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Research Project Blog Post

Education is extremely important to me as a future teacher; it creates opportunities but can also be easily manipulated to ruin lives. Educational policy plays a large role in national identity, culture, and society. Betsy DeVos is currently enacting her school choice initiative, saying that a person’s zip code should not determine their education. While that opens discussion over national issues like lower-income areas and the lack of education there, she is also continuing to favor elite families whose children are able to change schools and ignoring impoverished families whose children are less likely to be able to be accepted into and move to different schools, an obvious divide in U.S. national identity. Education also plays into the U.S.’s history: education determined who was a citizen and therefore who could vote and run in elections; slaves were not allowed to be educated for fear that they would realize their rights and revolt, and educated slaves often wrote novels depicting their lives, hoping to appeal to white abolitionists and the greater United States’ population. Therefore, my question is this: when have people earned the right to be educated, how are they educated, and how does this play into the culture and society of Brazil?

My research will then delve into two sections: history and culture. My history section will deal with Brazil only. Here, I am to research what education was like when the recognized country—before the Empire—began to form. In class, we have used the Constitution to look at race relations. I would like to use a full translation of the Constitution to look at laws and amendments to learn who had the vote and who could run as a candidate and if education had a role in those persons’ lives. I would again like to use this to learn who was a citizen.

My cultural aspect of research will investigate how the people of Brazil understand their own education. For this, I would like to do a comparative analysis. In the U.S., there is a competitiveness to our education: the government becomes outraged when what we believe to be a “lesser” country does better than us in testing. I think that learning how the government of Brazil and Brazilian citizens perceive education compared to other nations will allude to their feeling of national pride and identity. Education is a huge divide amongst class systems in the United States. Comparing this to Brazil will show how education can help or harm this system and show that this issue is not just the U.S.’s, but the world’s.

For primary sources, I intend to use famous educational leaders’ work—like Paulo Freire—to see how they have affected education in Brazil. Again, I will use the Brazilian Constitution to glean information about citizenship and voting rights. This will help my historical analysis of Brazilian educational policy. I will also use information from the Ministry of Education’s website and webpages of several educational groups in Brazil; for example, the Science without Borders program. For secondary sources, I intend to use analyses of Brazilian educational programs, like those done by Javier Luque, David Evans, and Barbara Bruns. Utopian Pedagogies and Cold War Politics of Literacy will also enlighten readers about how policies of the past have worked. These will help my cultural comparisons in the second element of the project.

Sources:

Utopian Pedagogy, edited by Richard J. F. Day, Mark Coté, Greig de Peuter

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy by Paulo Freire

The Science Without Borders program: http://www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/web/csf-eng/faq

A Decade of Research on School Principals: http://consort.library.denison.edu/record=b4832655~S6

Ministry of Education: http://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php

Achieving World Class Education in Brazil: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/993851468014439962/pdf/656590REPLACEM0hieving0World0Class0.pdf

Research Project: The Development of Brazilian Cities – Jordan

I have always had a passion for cities and urbanism, and I find the urban environment in Brazil to be fascinating. Therefore, I wish to examine the historical development of Brazilian cities in some capacity to see what the development of Brazilian cities tells us about the culture and way of life. More specifically, I’m looking at two different Brazilian cities: Belo Horizonte and Salvador as they exemplify two distinct development patterns and urban layouts. For Belo Horizonte, I would look at the logic behind the planning of the city with an eye towards the specific purpose behind the planning of the city and how that planning affected the future development of the city. Alternatively, I would like to look at Salvador, which follows a very different model of development given its historic purpose. I would look at the creation and maintenance of the historic Portuguese old town and the more organic development plan of the rest of the city. Looking at a city’s development as a way for understanding more about Brazil would be a unique way to deepen our understanding of the country and involves some unique primary sources.

If looking at Belo Horizonte, I would hope to discover more about the effect that the more industrial and resource extraction foundational purpose had on the development of the city. This would be analyzed through a look at the original plan for the city and the relation of the future developments to the initial plan for the city. Inherently I think this research would have to involve a look at class or racial distribution throughout the city in light of the initial plan of the city, and thus the city plan itself and the history of development could be a way for understanding the patterns of settlement and stratification in the modern city. An urban-based analysis could also reveal additional elements of race relations and attitudes in Brazil

I believe my aims would be fairly similar if looking at Salvador, but the method of inquiry would be different by nature of the city. As one of the oldest cities in the Americas, Salvador has a longer and more organic history than Belo Horizonte. Furthermore, it has a distinct and unique old town in the Pelourinho that contrasts with the more organic growth of the rest of the modern city. Furthermore, the city’s historic division into the high and low town also allow for an analysis of class relations, and its site as a major city of the Transatlantic slave trade makes it very diverse today and thus an interesting place to look at transculturation in city layout and design as a way of understanding how cultures interact to produce new culture. Again, I would have to look at race and class distribution as part of this analysis too as part of the look at the built environment, and I think Salvador would be an excellent place to look for this analysis.

