Nunes, João Pedro

Playing to One’s Assets: Street Patterns and Sociabilities in the Lisbon Suburbs - 2012.


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This article analyses the daily gathering of a group of men who meet to play cards on a pavement in their neighbourhood. This practice is understood as a pattern of street behaviour, a notion that enables the interpretation of its effects on the public space of the neighbourhood. By reconstituting the emergence and the consolidation of this small social world, an exploration of the production of a local social order is carried out. At the end, the public character of this street pattern is discussed in terms of the ways in which such uses of space and sociable practices change both the social and urban condition of the players.