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Jacinto Cuvi, "The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
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- [01:37]
Michael Johnston
Hello and welcome. My name is Michael Johnston and this is another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. And today I have Asinto Cuvi, Associate professor of Sociology and Development Studies and head of the center for Developmental Studies at the University Libre de Brussels. Welcome to the show today.
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Asinto Cuvi
Thank you, Michael. I'm so glad to be here.
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Michael Johnston
Excellent. And today we're here to talk about your brand new book, Hot off the Press, the Edge of the Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship and Sao Paulo. Yeah, I look forward to talking with you about this book today. Could you tell me to start a bit about how you came across this idea and how it developed into a research project and then finally into a book that I had such a lovely time reading.
- [02:32]
Asinto Cuvi
Well, thank you. It was a very long journey, as I guess most first books are, which started back when I was a master's Student More than 15 years ago, I guess. And it started with the reading of another book, a book that was quite influential in its time, called the Other Path. It came out in the mid or late 1980s. And it's a book by an economist, but an economist who kind of left the academic field and became more of a think tank founder and director. And he made some claims about economic development in general, but more specifically about informal markets, which, as you probably know and our listeners probably know, are huge right across Latin America, which is where I come from, and saying that the problem with these informal workers, which are workers like street vendors, in my case, I only focused on street vendors. But he looked at other occupations and groups. But he said the problem is that their rights are not guaranteed. And if you figured out how to give them property titles, that would guarantee their property rights to the assets that they use for their daily work, or in the case of housing, to the houses that they inhabit and that many of them have built, if you give them those rights, then things will be fine. Basically, they'll have the possibility to invest in their assets and grow their capital, and these economies will be able to catch up with wealthier parts of the world. And I remember reading that as a master's student again a long, long time ago, previous life almost, and feeling kind of skeptic. I. I didn't have much theoretical knowledge in sociology at the time. In fact, I. I wasn't even studying sociology yet. But it felt that the image that De Soto, who's the. The author of the book, was giving of how these economies, these informal economies operate was kind of shallow, you know, and sociologists in general were. Were quite critical of the theoretical framework that economists use and all the like. Rational choice, thinking life is way more complicated than the way you guys are modeling it. And that was kind of my gut reaction to what De Soto was writing and saying about these informal markets, something that he was simplifying it to the point of distortion. And there was probably a lot more going on. I did not do my master's thesis on it, though. I focused on something quite different, which, weirdly enough, is now becoming my new research project. Maybe we'll talk about it towards the end. But when I started my PhD and I did my PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, I decided to go find out whether my initial gut reaction to De Soto's framing of street markets was founded and whether indeed there was much more going on than what he claimed. And my book is basically a statement about how. How many complexities, both in terms of the politics and the power relations, but also the exchanges of goods, of money or services you find in actual street vending markets. Right. So I guess that was the spark, the intellectual spark, if you will, of this project.
- [06:17]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. So did you choose the same site that DeSoto did, or did you choose a different location and different cases in DeSoto? Not that you necessarily know the individual cases, because in research, that tends to be blurred purposely. Right. To be made where others cannot know exactly who it was that were interviewed and things like that. But to. You use the same location.
- [06:42]
Asinto Cuvi
So. No, no. DeSoto did his field work, if you can call it field work, because he had this whole team, like think tank researchers. But. But he did. I mean, to his credit, even though I. I really disagree with much of his argument, he. He did collect a lot of data, and he did that in Lima, Peru, which is where he from, even though he grew up abroad, I think, or at the very least studied abroad. And I went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for different reasons. One of them was that I was actually, at the time, quite attracted to Brazil. Brazil was booming when I started my. Well, it was booming when I started my PhD, and it was still the place to be when I had to choose where to go for my field work. And Sao Paulo, I figured, was an interesting place both at, like, kind of like personal slash career level, because it's the wealthiest city in Brazil, and it has some, like, very strong academic institutions, research centers that I was very lucky and privileged to manage to build some ties to. But it also, because of its economic importance, the city economic importance in the country and beyond, I felt would be a very interesting place to study these dynamics. Right. But it's like the stakes were higher because of how much trade happened in. In the streets, on the sidewalks of this mega city. I mean, we're talking about a city of 20 million people.