As we have learned in class so far, Brazil is a remarkably diverse country that is the result of a variety of factors throughout its history. This history has led to the unique country we see today, and one way of understanding how this country came to be and some of the results of this historic diversity is by looking at the cities and tracing their unique development patterns. Despite their incredible importance to the history and economy of Brazil, my limited research into the subject has not revealed much research on cities in relation to the unique country that Brazil is today. Therefore, analyzing the development of one of Brazil’s cities could reveal new information about how and why Brazil is the way it is.

 

Secondary Sources

BARBIER, M. B., and Michel ANTONELLI. “Salvador de Bahia. Evolution Du Centre Ville.” Cahiers Du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien, no. 37 (1981): 269–71.

Cintra, Antônio Octávio. “Urban Development in Brazil: A Study of Policies and Unpolicies.” Luso-Brazilian Review 17, no. 2 (1980): 213–32.

Friendly, Abigail. “Urban Policy, Social Movements, and the Right to the City in Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives 44, no. 2 (March 2017): 132–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X16675572.

“Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia – UNESCO World Heritage Centre.” Accessed February 10, 2018. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/309.

Levine, Robert M. “The Singular Brazilian City of Salvador.” Luso-Brazilian Review 30, no. 2 (1993): 59–69.

Lima, Zeuler. “Preservation as Confrontation: The Work of Lina Bo Bardi.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 2, no. 2 (2005): 24–33.

Rezende, Vera F. “Brazilian City Planners, American City Planning? New Perspectives on Urban Planning in Rio de Janeiro, 1930–1945: Research from the Field.” Planning Perspectives 25, no. 4 (October 2010): 505–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2010.505071.

Rio, Vicente del, and William Siembieda. Contemporary Urbanism Brazil: Beyond Brasília. University Press of Florida, 2009. http://0-muse.jhu.edu.dewey2.library.denison.edu/book/17466/.

Smith, Harry, and Emilio José Luque-Azcona. “The Historical Development of Built Heritage Awareness and Conservation Policies: A Comparison of Two World Heritage Sites: Edinburgh and Salvador Do Bahia.” GeoJournal 77, no. 3 (2012): 399–415.

Violich, Francis. “URBAN GROWTH AND PLANNING IN BRAZIL.” Ekistics 7, no. 42 (1959): 320–24.

Primary Sources

Grant (M.D.), Andrew. History of Brazil: Comprising a Geographical Account of That Country, Together with a Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Have Occurred There Since Its Discovery … H. Colburn, 1809.

“Salvador (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) – Population Statistics, Charts, Map, Location, Weather and Web Information.” Accessed February 12, 2018. https://www.citypopulation.de/php/brazil-bahia.php%3Fcityid%3D292740805.

“The City of Salvador – World Digital Library.” Accessed February 12, 2018. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/219/#q=salvador%2C+bahia&qla=en.

“Ville de Saint Salvador, Capitale Du Bresil. – David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.” Accessed February 12, 2018. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~232921~5509492:Ville-de-Saint-Salvador,-capitale-d?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/where%2FSalvador%2B%252528Brazil%252529;q:salvador;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=4&trs=5.

Wells, James William. Exploring and Travelling Three Thousand Miles Through Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Maranhão: With an Appendix Containing Statistics and Observations on Climate, Railways Central Sugar Factories, Mining, Commerce, and Finance … S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887

