Unknowing São Paulo

GSSC Seminar Series

15 July 2025
12:00-13:00

Seminarraum 3.03

Unknowing São Paulo: Life beyond capture in the economies of small clothing businesses and the fragility of the urban

Simone Toji (University of Sheffield, England)

Chair: Tilmann Heil

Drawing inspiration from encounters with interlocutors in the small-scale garment industries of São Paulo, this presentation builds on the notion of the radical unknowability of urban life (Simone and Castán Broto 2022) to discuss urban processes that make cities dynamic and ever-evolving forms. Through considerations and experiences from varied actors of small garment businesses, it examines how urban life in São Paulo is conceived and lived in uncertainty. By tracing the everyday routines of garment workers and entrepreneurs, the article uncovers contingent and ephemeral practices that resist stabilization or definitive categorization. It questions the impulse to fully ‘know’ the urban, encouraging instead an approach grounded in an epistemic modesty that attends to relationality and what remains elusive. In the talk, I will argue that by acknowledging these urban processes as fragile, the fugacity of urban life can be glimpsed in its unanticipated potentiality.

Simone Toji is a Newton International Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. She was a Junior Research Fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center Conviviality and Inequality in Latin America (Mecila) in 2022. Her current projects explore questions in human mobility, urban studies, ethnography, and cultural heritage.

Organised by Thematic Area South-South Relations of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC).

For more information, visit: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/gssc-seminar-reihe/gs-25-07-15-toji