- [08:19]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. Larger than you could find anywhere in, like, Austin or even in Texas. As whole. As a whole. Because we. While we have some global cities in the United States, we don't have any mega cities like that.
- [08:31]
Asinto Cuvi
It is a huge city. Huge. And I focus on the downtown area.
- [08:36]
Michael Johnston
Did you face any challenges to gain access to these spaces when you made your selection of Sao Paulo?
- [08:44]
Asinto Cuvi
Yeah, I did. I faced many challenges. So I was also lucky. And at this point, I can't even tell you, like, which came first. It's kind of like the chicken and the egg situation. I was lucky to get access to an ngo. I was actually invited the first time I landed in Sao Paulo. I reached out to this NGO that was doing some work with street vendors, and they invited me to this forum that they had set up, that met, I think it was once a week. And at the forum, I was introduced by the ngo. So the person running the forum was a fellow academic. So she had actually trusted me. She understood what I was there for. And her introducing me to the street vendors that attended this forum clearly helped me establish some rapport. And what I did was I asked the people who were there if I could then go and visit them at their stalls the next day or over the next few days. And so that was one entryway. And when I say I'm not sure which came first, like, in terms of the chicken or the egg, it's because on my first preliminary trip to Brazil, I hit four cities. Sao Paulo was not the only one, but Sao Paulo was the one where I had that kind of introduction, you know, so it might be that I chose it because I had those contacts or was able to establish those contexts during the trip, in part, that may have played a role. It was a long time ago, so I'm not. I'm not sure at this point. But even so, I obviously did not want to talk to only the people who were attending this forum, because, I mean, in a city of 20 million people, there was at the time an estimated like 100 to 150,000 street vendors. And I needed to get many more stories than only the hoes of that tiny group, which was probably like, it would have been some selection bias if I restrained all my research efforts to what those people had to tell me. And so I went straight to those streets, and in many cases, I just approached street vendors cold and introduce myself and explain what I was there for and hope for the best. I got a lot of rebuttals.
- [11:17]
Michael Johnston
Okay. That's what I was curious about. If you said they were receptive of you, and if not, I was curious about what reasons or what rebuttals may have been a result of maybe like, positionality or reflecting on who you are and where you came from and building that rapport. Right. Rapport is an important piece of the research.
- [11:37]
Asinto Cuvi
Oh, it's key. Building report is absolutely key. Well, when somebody tells you just to get out of their way, you can't really figure what their deep reasons were. Right. So it's hard to say. Whether it's because I was a foreigner, whether it's because, you know, I'm light skin, whether it's my accent, or whether, like, they would have said exactly the same thing to anyone who approached them, saying, listen, I'm a researcher in sociology, and I want to learn more about what your work and life are like. So, yeah, I. I can't tell you exactly their reasons because there was no actual conversation, but I should say that responses varied widely. Right? So. So some people were definitely rude, and I don't. I don't completely blame them. Like, there is something a little intrusive about the kind of work we do, and it's likely that I don't know that I would have reacted the same. And. And of course, being impolite is never quite justified, but if they don't want to be bothered or they want to bother to answer any questions, I think they totally have the right to tell you no. And so the, the reactions that I got, they ranged from those kind of, like, pretty stinging refusals to very welcoming and very friendly and. And with also a mix of curiosity on their part. I think that that was part of what helps you as a researcher is that people are intrigued by this foreigner who's there and is interested. You know, you're paying attention to the lives of people who feel that nobody really cares about them. And so there might be some of that as well. From, like, based on the way that some of them replied to me or the things that they said afterwards, I got the sense that in some cases at least, that may have been part of the motivation or in other cases, just like having someone to talk to, you know, and share the. The issues and problems they're facing. So there were very, like, different dynamics, but it's not easy, for sure. I mean, you need to have some kind of thick skin to go there and just, like, approach people on the streets and introduce yourself. It was tough. I think I pulled it off in the sense that I managed to talk to enough people to really understand what was going on. And of course, a third pathway that I used was referrals, right? Once you meet some people, then you ask them to introduce you to other people, friends they know, and that creates some kind of trust that. That enables you to kind of expand the sample. But all of this is concerning street vendors, because there was also, I approach, also many more people who were not street vendors themselves, but who had an impact or a say and what went on on the sidewalks, right? Like politicians, police officers, NGO workers, all sorts of, like, different government workers at different levels of government. And with them, I would say it's easier. I don't know. I don't. I don't want to make any kind of stereotype about, like, Brazilians being friendly, but when I would, for example, email them, and in that email, I would explain what I was doing, and they could check that I was actually a PhD student at a university in the US most of them answered politely and were open to, like, having a meeting. So I'm, I, I am also thankful for that.