Google-Books-ID: Kuq_AAAAIAAJ

Research Project Tongtong Wu

Brazil is a country with diverse racial groups like Europeans, Africans, indigenous people and Asian immigrants. Miscegenation was common in Brazil since colonial era under the ideology of white supremacy, and the white Brazilians believed that Brazil would eventually become a white society as a result of mixing races. Even though Brazil stresses racial democracy, there are discriminations, certain racial dominations and socioeconomic difference among different racial groups.
During the period of slavery abolition, Brazilian slave masters gradually lost those Afro-Brazilians who were their main source of labor. To compensate for the labor loss, the Brazilian slave owners to lower their overall cost, they tried to hire cheap Chinese laborers in Latin America, the US and Guangdong Province. The Brazilian slave masters took advantage of Chinese immigrants were distant from their home country with little protection from the Chinese government and had lower status as a new group of settlers. The Chinese government negotiated with the Brazilian government reluctantly on sending Chinese laborers to Brazil temporarily under a five-year contract while granting the Chinese the freedom to entry and exit Brazil.
Brazilians reacted to Chinese immigration with different attitudes. Some regarded hiring Chinese laborers, as a transitory move for the abolition of slavery, while others were fear of Chinese immigration would worsen the existing racial problems. There were stereotypes about Chinese immigrants with compliments and dislike simultaneously. There were compliments that the Chinese were hard-working, tough and resistant to hardships, while others said that Chinese were unwilling to fit into the society. Unlike the Indians and Africans who Christianized themselves after arriving at Brazil, Chinese with their unique cultural heritage made them unable to assimilate into a western society. As an isolated group in Brazil, the Chinese Brazilians were neglected. Similar situation also happened to the Brazilian Japanese, which they were living in Brazil as a unique group with some level of discrimination. As unique racial and ethnic groups in Brazil, they struggled to live in Brazil and build connections with their home country.
As a Chinese international student in the US, I would like to explore the life of Asian immigrants in Brazil because their struggles would make me better understand discrimination and the hardships they have. To incorporate my projected major Psychology, I would like to explore how does the Brazilian society impact the mental health of Asian immigrants. As the Asian immigrants were placed in the middle of Brazilian society and parted from their home country, I would like to investigate the challenge to blend into a different westernized culture and separation from their cultural heritage impact their philosophy, education, career development and mental health in Brazil. I am also interested in exploring the social dynamics between Asian immigrants and other racial groups. I have started reading books like Negotiating National Identity by Lesser on Japanese and Chinese immigrants history in Brazil and Racism in a Racial Democracy, which I am currently reading for the Book Presentation, as I have learned about how Euro-Brazilians and Afro-Brazilians interacted with each other, and racism in a smaller Brazilian community. Therefore, I could draw comparisons among racial groups and identify the discrimination Asian Brazilians experience. I would find more primary sources on Asian Brazilians talking about their immigration experience either from documentaries or journals, but I might need assistance on those primary resources. I would also find more secondary resources on psychological health of those immigrants.

References

Conrad, Robert. “The Planter Class and the Debate over Chinese Immigration to Brazil,
1850- 1893.” International Migration Review 9, no. 1 (1975): 41.
Dantas, Sylvia Duarte. “An Intercultural Psychodynamic Counselling Model: A Preventive
Work Proposition for Plural Societies.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 24, no. 1 (March 2011): 1–14.
France Winddance Twine. Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White
Supermacy in Brazil. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Jeffrey Lesser. Negotiating National Identity : Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for
Ethnicity in Brazil. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1999.
Twine, France Winddance. 1998. Racism in a Racial Democracy : The Maintenance of White
Supremacy in Brazil. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Research Project Blog Post

A potential research project topic that I am heavily considering is the role of soccer in Brazilian national identity. In my research, I would like to discover why soccer is so important to Brazilians and how it shapes national identity.  In order to tackle this question, I would look at how soccer started in Brazil in the first place and examine how its importance began to rise. This is significant as soccer still plays a huge role in Brazilian national identity today. The current basic knowledge I have on the topic is that immigrants from Europe brought soccer to Brazil and that soccer was largely played by elites initially. This interests me as it possibly adds a racial element to the topic, which is significant as it questions the racial democracy that Brazil claims to be.

If I choose to examine the role of race within soccer, it would be interesting to see if there were any racial conflicts within the team or if soccer served as a unifying force within Brazilian society. Another possible avenue I can take within this research topic is how big losses in Brazilian soccer impacted national identity. Tying it back to race, it would be interesting to see if specific players were used as a scapegoat because of their race during these losses. Also, since soccer did begin as an elite sport, it would be interesting to discover more on how more racial groups gained their right to play.

In order to examine this topic, secondary sources are important to look at when thinking of how the national identity of Brazilians has been shaped over time. Specifically, since European immigrants brought the sport of soccer to Brazil, it would be interesting to see how Brazilians made soccer Brazilian instead of European. One secondary source I have found specifically looks at the role of Italian immigrants in developing Brazilian soccer. I have also found a primary source that compliments this secondary source very well. This primary source comes from a newspaper article, in which an Italian immigrant living in Brazil reacts to the loss of the Brazilian team to the Italian team during the World Cup in 1982.

