Camelódromo da Praça XV (Porto Alegre, Brazil) was a large street market that thrived at the turn of the century, selling cheap goods or small counterfeits. Social and economic life was shaped by a constant tension between disembeddedness and embeddedness, as articulated in Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. As the literature on informal economies has shown over the past fifty years, this duality reflects free-market ideologies interwoven with bazaar structures rooted in honor and social networks. Disembeddedness described a self-regulating market stripped of protections, marked by anti-unionism, anti-politics, undemocratic practices, fierce competition, individualism, and exploitation. In contrast, embeddedness referred to the “double movement” resisting such alienation, expressed in face-to-face ties, creative kinship, mutual aid, honor, everyday politics, and community-based moral economies that curbed inequality and stigma.

I conducted ethnographic research at the Camelódromo from 1999 to 2004. Twenty-five years after my initial work, I returned to the field and found a profoundly transformed political, social, and economic landscape. Two key developments—re-territorialization and later de-territorialization—were central in fostering disembeddedness. First, in 2009, the Camelódromo was formalized and incorporated into a low-income shopping mall. The second shift, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, saw traders digitalize their businesses, especially via Instagram. Coupled with broader political shifts, this post-pandemic digital entrepreneurship reshaped markets and fueled support for authoritarianism.

Digitalization has intensified critical economic and political transformations. This occurred for several reasons. First, traders began working in a more isolated and dispersed manner, focusing on their nuclear families. As location became less decisive, many moved to peripheral areas, since most sales happened through Instagram or WhatsApp. Second, Brazil’s digital marketing ecosystem—dominated by a few hundred far-right–aligned coach influencers who claim to teach people how to make money on Instagram—became a major phenomenon. Many interlocutors are dependent on this network, as it is through them that they learn to navigate Instagram’s tools. Third, more indirectly, Brazilian social media is heavily dominated by far-right content.

Over time, re-territorialization and digitalization transformed both the everyday practices of traders and their self-understanding of what it means to be a worker. “Stone life” (vida de pedra) was an emic term describing life and labor on grey cement, symbolizing the grit of daily vending. As trade shifted from the “stone” to the virtual realm, aesthetics and norms changed. The labor-intensive task of assembling and disassembling stalls was once seen as an art form, conferring status, tradition, and know-how. These markers changed: from placing teddy bears to curating Instagram stories; from printed cards to online profiles. On the street, traders “hustled” physically. Online, engagement depends on trends, AI tools, editing apps, and paid traffic. This shift inverted generational hierarchies: older traders lost symbolic capital to younger digital natives. Economic disparities deepened as digital skills became key to success.

At a subjective level, interlocutors viewed digital ventures as opportunities to negotiate personhood through self-worth. In a Goffmanian sense, having a presence on Instagram means curating a persona through a facade reflecting the titles and labels they believe most appropriate. This shift allows identities to become less externally imposed—as with the stigma of street work—and more malleable, as they now have greater control over how they present themselves. Many describe themselves as businesspeople or even CEOs in their bios, even when running only partially formalized small shops. Individuals embodied a form of “CEO-ization” of the self, seeking to shed the stigma of poverty and marginality historically tied to street work. On one hand, CEO-ization signifies a pursuit of autonomy and dignity; on the other, it reflects a broader transformation of work’s collective dimensions, increasingly shaped by neoliberalism and self-reliance.

Digital disembedding did not create individualism among low-income workers; it reinforced long-standing tendencies. As my previous ethnography “on stone” showed—aligning with Veronica Gago’s concept of neoliberalism from below—this remains a feature of competitive, self-regulated informal markets. On the streets, many blamed peers in worse conditions. Narratives of superiority emerged, building hierarchies atop more vulnerable groups. This precarious entitlement helped traders cope with stigma and police violence by blaming or reporting others. Rather than rejecting marginalization, they redirected it downward. This logic persisted across street and digital spheres. Digitalization enabled labor subjectification detached from street meanings. Traders expressed a desire to be “the boss,” “founder owner,” and disdain for being “just a worker.” Though digital entrepreneurship rarely brought significant income, it offered self-worth—reinforcing a paradox where dignity stems from the devaluation of others.

Previously, street vendors formed kin-like ties through work, categorized as “street,” “road,” and “home” families, whose closeness varied by context. These bonds, marked by mutual obligation, extended beyond blood and affinity, and were more flexible than traditional family structures. Formalization and digitalization reshaped them: the shift confined and isolated vendors to small shops and imposed conditions that redirected reliance to the nuclear family. Alongside Brazil’s rising far-right sentiment, many traders became vocal defenders of the “traditional family”—patriarchal and hostile to LGBTQI+ people.

Despite prevailing individualism, police violence and state abuse historically fostered layers of group identity and resistance. Though often sporadic and reactive, these forms of politics allowed expressions of collective anger and worker solidarity. The state was largely absent in providing public goods, but present in the form of extortion and violence. Once traders immersed online, the long-standing anti-establishment sentiment, rooted in anger toward abuse, began to converge with anti-establishment populism, ultimately solidifying support for authoritarianism.

These micro-level changes in everyday practices and labor subjectivities have converged into broader political transformations. With few exceptions, returning to the field revealed a widespread shift toward populist far-right support. As Polanyi foresaw, the pendulum of economic disembeddedness has swung toward right extremism, as individuals seek new traditions in response to the erosion of social bonds, norms, and hierarchies.

I treat this twenty-five-year ethnographic journey as an allegory mirroring The Great Transformation—not in Europe, but through the contradictions of a developing country. Drawing from anthropological perspectives that reject digital determinism, I do not argue that radicalization is a direct or homogeneous outcome of digital disembeddedness. Rather, it is shaped by contradiction. Some traders did not digitalize their business and still became more politically radicalized—and vice-versa. Post-pandemic digitalization was a critical variable—accelerating and establishing more individualistic and aggressive market rules unanchored from prior social relations—but not the sole cause. This transformation must be understood as part of Brazil’s and the world’s broader cultural, political, and economic shifts.

Funding

The first phase of this research was funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation. The second phase is funded by the European Union (ERC, WORKPOLITICSBIP, 101045738). However, views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.