- [15:31]
Michael Johnston
Excellent. And, you know, that's one of the things I appreciate most. I love having ethnographers on my, on my show because ethnography is such a rich form of research because of all of the different stories, the stories are. The most beautiful part of ethnography is just hearing it directly from the participants instead of using an interpretive lens. I mean, trying to use Verstein and things like that when hearing the stories directly from those participants and less of the whole interpretation. But. And then one of the things that I think that was wonderful about your book is it's rich with theory, and one of the lenses that you use is edgework and formal economies as a form of edge work and as both the metaphor and as a tool for analysis. So how does this framing differ from other sociological lenses like liminality or legal pluralism or, you know, grappling with things like boundaries and ambiguity?
- [16:39]
Asinto Cuvi
So you're right. I mean, it's in the title, right? The book is called the Edge of the Law. And, yeah, I make the case from the get go that this is about people who live on the edge of the law. Like, by which I mean, not that they are committing any crimes, although a tiny minority of them may be, but rather that their rights are not guaranteed. That they. They live in this very shaky position where you're not sure whether the next time you have some kind of encounter with any kind of law enforcement or inspector or whatever, they are going to recognize your status as a worker who is entitled to practice street trade and whether they are gonna decide that you are not doing this legally and confiscate your wares. Right. So it is. It is that. That part and that. That's what the edge, the word edge in the title refers to. It is. You're right. That liminal position that I felt was very interesting, especially because I did my field work at a time or, or in the immediate aftermath of a very aggressive campaign by the city government to push virtually all street vendors outside of legal status. They were Actively trying to terminate the licenses of the very small minority, to begin with, off street vendors who held a license and therefore had the right to work. Right. So it's not just that they were on the edge because the laws governing the licenses may not be clear or the way that they're enforced may not be clear. It's also that they were being pushed into illegality by a government that was extremely hostile to informal workers on public spaces. So that's kind of the setting, and that's what. What I meant by the word edge in the title as far as, like, the kind of analytic leverage that it gives me. I. I'm going to be candid. I guess that's part of the point of giving an interview about your book. I'm not an expert in sociolegal studies. It was the. The original project was not so much about laws and rights and legality as it was about markets and how markets work, how informal markets work, and all the politics surrounding them. And it was actually through the process of not only collecting data, but thinking about it, considering it from different angles, trying to figure out what that overarching arcing argument is, you know, for the book, because it's my first book and I. I didn't really half one at the beginning that I came to consider rights and, and legality and this like, liminal legality as the most interesting and in a way, the most profitable angle to look at all this data, these, these observations that I had made. And by saying that, I'm giving you a bit of a disclaimer in that I know from the studies that I read once I decided to frame it this way, that it clearly resonates with many other concepts in sociolegal studies, including this concept of liminal legality. The legal pluralism is something that I'm. I'm less familiar with. But now One of my PhD students is working on legal consciousness. And so I've. I've seen how these tools definitely apply to the kind of processes that I study in this book. But I don't see the book itself as making like, a narrow contribution to, let's say, the conceptual apparatus of sociolegal studies. I feel it as making a broader contribution to how we understand the politics of informal economies and informal work. But through those lenses, through the lens of precarious rights and what it feels like to have rights that are so precarious that you may lose them from one day to the next.
