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This paper addresses the life and social experience of low-income people in Brazil, based on a theory of social bonds. The material consists of a set of twenty qualitative interviews with people earning up to one minimum-wage per month. The interviews last, on average, two hours and were undertaken by the National Institute for Applied Economic Research [IPEA] (2016), in a nation-wide qualitative survey about social inequality and life conditions. The material was content analyzed considering four categories of social bond: the lineal bond, the elective participation bond, the organic participation and the citizenship bond. The results show that organic participation, along with lineal bond, play a key, albeit ambivalent role. On the other hand, citizenship bond is mostly characterized by experiences of misrecognition and lack of protection. Elective participation bonds are barely resourceful, yet they play an important role in individual attempts to fight poverty. The consequences for the relationship between social inequality and social regulation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to make a small revision of the literature on rural domestic animals and wild ones in Brazilian cities from the perspective of an anthropology of human-animal relations. To this, we add some new ethnographic data, collected individually or together, which aim to cast a light on the idea of a city set apart from the 'natural world', as if there were no entanglements and intersections between humans and the wild fauna in contemporary cities. We want to believe that the animal life is also part of the urban landscapes, and that we build together these landscapes with multiple more-than-humans ecologies in an urban context. In this sense, the cities present themselves as the lace of an oykos of interactions and living with the urban fauna (domesticated, tamed or wild), and also with the flora (also domesticated, tamed and wild), along with other organisms in an ecological context that produces plural environments, instead of cities that onli mean the place of the anthropos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming that contemporaneity has brought about numerous continuities and discontinuities, it is undeniable that technology is increasingly omnipresent, even mediating social relationships. In this paper, discuss how dating applications (apps) further enhance the existing economy of bodies through technological mediation. This economy is based on a device incorporated by the apps that incorporates a mercantile structure to facilitate interactions. Data obtained from two investigations conducted among users of gay dating apps in Belo Horizonte and Fortaleza cities through approximations and cross-referencing suggest that an economic context is institutionalized, in which interactions operate on a market-based system, ratifying and sometimes challenging concepts such as scarcity, price, supply, demand etc. The non-material condition accelerates interactions, making the use of algorithms and defined scripts a predictable element of negotiation between users who need to be clear and direct in order to get what they want. The main findings suggest that gay dating apps mediate users who take a calculating perspective on searches to maintain some form of interaction with those they desire, a process that reflects a market dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the role played by abductive reasoning and admirableness in the creative processes in the Big Data era. The conceptions of creativity, in the mechanistic and antimechanistic scope, are introduced by means of examples in the domain of photographic production, as is the case of Maureen Bisilliat (1995) and Nan Goldin (2012) works. As our investigation is essentially theoretical and interdisciplinary, it is mainly based on the literature on the concepts of creativity, abductive reasoning, and admirableness; it is grounded in different areas of knowledge, including Pragmatism, Literature, Visual arts and the Philosophy of Information. We discuss the limitations of mechanistic conceptions of creativity, arguing in defense of the hypothesis that creative action is not strictly related to the created object, but to a long collaborative process between agents that will assist (directly or indirectly) in the production of artistic works. In the conclusion, the role of emotions is highlighted in the dynamics of the creative/abductive process, as proclaimed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). Inspired by this author, we emphasize the role of admirableness in the process of creation - understood here as a feeling that encourages us to investigate and get to know the objects that attract our attention, without the desire for controlling them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]