Financialization of Territory and New Nexus between Poverty and Consumption in the Metropolis of Sí£o Paulo

Abstract

Financialization became one of the most dynamic components of contemporary capitalism, involving significant changes in the global circulation of wealth, but also in the organization of national territories and the daily life of urban populations. New financial links between the Brazilian urbanization and life of economic agents reach ever-larger portions of poor people, as well as less valued and/or peripheral areas of the urban context. In Brazil, financialization conforms a paradoxical situation in which the expansion of consumption and financialization between the layers of low income combines to the expansion of poverty. Through an extensive literature review, and also documental and field research, we identify how to understand the dynamics of this new poverty that is configured in the metropolis of Sí£o Paulo, with special consideration to changes in consumer practices among the low-income population as well as the new topology of networks from large commercial and services companies.