- [21:13]
Michael Johnston
Yeah, and, you know, law, I think it has kind of like two different edges. Like there's the word of the law. And then there's the experience of the law, the application of the law. And when doing social problems research like this, there's an objective component and then there's also a subjective component. And I think the focus of your book, you can tell me if I'm wrong, and I might be, but I think it's more on the interpretation that the market vendors have of the law and their experience with it as is applied in their everyday experience.
- [21:45]
Asinto Cuvi
Yeah, no, you're totally right. The subjective component is key here because there are this text of law that stipulate like, who can practice street trade, what stuff they can sell, where they're supposed to set up their stalls. And so there's this whole set of rules that is actually enshrined in municipal legislation. But then life on the streets is a whole different story. Right. That said, I think the assumption in most studies of informal economies is that those are indeed kind of disconnected and that what the everyday life of street vendors is about is trying to negotiate with enforcement authorities the possibility to continue doing their work even though they are breaking the law. Right. And there's definitely part of that. But what I try to show in my book is that it's also more complicated than that and that the quote unquote objective or like the institutional writing of the law, it interacts with all the like practices and discourses that people in the streets have about the law have about what is legal, what is not, who has legal status, who doesn't. And by the way, it's not only street vendors. It's also what the police officer said. It, it's also what, like the civil servant who's in charge of regulating street vending in a particular location says and thinks about what the law dictates, what it allows, what it forbids. And so, yeah, I'm. I mean, I start from what the, the text, what is written into the law. And then I, I look and, and listen to what all these people will say and how in the process they kind of reconstruct legality, like through these different interpretations and the challenges that they face to like, people who will tell them, you do not have the right to work as a street vendor, to which they have to respond and make the case that they do have that right, you know, and it is through those interactions and those clashes that the law is actually produced. Right. In practice. So, yes, you're right. This is, this is a very important component of, of, I think the, the contribution that the book makes. And it's not, it's not a, like, completely original idea. This is something that social legal studies have been saying, I think, for a long time. But I. I study it in a setting like an informal economy, where things can get really, really contentious on the one hand, and also really shady, where, like, nobody really knows what the law actually says and who is entitled and who's not entitled to work. And so I think that gives it an extra layer of drama to some extent and of, like, analytic interest.
- [24:52]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. The vendors are even holding each other accountable of one another and, like, whether or not they want to allow them to. There's one case in there where just allowing somebody else to work within the same building or a house after she had left the streets would be. Would be dangerous. Right. It's ongoing negotiation between risk, which there's a certain level of risk the vendor is willing to take without becoming dangerous to oneself or others who are. Who are nearby.
- [25:24]
Asinto Cuvi
Right. So there's tensions at all levels. I mean, I, as one of the. The people I interviewed in the book was the sister of a street vendor said, she said, like, I could not live the way my sister lives. I must tell you that having done fieldwork for more than a year with the street vendors in Sao Paulo, I don't think I would survive more than three days dealing with all the tensions that they have to deal with. And some of them do come, as you point out, from relations among them among street vendors and competition among street vendors and fights among them to, like, determine who they will let set up their stall in the same street where there are already like, 10 people working, and they see each other as competitors. And on top of that, you have the police who is running after these guys, trying to kick them out. In the case of unlicensed vendors, they're actually. The police is literally, like, running in the streets, trying to catch them to confiscate their wares. And there is an anecdote also about these thugs who, like, on top of all those threats that these guys are facing, There was one of the street vendor that I met in Ecuador, sorry, in Brazil, but who was from Ecuador, who, at the end of his shift, it was like, midnight, he was in the streets, which is just to be in the streets in Sao Paulo at midnight can. Can be dangerous depending on what neighborhood you're in. And he was attacked by some thugs who used to hang out in that same location near the same subway station where he used to work. And. And they stole the headphones, like they stole his wares. Right. The interesting thing was that the Next day he wasn't, he didn't have anything to sell anymore. And one of the street vendors who used to work there, and they weren't particularly close, but one of these street vendors asked him like, what's going on? Why aren't you not working? And eventually he tells him the story of what happened and then, and the street vendor who told me this, like was actually surprised by what happened after, which is that all the street vendors working at that location who at times were really like at the loggerheads with each other at that moment they coalesced and together they went and confronted these thugs and said, listen, like, it's hard enough to run after, to run away from the police day in, day out, you're not going to take our stuff from us. And he got his headphones back. So you have those dynamics in which indeed like there is tension among Fred vendors. There can be a lot of tension amongst your vendors, but sometimes you also have this solidarity in these networks that are in some cases without those networks you cannot make it. Basically you cannot survive. And depending on what location you're working in, there's places where if you don't have the kind of solidarity, you're not gonna like make it through the day for sure.
