ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a summary of the results of ethnographic studies undertaken in an inner city council estate in Oporto labelled by the town's collective rumour as a 'dangerous place'. The reconstruction of the space-time of an urban community, either from its actors' memories or from social practices as observed by the researcher, translates into a collective dimension the same work biographical methodologies apply on the individual scale. The notion of culture of resistance, developed within the theories of cultural production and reproduction is the analytical frame used to draw upon the ethnographic data generated. The relationship between the labour realm and the culture of resistance presents a crucial analytical axis: that of the relationship between formal and underground economies. The centrality of drugs in the reinforcement of the parallel economy and in the structuring of cultural resistance movements was signalled.
