Blackness and Social Mobility in Brazil

This book examines the emergence of the black middle classes in urban Brazil, after 30 years of black mobilization and against the backdrop of deep economic, cultural, and political transformations taking place in recent decades within the country. One of the consequences of such transformations is said to be the restructuring of gender, race, and class relations. Utilizing qualitative research techniques such as ethnography, interviews, life histories, and focus groups among Afro-descendant families in the Northeast region of the country, the book explores contemporary race, class, and gender inequalities and their impact on daily lived experience. It reveals the dynamics underlying upward mobility, the diverse modes and experiences of social ascent into the middle classes, and the everyday negotiations involved in establishing one's status in the socio-racial hierarchy, which are not captured by other, more "macro" lenses. While some of these patterns are not peculiar to black people, this book argues that "race" shaped the contours and possibilities of social mobility in particular ways. This book is critical reading for specialists in the fields of inequality and race, class, and gender relations.

Revises the classic narrative about black social mobility in Brazil Focuses on the material, social, and symbolic practices of Afro-Brazilians Contextualizes individual social ascension in broader society

Autorentext
Doreen Joy Gordon is a Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Dr. Gordon's research interests focus on race and other social inequalities, postcolonialism, decolonization, family/kinship, religion and aesthetics, and social justice issues in Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction: A classe media negra não existe / A Black Middle Class Does not Exist.- Chapter 2. Negotiating Inequality in the 'Black Rome' of Brazil.- Chapter 3. Tension and Support: Family and Personal Connections.-Chapter 4. Sem educação, não tem nada / Without an Education, You Have Nothing.- Chapter 5. Keeping up Appearances: Beauty and the Negotiation of Status.- Chapter 6. Religion and Public Life.- Chapter 7. Mobilizing Ethnicity.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Reflections on Brazil and Beyond.