Processos de urbanização

The study was conducted to search first, for factors that would explain the mobilization and collective actions of the textile workers of Sao Jose dos Campos, state of Sao Paulo (Brazil), in the years 1956-1964 and, second, to understand how the political environment had helped shape the workers' militancy in this period. The analysis was informed by a theoretical approach that combined a causal model of constraints on collective actions and struggle for power (interaction with the government and other members in the polity) with a purposive model stressing the contenders' internal structure (interests, organization, mobilization) in its effects on the capacity to act. The micro and macrodynamics of development of organizational ties among the textile workers were explored by focusing on some aspects of class formation as related to the processes of urbanization and industrialization of Sao Jose dos Campos, and on the sharpening of their grievances as a result of the post World War II cycles of the textile industry in Brazil. The specific design was to look at that group of workers over time (from the more quiescent years pre-1957 to the militant years 1957-1964) searching for differentials in those variables affecting collective actions, with special emphasis on the links between workers' cohesion and protest, as they were affected by the liberalism of the populist regimes in the period covered by the study. The thesis explores the social bases of workers' solidarity both in the sense of evolving group structures and networkings, and of the emergence of a shared social identity among the workers as related to residential patterns (highly segregated workers' neighborhoods) and migratory patterns (stressing the common geographical origins of migrant workers). It also examines the influence of shop floor grievances and of the breakdown of paternalism in industrial relations on the workers' mobilization for protest, and the impact of the fluctuations in the standard of living on workers' propensity to join concerted actions. The study criticises the assumptions of apathy of the working classes, as found in formulations of the theories of populism, and suggests the need to focus on organizational processes.

Essa pesquisa trata do processo de constituição do município de Diadema, localizado na região sul do Estado de São Paulo, através do estudo do núcleo rural de Vila Conceição, atual centro dessa cidade. Vila Conceição, loteamento criado a partir de uma antiga fazenda em 1924, é importante porque como bairro rural, tornou-se sede distrital em 1948, recebendo a denominação de Vila Diadema e em 1958, quando o distrito de Diadema emancipou-se do município de São Bernardo do Campo, passou a ser sede municipal. Mas nesse período, Vila Conceição não era uma região de economia desenvolvida, característica que encontramos, principalmente no bairro de Piraporinha que, no início da década de 1950, possuía duas indústrias, a Inbra e a Solidor. Diante disso, nosso objetivo é compreender as peculiaridades dos processos de emancipação, industrialização e urbanização em Diadema, tomando como foco, as transformações ocorridas em Vila Conceição, posteriormente, Vila Diadema.

The dissertation explores cultural representations of the new Latin American city that has emerged since the waning of national-popular development and the advent of neoliberal globalization. The discussion focuses on Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City in the 1980s and 1990s. The main argument is that, with the withering of the modern city and its narratives, new (post-civil and post-national) subjectivities have emerged, and that cultural cartographies of the city can help us to better grasp these new configurations. The first chapter, "A Totality Made of Fragments," examines the construction of the image of the city in Modernist culture as an allegory for the totalizing and integrating impulse of the nation in the work of Fuentes, Sábato, and Vargas Llosa. The second chapter, "Reading the City Like a Text," explores the relationship between walking in the city and writing about the city in Rubem Fonseca's and Clarice Lispector's texts on Rio de Janeiro, focusing on these texts' critique of literature and literacy. The third chapter, "Public Spaces and Urban Geographies of Civility," engages uses and figurations of public spaces as sites for the expression of civil society. By reference to Poniatowska's chronicle-testimonio about the student massacre at Tlatelolco in 1968 and Eltit's novel about Santiago de Chile under dictatorship in the 1980s, this chapter offers a critique of the normative ideologies of civil society and public space. The fourth chapter, "Homosexual Desire and Urban Territories," examines a novel by Zapata (1979) and an ethnographic study by Perlongher (1987) in order to map out how cartographies of queer desire in Mexico City and São Paulo disrupt public space's drive towards closure and universality. The fifth and final chapter, "Deterritorialization and the Limits of the City," concentrates on neoliberal globalization in the 1990s in Buenos Aires. It combines analyses of cultural theory, fiction, and film in order to show the emergence of new, post-national subjectivities that are reshaping the city in ways that depart radically from Modernism's drive towards integration, citizenship, and national culture.

