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Based on more than two decades of ethnographic engagement with the urban margins of Brazil, this book offers unique and detailed insights into the "politics of the periphery". Providing a long-term analysis of the residents of the periphery of the city of Recife and their interactions with state representatives and institutions, it contributes to a better understanding of the politics of marginalized populations around the world. Politics of the Periphery takes theorizing beyond state-oriented and Eurocentric approaches and offers scope to understand politics and the state from the urban margins, from the places where an ever-increasing part of the world's population lives. Critiquing approaches that see politics of marginalized populations as an expression of deficient citizenship, as informal politics, or as protest against the authorities, Martijn Koster shows how the politics of the periphery combines resistance with compliance as well as indifference, intertwining formal procedures and meetings with informal negotiations and exchanges.

This book weaves together political anthropology, urban studies, and development studies as it focuses on two central settings of resident-state relationships: government programs and electoral politics. In these settings, it shows how residents deal with urban development, citizen participation, police action, elections, and forms of clientelism. It highlights how their politics revolves around distrust, trust, betrayal and hope as they struggle to secure their place in the city.