Bury my heart under the overpass: the noble art and the black neighborhood of São Paulo

Abstract

This project is based on conducting an ethnography on an installed boxing gym under an overpass in the Baixada do Glicério, central region of São Paulo, stigmatized locality as black neighborhood in the city, due to its high concentration of African immigrants and Latin Americans. To fulfill this mission, i will perform a participant observation as boxing student at the academy. In this way, I intend to describe and analyze the particularities of social and sports activities of boxing in this space, watching and participating in drills with the other students (young people from the neighborhood, immigrants, former street dwellers, among others), in addition to following these actors social in their everyday social networks across the region, thus being able to discuss how this activity provides reflections on the ideas of belonging, body, prejudgement, leisure and city. (AU)