The Business of Belonging: Homocapitalism, Homonormativity and Cu/Queer Economic Geographies in São Paulo, Brazil

This paper examines corporate LGBTQ+ activism and the productive incorporation of queers into capitalism in Brazil. Mobilising transnational queer materialist critiques in tandem with critical perspectives from teoria do cu , the paper sheds light on how homonormativity operates not simply as a set of cultural norms or representational tropes, but as a structural and ideological formation that integrates queer inclusion into global circuits of capitalist accumulation while obscuring the material and historical violence sustaining those circuits. The paper draws from fieldwork conducted at the Out & Equal Forum in São Paulo, exploring how corporate investments in LGBTQ+ diversity operate within wider economic geographies that differentially fold queers into global capitalism. In so doing, the paper contributes to extant debates in queer economic geography, underlining the importance of moving beyond hegemonic homonormativity critiques to grasp the complex, uneven ways in which queers are incorporated into (homo)capitalism.