Between Blood and Knowledge: an anthropological analysis of Hip Hop "Battle of Wine" in Natal
Hip Hop, youth, social networks, digital technologies, urban anthropology
This research addresses experiences lived by young people from the Northern Zone of Natal. The Battle of Wine is a manifestation of the hip-hop culture that for seven years has mobilized an increasing number of people in its locality, but also articulates relations in other regions of the city, state and country. This happens in a social context marked by the contradictions resulting from the neoliberal politics, especially in the global South. From the ethnographic face-to-face and online perspective, I tried to follow the processes of sociability and technical and structural development of the event, as well as its internal tensions. In the first part of this work, I try to understand how, from its social context, a young peripheral can manage strategies and organize their networks of sociability to contribute to a collective initiative marginalized in relation to state and society structures. I then try to understand the cultural manifestation itself (its values and its aesthetics), describing some duels and their rhymes. Thus, I will try to analyze the performance of MCs and other participants, as well as the tension existing between the two modes of dispute - Battles of Blood vs. Knowledge Battles. I also want to understand the role played by the internet and online social networks in the aforementioned Wine of Battle development process (the use of page and group in Facebook, group in Whatsapp and channels in Youtube, for example). The internet, however, does not constitute a disconnected sphere from social reality - in our case, specially the urban violence - and the permeability of facts, and their consequences, between streets and online networks has been shown to be cause of tensions and death or life risks in the daily life of the Battle of Wine youth. Finally, I try to understand the dynamics of the local social network that constitutes the battles of the Wine Battle from more complex and wider dynamics of networks of the battles of MCs in the country.