Departing from the ethnography of use/appropriation episodes of Martim Moniz Plaza, this paper discuss about the importance of the ethnographical practice in the apprehension and understanding of the everyday circumstances. Some social/cultural aspects are discussed which contributed to the invention of a geography of resistance in this specific area of the city and also to the inscription of this plaza in the social and urban map of Lisbon. Four motives have oriented this reasoning: 1) the geographic situation of that Plaza (at Lisbon's centre); 2) it's building configuration as a result of a set of controversial social and urban policies; 3) the representativeness of this specific plaza - namely, of two shopping malls that arise, at the Plaza, as symbolic meeting points - in an attempt to construct a multi-ethnic and a multi-cultural image of the city; 4) the role of this Plaza regarding the definition of a set of political manifestations.
ethnography; geography of resistance; urban public space; use and appropriation
