition for preserving the diversity and vitality of popular cultural expressions.

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• TURNER, Victor W. 1974. O processo ritual: estrutura e anti-estrutura Tradução de Nancy Campi de Castro. Petrópolis: Vozes .

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  The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Acadêmicos do Sossego is a traditional carnival association based in Niterói, founded on 10 November 1969. Based in the Largo da Batalha neighbourhood, it adopted blue and white as its colours. It has won four titles in the Special Group of the Niterói carnival — including a three-year championship run between 1986 and 1988 — as well as two titles in the local access group. In 1996, it migrated to the Rio de Janeiro carnival where it won four championships in the access groups and went on to parade at the world-famous Marquês de Sapucaí Sambadrome.
• 2
  A transparent plastic material widely used to decorate carnival floats due to its lightness, malleability and capacity to reflect light. Applied to polystyrene or wooden structures, acetate enables the creation of visual effects of brightness and movement, and is particularly valued for its cost-effectiveness. Its handling requires specific adhesion and fixing techniques developed by carnival artisans.
• 3
  The elite tier of Rio’s carnival, composed of the twelve samba schools considered the most important and traditional. Their parades take place between Carnival Sunday and Tuesday at the Sambadrome and receive huge national and international television coverage. These schools receive the largest budgets, modern infrastructure in the Cidade do Samba and the most media visibility, making them the ‘epicentre’ of Rio’s carnival system.
• 4
  The professional responsible for the artistic conception of a samba school parade, including the development of the theme, the float design, the aesthetic coordination of costumes and the overall supervision of visual production. A central figure in the technical hierarchy of carnival, the carnavalesco articulates creative, administrative and technical dimensions to materialise the narrative of the enredo in visual form.
• 5
  TN: The term ‘access group’ refers to the divisions below the Special Group within Rio de Janeiro’s carnival system, which in principle allow for promotion to higher tiers. This article focuses primarily on the Gold Series (Série Ouro), the second division in the hierarchy.
• 6
  The second tier in the hierarchical structure of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, composed of a variable number of samba schools that parade at the Sambadrome after the Special Group. It represents the main access group to the top of the carnival hierarchy: the first-placed school is promoted to the Special Group, while the two lowest-ranked are relegated to the Silver Series (Série Prata).
• 7
  The Evaluation Group is the fifth division of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, containing samba schools that are either newly established or in the process of returning to the competitive circuit. Its parades are held on Estrada Intendente Magalhães, a road in the city’s North Zone, and are organised by the Superliga Carnavalesca do Brasil. The group’s champion is promoted to the Bronze Series in the following year. The current structure emerged from the reorganisation of the Rio carnival in 2020, replacing the former E Series while maintaining the system of promotion and relegation between tiers.
• 8
  TN: The enredo — narrowly rendered as ‘theme,’ ‘plot’ or, in televisual terms, ‘narrative arc’ — is the narrative-conceptual framework of a samba school parade, organising its thematic content and structuring its visual, musical and performative elements.
• 9
  TN: Original Portuguese: Empretecer o pensamento é ouvir a voz da Beija-Flor.
• 10
  The set of embellishing materials used in the fabrication of costumes and float decorations, including ribbons, cords, sequins, paillettes, buttons, pieces of elastic and other decorative elements. These are components essential to creating the dazzling visual effects of carnival and are frequently reused and circulated between different schools through informal exchange networks.
• 11
  Area located along Avenida Presidente Vargas in central Rio where samba schools gather and organise before entering the Sambadrome. It serves as a space of final preparation, where last-minute adjustments are made to floats and costumes, sections are organised, and participants are energised emotionally. For access group schools, the concentração often becomes an extension of the barracão with finishing work carried out directly in the avenue.
• 12
  Area located beyond the end of the runway where schools proceed after completing their parades. It functions as a space of demobilization and celebration, where the symbolic ‘dismantling’ of the spectacle takes place: performers remove costumes, directors assess the performance and the carnival community experiences the transition from the extraordinary ritual of the parade back to everyday life.
• 13
  Specialised professionals hired by samba schools to execute specific technical tasks in carnival production, such as welding, carpentry, polystyrene sculpture, sewing and structural assemblage. They circulate between different schools and divisions, constituting a flexible and highly skilled workforce that often holds simultaneous contracts with multiple organisations during the pre-carnival period.
• 14
  A term used to designate all those who actively participate in a samba school parade, including passistas (dancers), ritmistas (percussionists), the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira pairings, members of the comissão de frente (lead commission), baianas (Bahian skirted dancers), ala das crianças (children’s wing) and participants in the various thematic sections (alas). Each school parades with approximately 3,000 to 4,000 participants, organised according to the narrative of the enredo and the regulatory requirements of the competition.
• 15
  A road located in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro where samba schools from the lower divisions (Silver, Bronze, Evaluation and Junior Series) hold their parades. Unlike the Sambadrome, it is an ordinary road adapted for the event, with temporary grandstands and infrastructure, materially evidencing the hierarchies of Rio’s carnival system.
• 16
  The Superliga Carnavalesca do Brasil is the entity responsible for organising the parades of samba schools from the Silver, Bronze and Evaluation Series, held along Estrada Intendente Magalhães in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Originally founded as LIESB in 2015, the league underwent several restructurings and changes in leadership, adopting its current name following a plenary session in 2023. Since then, it has coordinated the parades of the lower divisions of Rio’s carnival, promoting schools according to their performance in competitive parades.
• Data Availability Statement
  The data supporting this study are ethnographic in nature and were produced by the authors through fieldwork. Due to ethical commitments of anonymity and confidentiality made with research participants, the primary data are not publicly available. The relevant empirical materials are fully presented within the article.

Edited by

• Dossier Editors
  Adriana Facina
  Programa de Pós-graduação em Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
  http://[e-mail] | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9381-5134
  Silvia Capanema
  Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, pesquisadora de Pléaide/Campus Condorcet, pesquisadora bolsista CNRS CREDA-IHEAL (2024-2025)
  [e-mail] | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1607-2055

Data availability

The data supporting this study are ethnographic in nature and were produced by the authors through fieldwork. Due to ethical commitments of anonymity and confidentiality made with research participants, the primary data are not publicly available. The relevant empirical materials are fully presented within the article.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 July 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  31 July 2025
• Accepted
  11 Feb 2026