Mobilidade urbana sobre duas rodas : a cultura do consumo das cinquentinhas na contemporaneidade

Abstract

The present dissertation is based on research conducted during the master's in consumerism, daily life and Social Development/URFPE, which had the proposal to make the reflection on the problems of urban mobility and the use/consumption of a specific model of motorcycle, popularly known as cinquentinhas, and that has been the subject of various debates and criticisms in contemporary consumer society. Thus, the overall objective of this study was to identify and analyze the culture of cinquentinha, while commodity and alternative mobility. Specifically, checking the determinants of consumer culture contributing to the purchase and use of ciquentinhas by people of the working class, as well as identify and analyze the meanings given to cinquentinhas by the users of the working class, in addition, identify the strategies of payment of cinquentinhas by the consumers and capture the understanding of people who purchased the cinquentinhas on the issue of urban mobility today. The referenced goals served to answer the following research problem: how consumer culture turns cinquentinha object of desire in working-class members? To understand that context, the methodology used to conduct the survey was based on socioantropológicas theories, in particular on consumption, favoring its symbolic character and field work that was carried out in four municipalities in the greater Recife. This exploratory study of qualitative character involved three categories of interviewees/as: users (category I), professionals linked to the sale (category II), and motorists, bikers and pedestrians (category III), which correspond to the search universe. Added to this, the methodology if configured in: secondary data collection, carrying out the interviews and analysis of the data obtained. Considering this, the results indicate that the consumer culture reveals himself as a motivator for acquisition of cinquentinhas in the greater Recife, in that it stimulates the purchase/uso/consumo through the economic aspects (price and maintenance), functional (mobility, agility and freedom), symbolic (distinction, status and leisure). Another revelation of the research was that the absence of effective requirements of both the license plate/regularisation as CNH in category A or ACC, long was considered a stimulus for acquisition and use of cinquentinha in the layers of social class from the popular context. With regard to payment methods, the research revealed that both the purchase in sight as the term were the main means of acquisition of the cinquentinhas. The question of the issue of urban mobility is understood by most respondents as the lack of infrastructure. The research and its results have made it possible to develop a critical reflection on the problem of consumption, its practices and its materialization as consumer culture in contemporary society.