ABSTRACT
Hip-hop and other forms of popular culture catalyze sociality and bottom-up governance forms, while complex and sometimes non-sanguineous forms of kinship and child-care serve as points of political organisation. Though movies like City of God and Tropa de Elite give international viewers an impression of complete anarchy in Brazilian favelas, these communities have developed innovative forms of autonomous social organisation, largely based around children and youth. Several favelas of Recife are among the most violent places in the world, where seventy murders over a long weekend barely inspire raised eyebrows. The gangues exercise a powerful allure for young men from the favela, and much to the contrary of newspaper stories of forced conscription of child soldiers in Africa, most of the boys in these drug armies say they insisted on joining up, often against the advice of older gang members. Hip-hop provides an economic and political response to clientelismo.
