In Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro, Janice Perlman provides a substantial study of life in the 1,020 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. She attempts to relocate and reinterview her previous subjects. Perlman returned to the infamous slums of Rio de Janeiro to follow four generations over 40 years. She has interviewed almost 2,500 people including her subjects’ children and grandchildren. She blends detailed personal testimonies with insightful analyses of the urbanization of poverty, the implications of public policy and the drug trade. She also conveys a deep understanding that favelas are not merely despair-filled slums but communities, in fact, many of the residents have remained there by choice. The central theme in Favela is to provide more information about urban poverty and social mobility. She provides captivating counter perspectives that add hope to what is understood about urban poverty in Latin America. She writes using compassion and personal stories to portray larger topics substantiated with statistical analysis. Perlman’s research has provided proof of an overall improvement in living standards and a surprising increase of upward mobility, especially among families that have fewer children. However, not all of her subjects make their way out of poverty. She discovers many innovative social interventions (by community organizers, nongovernmental organizations, and international agencies) that, if replicated, could have widespread benefits. Perlman worries that the emerging democracies of Latin America have so far failed to fully incorporate their expanding urban populations and produce enough good jobs. But their uplifting reportage from the edge provides solid ground for reasoned optimism. F... ... middle of paper ... ... Given the scope of the study (i.e. a 30-year period, half-a-dozen neighborhoods, thousands of individual lives), the complexity of the object and the lack of recent ethnographic fieldwork, many such findings are not fully explained, but informed conjectures are provided. Favela touches on several topics pertinent to urban scholars, and considering Brazil’s growing economy and changing domestic infrastructure, studies like this one will only become more urgent in coming years. The book does deliver powerful insights into the feelings, drives and prospects of the studied population. In all, Favela gives a sensitive and well-documented view of the world of twenty-first-century urban marginality, and calls for more ‘prolonged involvement’ (p. 339), as Perlman puts it, to match the attitudinal trends established in the surveys with the actors' practices and worldviews.
Auyero, Javier. Poor People's Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Print.
When you hear about Brazil, what comes to your mind first? The Amazon rainforest? The Christ Redeemer statue? Soccer? Carnival? What about the 16 million Brazilians living in poverty? In Gordon Parks’ “Flavio’s Home”, the Life magazine article centers around the poverty-stricken da Silva family who reside in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He tells the story of a twelve-year-old boy, Flavio, and his misadventures as he and his family face poverty. Parks describes poverty as “savage”, it “claims victims”, and it “spreads like a cancer”. Notice what “savage”, “victims”, and “cancer” all have in common? Among these words, they arouse a feeling of pity or sadness within the reader. These words drive the reader to think about possible ways to help alleviate poverty -- this being Parks’ purpose for telling Flavio’s story. Another way Parks brought pathos into his essay is by describing the living conditions of the slums by using personification
Sally Engle Merry’s “Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers” explores the urban danger associated with living in a neighborhood with “strangers.” The ethnographic study centralizes around a multiethnic housing project in a neighborhood with high crime; Dover Square Project. She emphasizes the relevance of social groups and the impact it maintains in promoting the idea of danger in urbanities. Merry focuses her attention on the impression the residents’ have, which is “that they live in a world of dangerous and unpredictable strangers” and the contrasting reality. Throughout the article, she clarifies this misconception and explores how the boundaries between the ethnic groups promote anonymity, which then in response fosters opportunities for
In the story “Flavio’s Home” by Gordon Parks, he draws you into a world that is very descriptive and allows yourself to imagine what it would be like if you were standing there with him. Gordon was there with Life reporter Jose Gallo to find a father with a family to examine the poverty of that particular family in Rio de Janeiro. Instead they came across a boy named Flavio, they followed Flavio up the mountain to a leaning shack. Flavio was only twelve but had worked so hard from the time he could stand that his body had taken the toll. Gordon describes the favela of Catacumba, pale by comparison to New York’s Harlem and Chicago’s south side. In so doing this gives the readers in those populated city’s an idea of how much greater the poverty
In conducting this assignment we visited the neighborhood of Washington Heights. During our visits we interviewed several of the residences; so that we could get a first hand prospective of what it is like living in the community, why they settled in the community and the many changes that they have witness durning their time in the neighborhood.
Shantytowns are defined as urban slums “perched on hillside outskirts of most cities” (Sanabria, 2007, p.25) in Latin America. Common characteristics of shantytowns include run-down buildings, poor infrastructure, lack of space, high population, risk of disease, low education level, and a great lack of job opportunities (pp.24-6). These ghettos are home to the poor and socially-outcast, especially first and second generation migrants from rural areas (pp.24-5).
The discourse of self-definition in Brazil is based on perceptions of economic success, material value and social prestige. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a general scramble to reconstruct individual identity in social success and achievement. “Assertions of moral and cultural (class and racial) superiority” make up the discourses of national and regional identity, while simultaneously setting up the social building blocks of discrimination and stratification (25). Through the strange consumption of not only goods, but the commodification of experiences, the Brazilian middle class sought to redefine their lives and social status, and ultimately create a world that thrives on social division and prejudice.
