Over the past few decades, the desire of residents on urban peripheries in Brazil to have their own businesses has grown. Consequently, several authors have critically pointed out the advance of neoliberal ideas among the urban popular classes. In this article I discuss the origins of this ‘entrepreneurial disposition’ and its relationship with neoliberal discourse that seeks to encourage ‘entrepreneurialism of oneself’. The analysis presented in this article is based on ethnographic research carried out among entrepreneurial workers on the outskirts of São Paulo through in-depth interviews focusing on life histories and participant observation in strategic spaces (online and in person) during 2020 and 2021. I explore adherence and opposition to and resignification of neoliberal entrepreneurial ideology from different cultural and material backgrounds by retelling the history of five entrepreneurs from three different families. I argue that rather than neoliberal ideas being an ideological conviction, they are embedded in social practices that are quite common in the periphery of São Paulo. Therefore, they should be analysed in the light of these previously existing practices and moralities. From a peripheral point of view, ethnographic analysis also allows us to examine the limits of this embeddedness and shed light on possible forms of resistance.

中文翻译：

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梦想与生存之间：新自由主义在圣保罗周边地区创业工人中的嵌入程度

在过去的几十年里，巴西城市周边居民拥有自己的企业的愿望与日俱增。因此，一些作者批判性地指出了新自由主义思想在城市大众阶层中的进步。在本文中，我讨论了这种“创业倾向”的起源及其与旨在鼓励“自我创业”的新自由主义话语的关系。本文提出的分析基于对 2020 年和 2021 年圣保罗郊区创业工人进行的人种学研究，重点关注生活史和战略空间（在线和亲自）的参与观察。通过重述来自三个不同家庭的五位企业家的历史，展现不同文化和物质背景下对新自由主义创业意识形态的坚持、反对和重新诠释。我认为，新自由主义思想并不是一种意识形态信念，而是植根于圣保罗周边地区相当普遍的社会实践中。因此，应该根据这些先前存在的实践和道德来分析它们。从外围的角度来看，人种学分析还使我们能够检验这种嵌入性的局限性，并揭示可能的抵抗形式。