Da promessa à realidade: a cidade potiguar do século XIX, a partir do olhar da elite

The purpose of this research is to apprehend the perception that the ruling elite, especially the Presidents of the province of Rio Grande do Norte/Brazil, had about the potiguar city, that is, the urban localities existing in the province along the 19th century. By interweaving political, administrative, socioeconomic and spatial aspects, the study of this perception involves two distinct moments, which are also linked: a moment of apprehension of the city, that is, how the elite seizes, describes and criticizes the city; and, a second moment, which occurs simultaneously or after the first moment, of intervention in the city, in which the elite exposes its vision and projects for the city and for the territory. Rather than describing the potiguar city in itself, the research is an attempt to reveal how it was perceived along this process from a particular standpoint or discourse, official and elitist, which did not correspond necessarily or completely to what it was in reality. We tried to understand, always through the lens of the discourse, how the ruling elite perceived the potiguar city based on what their members thought about other urban realities, particularly of the advanced countries; how, within an integrated vision, this city was characterized in political, administrative, socioeconomic and spatial terms and how it consolidated itself along the period established for the research. Qualitative and historical in nature, this study was also methodologically developed based upon bibliographical and documental research. Given the fact that this research works with descriptions, comparisons and interpretations, it was necessary to make use of tools such as the discourse analysis in order to apprehend, as much as possible, what lay behind the words of the elite. The primary sources used were essentially the official documents produced by the Presidents of the province, as well as other documents written by top government officials and other members of the administration staff, all of them composing the so-called ruling elite of Rio Grande do Norte. Secondary sources were books and other publications, theses and dissertations, among others. The research made possible the identification of a certain perception of the potiguar city in the 19th century, which is certainly limited because it is grounded on a specific discourse - that of the political and administrative elite, but which, in spite of such a limitation, is still useful to understand the city and its evolution along the period established, among other noteworthy remarks

A confluência dos olhares compreendendo o bairro Nossa Senhora da Apresentação - Natal/RN - A partir da concepção popular da segregação e da violência

The neighborhood of Nossa Senhora da Apresentação emerged in the 1970s, with its origins linked to housing policies carried out during the Brazilian Military Regime (1964-1985) by the Company Housing (COHAB) subordinated to the National Housing Bank (BNH). In this sense, the neighborhood is considered a periphery, located in the northern part of the city. With a large territory and population, it is considered the largest neighborhood in the state capital Natal - and its metropolitan area. The neighborhood also represents an urban space that presents social, economic and structural contrasts among them violence. The neighborhood is the leader in homicide rates in the capital. Therefore, the following study, based on empirical analysis of three distinct spaces within the neighborhood, aims to analyze how social actors perceive their own neighborhood and, specifically, segregation and violence. As this work shows, these two instances of urban life are not separated in the discourse of the residents. The main contribution of this work is the analysis of the impact of those views on the construction of social stigmas, reproduced within the neighborhood, on the fragmentation of the social and spatial fabric, and on the formation of poor and elitist spaces within the neighborhood, confirming the hypothesis that we are facing a New Urban Periphery

No tempo dos brotos: juventude e diversão em Petrópolis e no Tirol (1945-1960)

The urban growth of Rio Grande do Norte capital gave his boldest step in the three earlier decades of the twentieth century seeking to catch up with foreign metropolis and also most developed Brazilian cities, for example, Rio de Janeiro. Novelties were such bulky that we can notice the rise of a new city which in many aspects superseded that one considered provincial by local intelligentsia. These urban interferences scratched city ground leaving indelible marks until the present day. The exacerbated growth of the city related to the 1940s, when Natal begins hosting the largest allied military base outside United States in the advent of World War II is important at a time when the city´s population doubled. The emergence of new leisure institutions, amidst already existing ones, continued marking the places as sociabilities and leisure permeated with meanings and representations are revealed. This work sought to know the sociability of Tirol and Petrópolis neighborhoods in Natal, in the period from 1945 to 1960, when the city witnesses the consolidation of a market increasingly focused on leisure and young people start to have a special participation in this process.