The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Cinthia Torres Toledo ◽  
Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
School Engagement ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Brazilian Literature ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Educational Trajectories ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban State

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

Turkish Muslims in a German city: Entrepreneurial and residential self-determination

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah Hackett
Keyword(s):  
Residential Patterns ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
German City ◽  
Post War ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Term Objective

Drawing upon a collection of oral history interviews, this paper offers an insight into entrepreneurial and residential patterns and behaviour amongst Turkish Muslims in the German city of Bremen. The academic literature has traditionally argued that Turkish migrants in Germany have been pushed into self-employment, low-quality housing and segregated neighbourhoods as a result of discrimination, and poor employment and housing opportunities. Yet the interviews reveal the extent to which Bremen’s Turkish Muslims’ performances and experiences have overwhelmingly been the consequences of personal choices and ambitions. For many of the city’s Turkish Muslim entrepreneurs, self-employment had been a long-term objective, and they have succeeded in establishing and running their businesses in the manner they choose with regards to location and clientele, for example. Similarly, interviewees stressed the way in which they were able to shape their housing experiences by opting which districts of the city to live in and by purchasing property. On the whole, they perceive their entrepreneurial and residential practices as both consequences and mediums of success, integration and a loyalty to the city of Bremen. The findings are contextualised within the wider debate regarding the long-term legacy of Germany’s post-war guest-worker system and its position as a “country of immigration”.

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402098725
Author(s):  
Susanne Frank
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Artificial Lake ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Core ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
The Phoenix

Since 2000, the City of Dortmund has pursued an ambitious flagship project in the district of Hoerde. On the enormous site of a former steel plant, and in the middle of an impoverished working class district, a large new upper-middle class residential area (Phoenix) has been developed around an artificial lake. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that the project has generated mixed feelings among longtime working class dwellers in the old part of Hoerde. Widespread enthusiasm about new lakeside living is interwoven with emotions of sadness and loss, reflecting a neighborhood transformation which unmistakably demonstrates their social, cultural, and political marginalization – feelings that were not allowed to become part of the jubilant official discourse which has marketed the Phoenix project as a shining example of the City’s successful post-industrial structural change. Ever since its announcement, the project has been blamed for triggering gentrification processes – despite the fact that there are still no empirical signs of rising rents or displacement. I argue that the concept of gentrification has been taken up so readily because it is popular, polyvalent, polemical, and critical, enabling citizens to find a language to denounce the blatant social inequalities and power imbalances that competitive urbanism has fostered in Dortmund. However, I also claim that the core of the prevailing sadness – the loss of the familiar neighborhood which could not be grieved over – remains under the radar of standard gentrification discourse. The article thus proposes neighborhood melancholy as a concept to account for the unclear, subconscious, and deeply ambivalent ways in which long-established residents experience their neighborhood’s transformation, expressed within the rubric of gentrification.

scholarly journals Between field and home: notes from the balcony

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110205
Author(s):  
Shruti Ragavan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Village ◽  
The City

Balconies, windows and terraces have come to be identified as spaces with newfound meaning over the past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdowns. There was not only a marked increase in the use of these spaces, but more importantly a difference in the very nature of this use since March 2020. It is keeping this latter point in mind, that I make an attempt to understand the spatial mobilities afforded by the balcony in the area of ethnographic research. The street overlooking my balcony, situated amidst an urban village in the city of Delhi – one of my field sites, is composed of middle and lower-middle class residents, dairy farms and farmers, bovines and other nonhumans. In this note, through ethnographic observations, I reflect upon the balcony as constituting that liminal space between ‘field’ and ‘home’, as well as, as a spatial framing device which conditions and affects our observations and interactions. This is explored by examining two elements – the gendered nature of the space, and the notion of ‘distance and proximity’, through personal narratives of engaging-with the field, and subjects-objects of study in the city.

Decolonization and Coloniality in Human Development: Neoliberalism, Globalization and Narratives of Indian Youth

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 207-221
Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Global South ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
American Psychology ◽  
Urban Indian

In this article, I argue that globalization is interwoven with colonialism and coloniality and both psychology and human development are shaped by the enduring legacy of Eurocentric colonial knowledge. In particular, I draw on my ethnographic research in Pune, India, to show how the transnational elite, middle- and working-class urban Indian youth are engaging with new practices of globalization. I examine how particular class practices shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about their self, identity, and family. This article is organized around three questions: (a) How has Euro-American psychology as a dominant force supported colonization and racialized models of human development? (b) What kind of stories do urban Indian youth from varied classes tell about their identity formation in contexts of neoliberal globalization? (c) How can we create and promote models of human development and psychology that are inclusive of the lives of people who live in the Global South?

