URBAN ACTORS, TRAJECTORIES AND LIFE PROJECTS IN THE CITY: Ethnographic approaches in perspective

Abstract

This article reflects on the process of organization of the dossier entitled "Urban Actors: aesthetics, trajectories and life projects in the city" published in December 2022 by Iluminuras journal, linked to the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGAS/UFRGS). Since the conception of the dossier, we have tried to build a proposal for a call that would dialogue with the themes of urban actors, with a special focus on the processes of dialogue between researchers and research partners in the space of the city. In this sense, the proposal of the dossier proved to be a privileged space for reflection on privileged alterities in social research, and more specifically in urban ethnographic practices. We begin the text by addressing the key concepts that were part of the editorial process, such as social actors, urban ethnography and life projects. Subsequently, we indicate three axes of reading identified as arts and urban interventions; cities, images and sociabilities and, finally, migrations and work. We conclude by addressing that the creative connections of the works with cited axes help us to think of new research partnerships and forms of contact with subjectivities in the city in the context of social science research.