In the 1950s Brazil experienced transformative changes including the nascent emergence of democratic elections after 15 years of repressive dictatorship, the suicide of its President and the construction of a new federal capital city in Brasília. Optimism and a forward-looking spirit, summarized in the 1956 Presidential motto, "50 years of progress in 5," suffused all spheres of the national experience. The modernization of Brazil would translate into the end of underdevelopment and a structure of dependency put in place with colonialism. My dissertation explores this historical moment through the Rio de Janeiro-based geometric abstract art movement, Neoconcretism. I study how this group of artists intersected with and contributed to the growing network of modernizing institutions that held the promise of a Brazil finally "catching up." Influenced by early twentieth century European avant-garde art styles, Neoconcrete art brought together an art practice and theory based in expressiveness, intersubjectivity and sensorial experience, which continues to influence contemporary Latin American art production today. In this project I argue that Neoconcretism was a transformative cultural force that shaped Brazilian modernism and national culture. Neoconcrete artists and aesthetic ideals contributed to many areas of national production including literature, the newspaper industry, education, and architecture and urbanism. Departing from scholarship that examines Neoconcretism within the internationalization of Latin American art, I am especially attentive to the influence of local discourses on its stylistic and intellectual formation. Given the group's collaborative nature, I use an interdisciplinary and cultural studies methodology to examine the artworks and writings of the group members in relationship to the national project of modernization and nation-building developed by the governmental sectors, private institutions and the intellectual and cultural classes. My dissertation underscores the way culture operated as an essential political tool, distinct from traditional genres such as propaganda, in the production of the "national". The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the Neoconcretists structures the organization of the dissertation and each chapter is conceived as a dialogical relationship between members of the group and Brazilian society. Chapter one establishes the broader Brazilian concrete project, and positions the emergence of abstract art in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as directly tied to the developing political and social climate proposing the construction of a "new" Brazil. In chapter two I argue for the equally generative roles of word and image in the production of meaning in Neoconcretism through an analysis of Neoconcrete poetry and the two main theoretical texts that defined Neoconcretism. I demonstrate how the movement was marked by positions of anti-progress and anti-rationalism that challenged the dominant political ideology. Chapter three turns to the Brazilian newspaper, Jornal do Brasil, which served as a place of employment for Neoconcrete artists, as well as a place of publication and circulation of Neoconcrete artworks and writings. I argue for the paper's generative role as a site of publicity for the group and its significance as a place of translation between high art and popular culture. Chapter four puts Neoconcretism and the construction of Brasília into direct engagement to argue for the influence of the national architectural boom on the artistic production of the Neoconcrete artists, but also to demonstrate how their works performed a critique of the state-sponsored project of modernization. In the dissertation I argue that the study of Neoconcretism unsettles any single narrative of Brazilian modernism and provides a lens to re-evaluate Brazil's "Years of Confidence" and the making of the nation through industrialization.

Due to increased urbanization in the global south during the later half of the 20th century, a severe lack of suitable housing and related infrastructure in low-income communities has developed. In order to address housing deficit issues, particularly in large metropolitan areas, national and local governments have implemented various policies and programs intended to improve housing conditions of residents living in poverty-stricken communities. To determine what types of programs provide housing for low-income residents, this thesis will examine select housing programs implemented in the South American cities of Caracas, Venezuela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and São Paulo. Brazil from the 1990s through the early 21st century. This study will provide an overview of urban housing in Latin America during the 20th century, including housing policies that contributed to the growth of housing settlements for low-income residents. The impact of the proliferation of low-income housing in urban areas will be discussed. This study will then present a narrative on select urban housing improvement and upgrading programs implemented in the low-income neighborhoods in the study cities. Data and other pertinent information regarding these initiatives were obtained from urban housing policy reports and briefs and program evaluations. The overarching goal of this assessment is to establish if programmatic outcomes were successful and to examine the impacts of such programs in the social and economic realms.

In the late 1940s, as Europe lay smoldering in the ashes of the Second World War, Brazil entered one of its most optimistic periods in recent history. Nowhere was this more evident than in São Paulo, where the local press crowed about the city’s unprecedented growth with such headlines as “the locomotive of Brazil” and “the world’s fastest growing city.” Paulistano pride was particularly strong among middle and upper class boosters, a category that included an array of urban professionals and cultural producers. Inspired by, and in dialogue with, individuals and institutions driving New York’s own rise to international prominence, these Paulistanos envisioned São Paulo as the next world-class city. However, to become a New York in the tropics, elite Paulistanos believed that São Paulo had to undergo a drastic process of city remaking – both in terms of its aesthetic identity and built environment. “Making the Modern and Cultured City” explores this complex process of city remaking through a transnational investigation of artistic production, architecture, and urban planning in order to elucidate the opportunities, challenges, and consequences of overlaying a particular vision of the city onto a dense, and rapidly changing socio-cultural ecology. I argue that the selective appropriation and reconfiguration of ideas and practices associated with New York that were circulating in the years after WWII enabled leading Paulistanos to pursue an idealized urban sensibility at home, while projecting São Paulo internationally as modern and cultured. To these actors, this meant a city with modern art museums where local artists could engage in abstract art, a city with modernist skyscrapers, and a city that embraced scientific urban planning. However, I contend that this process of transforming São Paulo – aesthetically, architecturally, and spatially – revealed anxieties about race, class, and culture among leading Paulistanos, exacerbated existing divisions within the city, and triggered a response from other sectors of society including the urban poor. Equally important to this dissertation is an exploration of transnational currents flowing in both directions. Drawing on archival evidence collected in São Paulo and New York, this project uncovers the extent to which leading New York reformers and New York-based institutions not only inspired and collaborated with their Paulistano counterparts, but how their experience in and impression of São Paulo as a rising city and a center for the arts shaped developments in New York – from efforts to enhance MoMA’s visibility abroad to the revitalization of Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas. By focusing on the networks of exchange between São Paulo and New York, and taking seriously the multidirectional flows of influence, this project illustrates how North-South elites worked together (not always harmoniously) to create a shared (but not identical) vision of the modern and cultured city in the postwar period.

