Lifestyles and urban visualities: aesthetic experience, subjectivities, and symbolic struggles in the contemporary city

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21669/tomo.v45.24566

Keywords:

Urban visualities, Ways of life, Aesthetic experience, Subjectivities, Symbolic disputes

Abstract

Visuality does not appear in the city as ornament, nor as a mere landscape of images. It permeates urban existence as a sensitive regime of presence and dispute: what becomes visible, what is recognized, what is imposed, and what is erased within public space. In contemporary cities, everyday practices, sociabilities, and processes of subjectivation are crossed by aesthetic layers that reorganize urban experience. Artistic interventions, cultural landscapes, institutional devices, and ordinary gestures overlap as symbolic inscriptions in ongoing dispute, producing conflicts of meaning and diverse ways of inhabiting. By approaching aesthetic experience as a sociological operator, this text places visuality at the core of the relationship among power, perception, and urban life, understanding urban existence as a shared, political, and sensory condition.

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Author Biographies

Bartira Brito, Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Bartira Brito holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), Brazil. She is a researcher at the Urban and Cultural Studies Laboratory (LABEURC/CNPq/UFS), working at the intersection of urban sociology, contemporary aesthetic cultures, sensitive globalization, and the transnational circulation of artistic works and repertoires. She holds a postgraduate specialization in Marketing and a degree in Social Communication from Universidade Salvador (UNIFACS). With over 30 years of experience in cultural production, artistic direction, and curatorship, she currently serves as Commercial and Artistic Director at Capta Brasil.

Rogerio Proença Leite, Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Rogério Proença Leite is Full Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and in the Graduate Program in Sociology (Master’s and PhD) at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), Brazil. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and completed postdoctoral studies in Sociology at the University of Coimbra (UC). His research focuses on Urban Sociology and Urban Anthropology, with emphasis on studies of cities, urban cultures, social dynamics of the anthropic environment, cultural heritage, and urban psychopolitical dispositifs.

He has been a Research Productivity Fellow of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Level 1C) since 2004. He was Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the Revista Brasileira de Sociologia (Brazilian Journal of Sociology – SBS) and served as a consultant to UNESCO/IPHAN in the field of cities and cultural heritage. He has held positions in national scientific bodies, including membership in the ANPOCS Advisory Committee on Heritage and Brazilian Culture and representation of ANPOCS at the National Forum in Defense of Brazilian Cultural Heritage. He currently coordinates the CNPq Advisory Committee in Social Sciences (CA-CS) and serves as Second Vice-President of the Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS).

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Published

2026-07-29

How to Cite

Brito, B., & Proença Leite, R. (2026). Lifestyles and urban visualities: aesthetic experience, subjectivities, and symbolic struggles in the contemporary city. TOMO Review, 45, e24566. https://doi.org/10.21669/tomo.v45.24566

Issue

Vol. 45 (2026): TOMO Journal (Rolling Pass)

Section

Special Issue Urban Visualities: Power, Subjectivities, Sociabilities, and City Life

Categories

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Copyright (c) 2026 Bartira Brito, Rogerio Proença Leite

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