Introduction

The last chapter provided an in-depth narrative account of the lives of typical members of each neighbourhood. It portrayed people finding ways of thinking about and explaining their lives, in what they take to be reasonable and adequate ways, with recourse to certain dominant stories about the world. In other words, it described the process of a social theodicy in a particular context. What emerged from this account was a picture of a social world characterized by economic insecurity, where women are involved in constant labour-intensive activities that revolve around their families. The majority of women are often confined to a relatively small space in which their bodies are in perpetual use: bearing children, feeding, cleaning, cooking and caring in a monotonous, ongoing cycle. Yet the women rarely speak of these activities. Instead, they make constant reference to the two dominant stories of their world: Christianity and the telenovelas.

In this particular context, Christianity and the telenovelas constitute active structures in the women's lives. They are important determinants of people's agency, or at least they provide them with reasons for acting. Conversely, passive structures are ones that exist but are not activated in the women's lives. This means that they do not have a strong influence on people's lives; they do not actively guide their lives or furnish them with reasons for acting. In the two bairros, structures of health and education can be viewed as instances of passive structures.