Joao Teodoro Xavier, who served as president (governor) of Sao Paulo, Brazil, from 1872 to 1875, directed his efforts to province-wide reform and to providing significant impetus to the modernization of the province's capital. Hindered by crippling opposition in the legislative assembly and by the lack of delegates to carry out his mandates in the interior, his record of actual improvement outside the capital is no more impressive than had been that of his predecessors in dealing with recurrent problems facing the province. On the other hand, it was the capital that offered the most propitious stage for Teodoro's innovative approaches, nurtured by humanitarian ideals and theoretically sound economic and political principles, because he had a more reliable constituency in the city and enjoyed fuller executive autonomy there in carrying out his initiatives. His program of urban improvements signified for him far more than simply the coming of age of the capital of the province; all sections of the population would benefit from a healthier, more attractive city which would offer increased employment and economic opportunities, better facilities for recreation to members of all social classes, and would bring greater prestige to all paulistas. Joao Teodoro did not change the destiny of the city, but he was a native son of Sao Paulo who recognized its destiny and, appearing at a time when he could sponsor urban improvements, came to exert considerable influence on its history by imparting the impetus that saw the capital become within decades the second leading metropolitan complex in Brazil- The study of his administration also lends itself to comments on the viability of provincial government under the Brazilian Empire.

This study provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the collective actions of coffee producers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, between 1920 and 1930. Its main goal is to clarify the conditions under which export sector elites mobilize and act cohesively to promote their political leadership and hegemony, and how this may condition the transition to industrialization and the deepening of a capitalist social order in dependent societies. Elite collective action is gauged here in terms of the extent of associational mobilization and differentiation and of active agreement or disagreement with respect to major issues. The centerpiece of the evidence is a sample of collective action events culled largely from the three most important newspapers of the period and analyzed by computer. The examination of the claims and participants in these events made possible the detection and assessment of factionalism and cleavages within the coffee export elite. The analyses show increasing levels of associational and political action by traditional coffee elites. These aimed largely at the state government and involved repeated demands of immigration programs, tax reform and control of regulatory mechanisms affecting the export sector. The data also show increasing levels of rancor with the government and factionalism within and between the planter organizations. The durability of these claims and cleavages was corroborated by the distribution of claim-making across the coffee zone and their continuity through time. By mid-decade, a veritable rupture was brewing between a group of traditional planters and statemakers. From that point on there took shape a generalized offensive to reaffirm traditional coffee elite dominance and hegemony in which Paulista economic elites conspired, organized or supported dissident political organizations antagonistic to the ruling party and the regime. The findings from the Sao Paulo case show that export sector expansion may lead to processes of differentiation which hamper, rather than promote, planter political capacity; and which may create political conflict rather than integration and consolidation. They also challenge the notion that large estate owners can easily maintain their hold over the export economy and subsequent processes of development and industrialization.

This thesis examines, via two original research projects, how individuals used dominant political discourses to expand the meanings of citizenship in modern Brazil. By engaging in debates over the meaning of “Brazilianness,” “citizenship,” and “human rights” discourses, individuals and communities reconstructed their identities. Two chapters on distinct periods of significant social change—the first on post-abolition turn-of-the-century and the second on the period of military dictatorship in the late twentieth century—reveal how individuals negotiated for membership in their local communities as well as the broader society. In some situations marginalized people believed the discourse of racial democracy as an effective means to work towards insertion into larger discourses about politics and the nation. The Afro-Brazilian community of Sao Paulo in the early twentieth century held this view. In the late twentieth century many marginalized communities utilized a discourse that transcended the nation because the military government claimed ownership on national discourses and tightly confined the space in which people could define and represent themselves publicly. Invoking a discourse of human rights allowed many Church members to address the government's restrictions on public discourse pertaining to citizenship and forge a new, transnational identity.