- [28:40]
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- [29:04]
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- [29:09]
Michael Johnston
See mint mobile.com so with the solidarity among these people and with the changes that they wish to see within the, within the government and the politics of Sal, do you see the possibility of reform to reduce such inequality and precarity? Or do you see these edges to persist and be inevitable as part of the government there?
- [29:35]
Asinto Cuvi
So I focus on these two groups, right? The ones who have permits and the ones who don't. And to some extent the edge of the law is that boundary between those two with the understanding that the licensed vendors are always under threat, right? So there's always this risk of disenfranchisement that's hanging over their heads because they are not popular and because the administration, in particular the administration that was in power right before I started my fieldwork, was really determined to kick them out. So I studied this boundary. And the politics of these two groups are very different. They're very different. The ones who have licenses, or in some cases, who lost their licenses because of this policy of actual disenfranchisement for them. What they wanted the most to happen was for the city to restore their licenses. Things that they really felt like very deeply that they owned and that belonged to them and that had been taken away from them. And basically to. To give them back their license and to leave them alone, right? To stop, like, harassing them every day, trying to find infractions that they may have committed in order to then try to cancel the licenses on the grounds that they have committed these offenses, that they have, breaking the law, et cetera, et cetera. So. So the licensed vendors, they're very much focused on maintaining their status and, um, not suffering too much from, like, enforcement and inspections. On the other hand, the unlicensed vendors, most of those that I spoke to, they are incredibly cynical about politics in general. Um, and I. I also relate that in the book, right? They. They have, in some cases, the view that everyone in government, whatever their political color, affiliation, is a thug. That there is a kind of like a mafia, that politicians belong to this kind of mafia, that they hate them, the street vendors, the poor, that they're in cahoots with each other. So they. They have this. Well, I'd say many of those, as I spoke with, have this, like, kind of dark and in any case, very cynical view of politics. And as a result, they also do not expect much. They do not expect much from politics. So they kind of raise their voices when really, like, some kind of egregious abuse happens. Like, for instance, one time there was an unlicensed vendor who was running away from a cop. And it's not clear whether the cop pushed him or whether he just stumbled, but he fell and was hit by a car after he fell. And then he. He became unconscious as a result of that fall for, like, I don't know, half an hour. I wasn't. I wasn't there. So I have to say this is something that was recounted to me, but it has recounted to me by many people, by several people who were there, including the guy to whom this happened. And when that happens, then you can see a reaction, but then it's usually kind of a violent reaction on the part of the Three Thunders, because they. They rioted after this happened, they rioted and they. They broke Things including some like police infrastructure in the area. And when I asked like one of them, like why they had done this, he said we wanted to show they. And by they, I guess he means the state or authorities that we exist. Right. So it's a, it's a very like bare politics or just like being able to continue selling their stuff and, and being chased by police all day long and having this very cynical view of, of the government, which is again, quite different from what the license vendors think and how they see things. One criticism that several people made to the license ones, though, is that it's really too narrowly focused on just give me my license and leave me alone. And they, they lack both, or at least that the leadership lacks foresight in the sense that eventually these peoples are going to die and if they're not unable to transfer their licenses to someone else, well, then the whole group will vanish. But also that there is no effort to expand, you know, the rights that they have through their licenses to other people, those unlicensed vendors who are by far the large majority of the street vending population. Right. So a kind of corporativism, if you will, on the part of these licensed vendors who are just focused on securing their rights. And this is a criticism to their politics that I heard from several actors on the field.
