Tracking the judicial network

ethnographic notes on circulation between bureaucracies

Abstract

The present ethnographic account is part of a research that was conducted within the bureaucratic judicial spaces of Foro Central I in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, from July 2021 to July 2022. The initial objective of the research was to immerse in the "Judiciary Network," aiming to identify, track, and understand the actors, practices, artifacts, and relationships established daily in this space-time of the Judiciary Power. The understanding of the dynamics in this space was achieved through observing the everyday practices that give meaning and coherence to the performance of the buildings housing this normative power, although they often remain unrecognized as an integral part of it. The text explores the "Judiciary Network", that is, the sets of relationships that are established, experienced, and produce practices and discourses fabricated daily by the different actors in this context, often defying the social imaginary about the production of criminal processes, traversed by contingencies and agencies that transcend hierarchies and procedural manuals.