In the favela of São Paulo, Brazil, 1958, Carolina Maria de Jesus rewrote the words of a famous poet, “In this era it is necessary to say: ‘Cry, child. Life is bitter,’” (de Jesus 27). Her sentiments reflected the cruel truth of the favelas, the location where the city’s impoverished inhabited small shacks. Because of housing developments, poor families were pushed to the outskirts of the city into shanty towns. Within the favelas, the infant mortality rate was high, there was no indoor plumbing or electricity, drug lords were governing forces, drug addiction was rampant, and people were starving to death. Child of the Dark, a diary written by Carolina Maria de Jesus from 1955 to 1960, provides a unique view from inside Brazil’s favelas, discussing the perceptions of good
I do not believe there is an answer for poverty because it’s such a big issue all around the world; however, it's more serious in some parts of the worlds than others. After reading “Flavio’s Home” I couldn’t understand how poverty existed in the United States as it does in Rio. America’s poverty will never compare to theirs, and the worst part is, that in other regions of the world, it's even worse. No wonder so many people put their lives at risk just to migrate to the U.S. in the hopes of a better life. People think that by migrating to better established countries than their own, it will decrease their chances of living in poverty. However poverty is just an issue that can’t ever be solved because everyone seeks more material possessions and money, which eventually runs out.
... social class marginalization in a major U.S. inner city culture. Bourgois did well explaining the social problems as well as his ideas of solutions and temporary solutions to the problems faced by most people who live in poverty. As a nation the United States must take a long, hard look at its inner cities, where the most severe poverty is found. There are many solutions to the problem of crime and violence that are being used today and yet they seem ineffective. This is due to the fact that the root cause of the crimes and violence is extreme poverty. As Bourgois said most of those who live and “work” in the barrio are looking or respect and a sense of dignity. (Bourgois, 2003) The problem is that they will never reach the success they are looking for without first helping other Americans to realize that the social status of the poor is what is holding them back.
Unfortunately, even with a highly visible police presence throughout Rio, the favelas are a different story. Average citizens often find themselves unprotected and frequently caught in the crossfire of police or criminal activity. Over the years the Brazilian government has taken a number of different approaches in dealing with favelas; from programs to eradicate the favelas to efforts to provide or improve infrastructure and permanent housing. The children of the favela spend many days in front of worn-down cultural center buildings, beating on old water bottles and cans, and singing in harmony. In August 1993 the city and the residents of Vigario Geral would never be the same (13:00). The police had lost four of their own and were on a bloody rampage, killing innocent men, women and
The first images that pop into your head when you think about poverty are the commercials on TV with the “In the arms of an Angel” song casting pictures and videos of kids in Africa, starving to death. It is all heartbreaking to imagine, but it does not mention that every year, developing countries are robbed of more than one trillion dollars that could fight poverty. disease and hunger. Gordon Parks’ distinguished way of capturing poverty in Rio de Janeiro, as mentioned in the Journal Entry “Flavio's Home,” is a great way to demonstrate the struggles of families in poverty . Photos taken by Parks made it on Life magazine which were originally based on his autobiography Voices in the Mirror in the 1990s to inform the inconsiderate rich about
Nancy Scheper- Hughes (1990) contributes an ethnographic study in the shantytown Alto do Cruzeiro of Northern Brazil including interviews, and first hand engagement in households of mothers with newborn infants. The author lived in the city and worked as community health worker (house-caller), as well as attending cultural circles organized by U.P.A.C. (Union for the Progress of Alto do Cruzeiro). Members of this union were used as key informants, research subjects, and assistants. Scheper- Hughes’ theological and methodological approach was derived from critical or Marxist phenomenology. Szwarcwald (2000) uses a geographical information system (GIS) to link mortality data and population census data, which allowed the establishment of the geographical
In 1958, Oscar Lewis began to research the subject of poverty, the results of which provided the foundation for his theory “The Culture of Poverty.” Lewis’ research revealed that those living in poverty displayed an ongoing pattern which was passed on through generations and therefore, their social trajectory was predictable. Data was collected from families in Mexico and Puerto Rico and Lewis (1966) documented the observations made on aspect of these groups of families, including “residence and employment history of each adult, family relations; income and expenditure; complete inventory of household and personal possessio...
The problems of race and urban poverty remain pressing challenges which the United States has yet to address. Changes in the global economy, technology, and race relations during the last 30 years have necessitated new and innovative analyses and policy responses. A common thread which weaves throughout many of the studies reviewed here is the dynamics of migration. In When Work Disappears, immigrants provide comparative data with which to highlight the problems of ghetto poverty affecting blacks. In No Shame in My Game, Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants are part of the changing demographics in Harlem. In Canarsie, the possible migration of blacks into a working/middle-class neighborhood prompts conservative backlash from a traditionally liberal community. In Streetwise, the migration of yuppies as a result of gentrification, and the movement of nearby-ghetto blacks into these urban renewal sites also invoke fear of crime and neighborhood devaluation among the gentrifying community. Not only is migration a common thread, but the persistence of poverty, despite the current economic boom, is the cornerstone of all these works. Poverty, complicated by the dynamics of race in America, call for universalistic policy strategies, some of which are articulated in Poor Support and The War Against the Poor.