- [34:37]
Michael Johnston
So both parties are extremely vulnerable, even those who are licensed. You know, I think of it as being a slight difference in a Marxist way of a petit bourgeoisie, which would be the license vendors who are still very vulnerable of being encapsulated by the government because all of a sudden losing their license on a, on a change of office, a change of guard. Right. Or the, the proletariat, which would be the, the vendors which may actually be lumped proletariat in the mind of the government.
- [35:10]
Asinto Cuvi
Yeah, yeah. So you're right. It, it is. I think those categories are to some extent useful to understand in particular the politics of the license vendors. That's some kind of petite bourgeoisie that doesn't really mind about inequality in its social order so long as what they have, what little they have actually, you know, is left alone by the state. So, so they, they do have that kind of. It's. It's funny to say it, but it's in a way, it's like conservative politics of saying, okay, if you don't touch our licenses, I'll vote for you. But you're also right that they're very vulnerable. They, they are under this almost permanent threat of losing their licenses. And that also has an Impact, because of course there's like people who are beautiful human beings among both the unlicensed and the license. And some of them hold like broader values of solidarity and, and, and would be happy to share some of the benefits that they enjoy as license street vendors with a, a broader group of people. At the same time, when you know that what you're facing way more imminently is that you might be demoted from that status of licensed remainders, and you may find yourself like in the streets begging or, or, or working as an unlicensed revenue, which means you're constantly on the run from the police, then it's much harder to have those like, more noble feelings of solidarity, of kind of wanting to protect the rights of those who don't have, or, or to expand the rights to those who don't have any right. And, and that climate, that climate of criminalization, because that's, that's what it is in the end, that licensed vendors live under it clearly also impacts their politics in that it makes them even more selfish in a way which is human and completely understandable because they're just afraid of losing like what little they have. And for those who lost them already, you know, like people who used to have a license and whose license was canceled or terminated, they, they have a similar stance. They say, like you bro, I mean you, you took away my rights. What matters to me now is that you give it back to me. And when they hear, because there were meetings at which you had like this, more like good hearted activists saying, listen, there's a hundred thousand people out there who need rights. Why, why are we only talking about licenses? When one of the women that I talk about at length in the book hears that, she panics and she gets really mad and she says, listen, the city doesn't even want to give back the licenses to those 5,000 vendors who have them. Why are you bringing up this huge, this other crowd of like tens of thousands of vendors? You're going to secure them and we want our licenses back. So yeah, there are, there's a lot of friction there as well. But I think the petit bourgeoisie framework does apply to some extent to the kind of political situation in which the licensed find themselves, because they're only one.
- [38:26]
Michael Johnston
Step away from losing everything and being at the bottom of the rungs. And it really does bring light to the sociological imagination that we are all taught as sociologists to be able to see the strange and the familiar. And they're just living their life. They don't necessarily see it as strange.
- [38:47]
Asinto Cuvi
Right? Right. And, and, and you're right that they are one step away from destitution. And what I. So the more like political sociology side of the book, it looks at the disciplining effect that, that position on the edge, you know, that, that being on the edge has over those people. Right. Because if your rights are guaranteed, it's easier, I think, to fight for broader causes. Or if you, I, maybe if you're hopeless, then you can also say, well, I have nothing to lose at, at this point. Although again, those unlicensed vendors, they tended to really mobilize only when they were actually suffering from like, extreme physical violence. But the ones that were licensed, but also on the edge, or on the, on the edge of a cliff, actually, to some extent the, they had to be at once, like, trying to claim their rights back. So they had to be assertive to some extent they were also quite submissive because the city really had the upper hand. And if the city government decided that they would not restore their rights, they could easily get away with it. And so that, that also had a disciplining effect that I analyze as well. And that helps me to maybe make some kind of counterpoint to the conventional wisdom about informal economies, which is that these workers and these actors, they, they have their own rules to some extent, they play by their own rules even though they suffer extortion from the state. And I show that at least when it comes to the licensed vendors, it's not that simple. Like, they, they are still in the shadow and, and to some extent under the thumb of authorities, precisely because the rights are so fuzzy. Right. And so precarious.
