The Law of the Oppressed: The Construction and Reproduction of Legality in Pasargada

TLDR

In capitalist societies, the state legal system functions as an instrument of class domination, a dynamic starkly illustrated by the housing conditions in squatter settlements such as the fictitious Pasargada in Rio de Janeiro. The article seeks to describe Pasargada legality by examining its internal legal rhetoric and its unequal relationship with Brazil’s official legal system. The study employs sociological analysis of legal rhetoric in dispute prevention and settlement, coupled with a legal‑pluralism perspective, to investigate Pasargada legality. Residents of Pasargada develop adaptive strategies, creating an internal legality—popular justice—that operates alongside and sometimes conflicts with state legality.

Abstract

In a capitalist society the State legal system is in general an instrument of class domination both at the level of the relations of production, as in the factory, and of the relations of reproduction, as in housing. Housing conditions are particularly illustrative of class domination in the squatter settlements of all major cities throughout the capitalist world. Pasargada is the fictitious name of such a settlement in Rio de Janeiro. In a nonrevolutionary situation, and particularly under the yoke of economic and political repression imposed by the fascist State (as in contemporary Brazil), the struggle against housing and living conditions in these settlements is a very hard one. Because of the structural inaccessibility of the State legal system, and especially because of the illegal character of these communities, the dominated classes living in them devise adaptive strategies aimed at securing the minimal social ordering of community relations. One such strategy involves the creation of an internal legality, parallel to (and sometimes conflicting with) State legality—a kind of popular justice. The article describes Pasargada legality from both the inside (through the sociological analysis of legal rhetoric in dispute prevention and dispute settlement) and in its (unequal) relations with the Brazilian official legal system (from the perspective of legal pluralism).