Another urban grammar: Black perspectives on social mobility in twentieth century São Paulo

Osei, Cassandra Abena

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115766 Copy

Description

Title

Another urban grammar: Black perspectives on social mobility in twentieth century São Paulo

Author(s)

Osei, Cassandra Abena

Issue Date

2022-04-21

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Dávila, Jerry

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Dávila, Jerry

Committee Member(s)

• Hertzman, Marc
• Harrison, Faye V.
• Brosseder, Claudia

Department of Study

History

Discipline

History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Brazil
• social mobility
• race
• gender
• class
• Black Brazilians
• São Paulo
• Black women
• Latin America
• housing
• schools
• labor
• radio
• media
• popular culture
• oral history
• African Diaspora
• archives

Abstract

“Another Urban Grammar: Black Perspectives on Social Mobility in Twentieth Century São Paulo,” is a social history primarily situated in the years of Brazil’s Second Republic (1946 – 1964). This dissertation rethinks Black paulistanos’ pursuit of upward mobility across class and gender in addition to race. It makes three claims. First, Black paulistanos, I argue, actively made new and recast existing prevalent symbols of economic, social, and cultural capital to fit their needs for upward mobility. Second, because Black paulistanos were not a homogenous group, I assert that many of these efforts created counter-knowledges and discourses rejecting or transforming practices and symbols of upward mobility common to São Paulo’s middle-classes. And third, I believe Black paulistanos, and especially women, innovated critiques and interventions in the domestic family sphere, labor market, education, and consumption, demonstrating that they routinely participated in the debates surrounding social cohesion under the Second Republic’s crises of urban development, migration, and inflation. I analyze photo essays and advertisements from national and local magazines, newspapers, and tabloids; educational debates in Black newspapers; pre-existing intergenerational family oral histories; and two interviews I conducted with Black women of divergent education, neighborhood, and class markers. Using these visual and textual sources while adapting Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital, my work conceives of social mobility as an opportunity to reconceive race, class, and gender hierarchies during periods of political and economic turmoil. Thus, the study of Black social mobility in São Paulo during the Second Republic offers insight into the construction of social mobility as both a dynamic, active practice of historical subjects and archives alike.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Cassandra Abena Wirekuaa Osei

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