- [40:50]
Michael Johnston
So a lot, a lot of, there's a lot of details that, that come out of this book for the research that you conducted. And as you step back and as you step away from the research, has it opened up for you as a scholar other ways in which you can move this research forward into the future?
- [41:10]
Asinto Cuvi
So if I'm being honest, it was like, as I said, an almost 10, 15 years journey. Like, I started working on street vendors on my first year as a PhD student in Austin, and I did at one point reach a point of exhaustion in which I felt like I don't want to, like, learn, study, no talk about street vendors anymore, because this was my whole life, at least as far as my academic life is concerned, for too long. And then something strange happened, which is that when the book was in production, and it takes a while, right, Once you submit the manuscript, it has to get reviewed and that copy edited, proofread, printed. And during all that time, I could start like, looking at other things, thinking about other research subjects, doing new research, more fieldwork on completely different topics. And this kind of has refreshed, in a way, my interest in my own work on street vendors. So now, as you can probably tell from the tone of my voice, I'm. I'm still very excited to talk about my research in the book. This is something that the awareness has in a way, gone away, but I do not see myself delving back into the world of street vending. This is not something that I think is. Is the best way forward for me at this stage. Now, the book, in a way, brings some closure to it and I'm going to keep promoting it and sharing the insights and the content. I don't plan to do any more research on street vendors in particular. So, yeah, that's where I stand as far as the research topic of the book. I do have other ideas though, for research in the future course.
- [43:14]
Michael Johnston
Excellent. Well, that does bring us to the final. The allotted time for us. But one question that we have in terms of what are you up to now? What's your next project then?
- [43:30]
Asinto Cuvi
So I would say that to some extent I'm still figuring it out. But there's a couple of topics in which I have started to do research. One of them was the elections of the presidential elections in 2022 in Brazil, which put it the leftist candidate Lula da Silva against the far right candidate J. Bolsonaro. And we, with a couple of colleagues here at ulb, my, my home university, we ran this survey of voters trying to figure out those, in particular those who voted for Rosaro. Was it more about religion or was it more about material interests? Right. So that was one side project. But then the broader project that I'm starting to rebuild and I'm going to have to apply for funding if I want to carry it forward, is more about how to understand this concept of informality, which is like the. One of the core concepts of the work I've done so far, but from the perspective of the state, but inside the state, because in the edge of the law, what I study, I study, like governmental processes, such as, like legislative debates and enacting of new legislation, et cetera. But I want to understand what informality as a concept, as an idea tells you about how bureaucracies operate. And this is when I said earlier that this is like bringing me back to research that I did like in a previous life as a master's student, this is one thing that I would like, to develop, like, understand institutions and informality within government bureaucracies.
- [45:18]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. So like the ideal, the, the. The essence of the law versus the practice of the law. And, and I think of that, like in policing in the United States, like what police have almost complete discretion as to who they pull over, when they pull somebody over, and then whether or not they give them a warning or whether they give them a ticket. Right. That's interesting. The whole informalities of society, and I think there's an informal component in almost every part of our lives.
- [45:48]
Asinto Cuvi
Definitely is. I've experienced it even as a professor. I think there's a lot of informality in the university where I work and probably in many others. So there is informality everywhere. But the literature on informality has focused on informal economies mostly. So I want to look at other places where there is a lot of informality and what that informality does. Right. To how people behave, to what public services are delivered or not delivered, et cetera.
- [46:22]
Michael Johnston
Yeah, it's kind of that determinism versus free will. It's kind of like the. At the, at the root of the topic, I think. So forward to seeing where this research takes you and to hear updates, but also read the manuscripts that you're getting published on this topic. But funding comes first, right?
- [46:41]
Asinto Cuvi
Right. And hopefully the next one is not going to take me 15 years to write.
- [46:46]
Michael Johnston
Well, I sure hope not. That's too long to wait to get you back on the show. Well, thank you, Jacinto, for being on the show today, and I really appreciate your time.
- [46:57]
Asinto Cuvi
Thank you so much, Michael, for inviting me.
- [47:00]
Michael Johnston
Excellent. Well, this has been another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network, and I look forward to talking to all of you again soon. Have a great day.