Improving life amid ruins: ethnographies of a gated community in the leste fluminense and the legacies of Comperj

Abstract

This article presents findings from an ethnographic research carried out between 2019 and 2025 in the city of Itaboraí, in the Leste Fluminense region, marked by promises of development associated with the Petrochemical Complex of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Based on the prolonged engagement with a family network, focusing on the experience of three women, Quitéria and her daughters, Fabiana and Débora, the study explores how their domestic practices and support networks enabled projects of social mobility amid the economic instability that followed the interruption of the enterprise. The work analyzes the displacements generated by the crisis, with emphasis on the paradoxical effects of the suspension of the Complex: rather than rendering local residents’ ways of life unviable, the cooling of development expectations devalued the real estate market and made it possible for middle-income families, previously excluded from this housing standard, to access sophisticated residences in gated communities. The research suggests that, in the face of the collapse of a promised future, these women creatively reorganized their life projects, revealing a sophistication in everyday knowledge and domestic management strategies. The house, understood as both a theoretical space and the core of family decisions, made it possible to apprehend the cycles of urban transformation through the feminine practices that sustain, negotiate, and reconfigure what is understood as “improvement of life.”