Irrelevant Interactions without Composite Operators - A Remark on the Universality of Second Order Phase Transitions

We study the critical behaviour of symmetric $\phi^4_4$ theory including irrelevant terms of the form $\phi^{4+2n}/\Lambda_0^{2n}$ in the bare action, where $\Lambda_0$ is the UV cutoff (corresponding e.g. to the inverse lattice spacing for a spin system). The main technical tool is renormalization theory based on the flow equations of the renormalization group which permits to establish the required convergence statements in generality and rigour. As a consequence the effect of irrelevant terms on the critical behaviour may be studied to any order without using renormalization theory for composite operators. This is a technical simplification and seems preferable from the physical point of view. In this short note we restrict for simplicity to the symmetry class of the Ising model, i.e. one component $\phi^4_4$ theory. The method is general, however.Comment: 13 page

House-ing Urban Kin: Family Configurations, Household Economies and Inequality in Brazil’s Public Housing

In Brazil’s post-neoliberal government, social policies became the bedrock for a new political economy predicated on poverty alleviation via market inclusion. This article draws from long-term ethnographical research conducted among beneficiaries of Minha Casa Minha Vida—Brazil’s largest housing policy. I am interested in the myriad ways policy designs and its contentious operation symbiotically reshape sociability and kin among first-time homeowners. I take a closer look at how ideas and configurations of the family travel across intimate and public domains—from communitarian politics to household economies—and are anxiously negotiated, becoming the indexer of experiential moral systems of care. Transitioning across multi-scalar instances of everyday sociality, I interrogate how such economies conflate with the infrastructures and pervasive imaginaries of the house in the local machineries of the policy.Introduction The "bureaucratic family": Modeling working-class households The Big Family - The Family Political - Celebrating the "Big Family" - "Big-Women" Restructured Household Economies - Family Debris - New Domestic Arrangements Conclusio

A Politics of Hope: The Making of Brazil’s Post-Neoliberal New Middle Class

How does hope emerge as a life-altering possibility against the backdrop of economic precarity, political disregard, and soaring inequality? This paper explores the role of hope as both a political-economic construct and an infrastructural affect in the wake of policy implementation. It draws on a five-year ethnography among community leaders, housing activists, planners, politicians, state officials, and market representatives involved in the implementation of Minha Casa Minha Vida, Brazil’s largest social housing program. In recent years, low-income projects have become the battleground for experimental, post-neoliberal forms of democratic governance via inclusive consumption. These public–private housing infrastructures give insight into the relationship between material hope and the making of Latin America’s “pink tide” new middle classes: how grassroots communities organize around hierarchies of worthiness to allocate wellbeing-enhancing state benefits, and how the uneven distribution of these benefits sustains the constitution of emerging, albeit temporary, collectives of consumer citizens.Dieses Papier untersucht die Rolle von Hoffnung bei der Umsetzung von Politikvorhaben in zweifacher Hinsicht: als politökonomisches Konstrukt und als infrastruktureller Affekt. Es basiert auf einer fünfjährigen ethnografischen Untersuchung unter kommunalen Führungskräften, Wohnungsaktivistinnen und -aktivisten, Planungsverantwortlichen, staatlichen Funktionärinnen und Funktionären, Vertreterinnen und Vertretern aus Politik und Wirtschaft, die an der Implementierung von „Minha Casa Minha Vida“, Brasiliens größtem sozialen Wohnungsbauprogramm, beteiligt waren. In den letzten Jahren sind Bauprojekte für Geringverdiener zum Schauplatz für experimentelle und postneoliberale Formen demokratischer Governance geworden, die darauf zielen, Bürger durch Konsum zu inkludieren. Das Beispiel dieser öffentlich-privaten Wohninfrastrukturen hilft, den Zusammenhang zwischen materieller Hoffnung und dem Entstehen der neuen lateinamerikanischen Mittelschichten zu verstehen. Es zeigt, wie sich neue Gemeinschaften entlang von Wertehierarchien organisieren, um staatliche Hilfen zu verteilen und macht deutlich, wie die ungleiche Verteilung dieser Hilfen die Entstehung neuer, wenn auch kurzlebiger, Kollektive von „Verbraucherbürgern“ fördert.Contents 1 Introduction 2 Policy afterlives 3 Material hope 4 Local infrastructures of hope 5 Deferred hope 6 Economic mediants 7 The double temporalities of hope 8 Hereafter Appendix Reference

