In this ethnographic essay the author, based on a research study carried out among young dwellers of a big popular settlement in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan area, intends to investigate the modernization experience in impoverished and peripheral social environments, with specific attention to structuring effects of this modernization over race and gender practices. The aim is to introduce new elements into the debate about the specificity of Brazilian modernization, as well as into the comprehension of the race and gender relations in contexts of poverty. Based on the data, the author intends to represent the subjects' "point of view" and the objective material conditions for the reproduction of inequalities, something that seems to be crucial for public policy elaboration in the field of reproductive and sexual health to young people, regarding at the same time the intersectional social conditions for production of violence and inequality.
Race; Gender; Youth; Periphery; Modernization