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2003 EventsFavelas: Race, Urban Poverty and Policy in Brazil
Professor Oliveira's new thesis, Examining Favelas: Are They Really Places of Racial Segregation or More Areas for the New Urban Poor?, assesses the contemporary favela community that presently demonstrates a situation both of economic decay and increasingly an urban refuge for middle class inhabitants. The contradiction of the contemporary favela Professor Oliveira posits is the result of government neglect for popular housing in Rio de Janeiro. It is in the context of the Durban summit that Professor Turner will present his talk analyzing recently announced Brazilian government policies on social and racial inclusion. His talk will discuss the efficacy of policies such as compensatory programs, affirmative action, and quotas in dealing with systemic problems of marginalization that too often have characterized the reality of so many African descendant Brazilians. Ney dos Santos Oliveira is Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro. Currently spending his post-doctoral sabbatical at Hunter College's Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center and Hunter's Department of Urban Studies, Dr. Oliveira's research examines racism and urban poverty in Brazil and the United States. Professor Oliveira earned his PhD in Urban Planning at Columbia University in 1995. Dr. Oliveira's published research has addressed comparatively such issues as Brazilian and American racism and public housing and community development strategies to combat poverty in Harlem, the South Bronx, and Niteroi-Rio de Janeiro. His doctoral research resulted in an innovative mapping exercise to trace poverty and spatial racial segregation in low-income areas of Niteroi-Rio de Janeiro. Professor Oliveira has been the recipient of several Brazilian government scholarships, and in 1994 and 1996 was invited by the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars in Washington D.C. to conduct research on housing, poverty, race, and class in Brazil. J. Michael Turner is the Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Co-founder of the Global Afro Latino and Caribbean Initiative (GALCI), and Professor of History at Hunter College, City University of New York. Based in part upon his work for the Brazil Office of the Ford Foundation in the 1980s, Professor Turner's interest in social justice for African-descendants in Brazil has expanded to developing advocacy programs in conjunction with the Franklin H. Williams African Diaspora Institute and Caribbean Cultural Center for Afro Latino NGOs in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Panama, Venezuela, Honduras, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic, among other countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. Initially designed to support the work of Afro Latino NGOs attending the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and Other Forms of Social Intolerance (Durban UN Conference, 2001), GALCI also collaborated with its members to provide better and more regular access to such multi-lateral funding institutions as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Inter-American Foundation, and private donors such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. When: Tuesday, November 11, 5 PM To reserve, please send email to brazilproject@gc.cuny.edu.
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Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies |