Sao-luisenses tell vivid, sometimes terrifying stories of verbal and physical confrontations. Their narratives, based on cultural models of Carnivals and brigas, highlight the vulnerability of the seld to humiliation by others and the vulnerability of moral controls to one's own hostile emotions. The book argues that this double sense of social and psychological vulnerability is a product of Brazilian interpersonal relations, which are profoundly marked by the arbitrary exercise of power and the stifling of resentment in subordinates.
Culture here consists not of shared symbols but of shared quandaries. The author suggests that Brazilian street fighting is an alarm bell - an inarticulate representation of pressing but poorly udnerstood social and psychological dilemmas. Violence in Sao Luis may therefore be a desperate attempt to understand and come to grips with the very resentment, rooted in the city's harsh social transactions, that engenders it.