Les politiques publiques et leurs après-vie: Le mérite et la citoyenneté habitationnelle au Brésil de la mobilité sociale

Políticas econômicas e sociais construíram o caminho para a redução das desigualdades e melhoria de vida de milhões de brasileiros nos anos de 2000. Com base em pesquisa entre recipientes do programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida, discute-se os nexos etnográficos entre políticas públicas e mobilidade ascendente. Seguindo a trajetória pública e privada de dona Hilda – uma senhora negra e pobre de 97 anos que vive na periferia de Porto Alegre – argumento que a mobilidade emergente no cerne da ampliação das intervenções de governo materializou-se em alinhamentos difusos entre políticos locais, agentes de mercado, planejadores, lideranças e “cidadãos desejantes”. Para navegar esses terrenos políticos, econômicos e comunitários, dona Hilda engajou-se num trabalho por cidadania habitacional e merecimento que a converteu na personagem exemplar do programa. Deslindando os limites morais entre discurso, história e subjetividade, a cartografia desses fragmentos está mais bem equipada para explorar as pós-vidas das políticas públicas no Brasil recente.Economic and social policies paved the way for inequality alleviation and wellbeing improvements in the lives of millions during the 2000s in Brazil. Drawing from ethnography conducted among recipients of the housing program Minha Casa, Minha Vida [“My House, My Life”], this article examines the ways public policies intersect with upward mobility. Charting the public and private trajectories of dona Hilda [Mrs. Hilda] – a 97-year-old poor black woman living in the periphery of Porto Alegre – I argue that mobility arising from within the widened scope of state interventions produced multiscale alignments between local politicians, marketers, planners, community leaders, and desiring citizens. To navigate this political, economic, and communitarian terrains, dona Hilda engaged in a laborious work for housing citizenship and worthiness that converted her into the program’s exemplarycharacter. Unraveling the moral boundaries at the juncture of discourse, history and subjectivity, the cartography of subjective fragments is best suited to explore the lingering afterlives of public policies in present-day Brazil.Les politiques économiques et sociales ont construit la voie vers la réduction des inégalités et l’amélioration de la vie de millions de Brésiliens dans les années 2000. Grâce aux recherches existantes parmi les bénéficiaires du programme Minha Casa, Minha Vida (Ma Maison, Ma Vie), nous abordons les liens ethnographiques entre les politiques publiques et la mobilité ascendante. Nous avons accompagné la trajectoire publique et privée de Mme. Hilda – une femme au foyer, noire, pauvre, de 97 ans, vivant dans la banlieue de Porto Alegre – grâce à laquelle nous soutenons que la mobilité émergente au cœur de l’expansion des interventions gouvernementales s’est matérialisée pardes alignements diffus entre les politiciens locaux, les agents économiques, les planificateurset les « citoyens désirants ». Pour s’insérer dans ces terrains politiques, économiques et communautaires, Mme Hilda s’est engagée dans un travail pour la citoyenneté habitationnelle et le mérite, ce qui l’a convertie en un personnage exemplairede programme. En élucidant les limites morales entre le discours, l’histoire et la subjectivité, la cartographie de ces fragments est mieux outillée pour exploiter la continuité des politiques publiques au Brésil actuel

Phase transition in scalar ϕ4\phi^4-theory beyond the super daisy resummations

The temperature phase transition in scalar $\phi^4(x)$ field theory with spontaneous symmetry breaking is investigated in a partly resummed perturbative approach. The second Legendre transform is used and the resulting gap equation is considered in the extrema of the free energy functional. It is found that the phase transition is of first order in the super daisy as well as in a certain beyond super daisy resummations. No unwanted imaginary parts in the free energy are found but a loss of the smallness of the effective expansion parameter near the phase transition temperature is found in both cases. This means an insufficiency of the resummations or a deficit of the perturbative approach.Comment: 14 page