Streets, scum and people: Discourses of (in)civility in postwar Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 326-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azra Hromadžić
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Political Inclusion ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City

Building on more than ten years of ethnographic research in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article documents discourses and practices of civility as mutuality with limits. This mode of civility operates to regulate the field of socio-political inclusion in Bosnia-Herzegovina; it stretches to include self-described “urbanites” while, at the same time, it excludes “rural others” and “rural others within.” In order to illustrate the workings of civility as mutuality with limits, the focus is on interconnections and messy relationships between different aspects of civility: moral, political/civil, and socio-cultural. Furthermore, by using ethnography in the manner of theory, three assumptions present in theories of civility are challenged. First, there is an overwhelming association of civility with bourgeois urban space where civility is located in the city. However, the focus here is on how civility works in the context of Balkan and Bosnian semi-periphery, suspended between urbanity and rurality. Second, much literature on civility implies that people enter public spaces in ways that are unmarked. As is shown here, however, people’s bodies always carry traces of histories of inequality. Third, scholarship on civility mainly takes the materiality of urban space for granted. By paying careful attention to what crumbling urban space looks and feels like, it is demonstrated how civility is often entangled with, experienced through and articulated via material things, such as ruins. These converging, historically shaped logics, geographies and materialities of (in)civility illustrate how civility works as an “incomplete horizon” of political entanglement, recognition and mutuality, thus producing layers of distinction and hierarchies of value, which place a limit on the prospects of democratic politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and beyond.

scholarly journals Juventude, imagem e cidade: experiências de pesquisa etnográfica com jovens urbanos em Porto Alegre

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (44) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo Stefano Rosa Gómez ◽  
Jose Luis Abalos Junior ◽  
Manoel Cláudio Mendes Gonçalves da Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
City Image ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Imaging Approach ◽  
The City

O presente artigo é resultado de um diálogo entre três experiências de produção coletiva de pesquisa etnográfica, que têm em comum os temas juventude, imagem e cidade. Um conjunto de nove etnografias visuais foi realizado a partir de uma parceria entre os pesquisadores associados ao Núcleo de Antropologia Visual (NAVISUAL/PPGAS/UFRGS) e os estudantes da disciplina de Antropologia Visual (2016/1) ministrada ao curso de Ciências Sociais da UFRGS sob a coordenação da antropóloga e professora Cornelia Eckert. As reflexões que aqui apresentamos percorrem um processo de ensino-aprendizagem implicado na experiência dos três autores enquanto estagiários docentes nesta disciplina. A proposta lançada consistiu em um exercício etnográfico a ser desenvolvido ao longo do semestre letivo, tendo como eixo temático as “intervenções artísticas urbanas”, no qual os discentes trabalhariam coletivamente no formato de grupos de trabalho, sob a orientação dos estagiários e pesquisadores do Navisual. Como desdobramento de tais experiências, foi produzida uma expografia compartilhada em parceria com o Departamento de Difusão Cultural (DDC/UFRGS) e o projeto UNIFOTO, que ficou exposta na galeria do Hall da Reitoria da UFRGS entre os meses de agosto e setembro de 2016. Destacamos neste trabalho o diálogo e convergências entre três abordagens que percorrem universos empíricos específicos na cidade de Porto Alegre - as Batalhas de MCs, os itinerários e trajetórias de jovens praticantes de skate, e o evento Feira do Hip Hop - propondo uma abordagem imagética em torno do tema das “intervenções artísticas urbanas”, tendo em vista compreender as formas sensíveis através das quais estes sujeitos experienciam, praticam e transformam o viver urbano.Palavras Chaves: Cidade; Imagem; Juventude; Antropologia Visual; Formas Sensíveis.Youth, Image and city: experiences of ethnographic research with urban youngs in Porto AlegreAbstract  This paper is a result of a dialogue between three experiences of collective ethnographic work which have in common the categories of image, youth and city. A group of nine visual ethnographies was carried departed of a partnership of researchers associated with the “Núcleo de Antropologia Visual (NAVISUAL/PPGAS/UFRGS) and the students of the course of Visual Anthropology assign in Social Science under the coordination of Cornelia Eckert. The reflection that we present here go through a process of learning and teaching, based on the experience of the three autors. The proposal launched consisted in a etnographic exercise to be developped alonge the semester, under the bow of a tematic pivot: "urban artistic intervention".As a result of these experiences, a shared exhibition was produced in partnership with the Department of Cultural Diffusion (DDC / UFRGS) and the UNIFOTO project, which was exhibited in the gallery of the Rectory Hall of UFRGS between August and September 2016. We highlight in this work the dialogue and convergences between three approaches that explore specific empirical universes in the city of Porto Alegre - the MCs Battles, the itineraries and trajectories of young skateboarders, and the Hip Hop Fair - proposing an imaging approach around (Sansot, 1983, Ledrut, 1984; Rocha, 1995) through which these subjects experience, practice and transform urban living.Key words: City. Image. Youth. Visual Anthropology. Sensible Forms.     

scholarly journals What happens between the roça and the urban periphery? Some questions about movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Felipe Rocha Benites
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Minas Gerais ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Small Farms ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The North ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Urban Periphery ◽  
The City

Abstract This article explores the idea of movement through an analysis of the flows between rural and urban areas, more specifically between small farms (roças) and the peripheries of big cities. I turn to my own ethnographic research on rural and riverside communities in the north of Minas Gerais, as well as ethnographies produced on populations in the Cerrado Mineiro, in order to question the primacy of movement in the definitions of the city and to extend the notion through an approach that incorporates the relations between persons and things circulating in both these social spaces.

The City in Brazilian Literature

1983 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Moser ◽  
Elizabeth Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Literature ◽  
The City
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