This research topic is important for understanding Brazil as it explores a factor that plays a huge role in national identity. It is especially interesting to examine how losses in the World Cup hurt national identity, specifically by looking at the reactions of Brazilians. This research topic is also important when examining race in Brazil. Past classes and the readings for class tomorrow (2/13) address the issue of race in Brazil, specifically whether Brazil is racist or not. Seeing how players of different races regarding soccer more than likely shows how they were treated during specific times throughout Brazilian history, since soccer plays such a huge role to Brazilian identity. Overall, this research topic is relevant as soccer and the race question is still play an important when thinking about Brazilian society today.

Primary Sources

8 SOCCER FANS DIE AS URUGUAY SCORES. New York Times (1923-Current file); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]18 July 1950: 26.

URUGUAY ANNEXES TITLE: Upsets Favored Brazil, 2-1, in World Soccer–Sweden 3d. New York Times (1923-Current file); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]17 July 1950: 27.

120 million Brazilians plunge into gloom. The Times of India (1861-current); Mumbai, India [Mumbai, India]07 July 1982: 9.

Secondary Sources

Bocketti, Gregg P. “Italian immigrants, Brazilian football, and the dilemma of national identity.” Journal of Latin American Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 275-302.

da Silva, Ana Paula. “King Pele: Race, Professionalism And Football In Brazil.” Nat’l Black LJ 21 (2008): 1.

Lopes, José Sergio Leite. “Class, ethnicity, and color in the making of Brazilian football.” Daedalus 129, no. 2 (2000): 239-270.

Oliveira-Monte, Emanuelle. “Blacks Versus Whites Self-Denomination, Soccer, and Race Representations in Brazil.” Luso-Brazilian Review 50, no. 2 (2013): 76-92.

Week 1 Wikipedia Review Blog Post

By reviewing Wikipedia’s article regarding Brazilian history, I read “Race and Ethnicity in Brazil”. The article covers the racial issues in Brazil like the presence of indigenous people, the “Abolition of Slavery” in 1888, “miscegenation”, “genetic studies” and regional demographics. However, not everything in the article is strongly related to the topic, as some of those deviate from the topic by using facts, but failed to tie with the main focus. For example, the “Abolition of Slavery”, the content of this subtitle mostly talked about the dynamic of labor, income and immigration after the end of slavery. “Gilberto Freyre on the criticisms that he received” was extra in this article because this subtitle was mostly comprised of quotations instead original edition of those sources, and those information was not strongly tied to the title of the article regarding racial issues. As a result, the subtitle failed to continue the previous subtitle “Gilberto Freyre’s work” on racial democracy. The article overall covered most of its content on early Portuguese settlement and other European countries’ immigration as the main focus of the race and ethnicity issue, which whitening Brazil to some extent. The article only wrote some brief sentences on African, Arab, Indigenous and Asian culture without furthering into their cultural heritage to the contribution of Brazilian race and ethnic groups.

The citations in the article are made up of sources in Portuguese and English with a variety of facts from articles and statistics from the country and American authors. Some links work, whereas, other links only show a webpage with a display of a list of articles, which it did not direct me to the source. For instance, [37] failed to cite the right page in the book Who Is Black?:One Nation’s Definition. Moreover, the source is biased as the book proposed the idea of having higher socioeconomic class as being “white”. I think that it is offensive to those non-white people because the book portrays whiteness symbolizes superiority. Some citations like [5] and [38] do not direct to the source by only displaying a website with a list of articles and blank page. There is no information out of date because most articles are published within twenty years.

The talk page addressed the ambiguity of the title of the article, as it was written as “Race and Ethnicity in Brazil”. One user thought that it would be better to title as “Race in Brazil” because the article mainly focused on race groups based on physical features instead of describing cultural groups like “Russian Brazilian” and “Italian Brazilian”. Therefore, the user thought it would be better to change the title to “Race in Brazil” and elaborate on race groups instead of immigration from specific countries. The use of language was stressed by another user because some words were not correctly described the specific race group. The word “preto” was considered offensive to the user, and another correct word to describe African Brazilians is “negro”, which is not offensive in Brazilian culture.

This article was rated as a C class article. It is part of the Wiki-project for Geography, Sociology, Anthropology and Ethnic Groups. The way Wikipedia discusses about the topic starts with an overview of ethnic groups and addresses the idea of racial equality. Our class started with the influence of African culture, as many foreigners have failed to learn about Brazil this way and African culture has been neglected by audiences.

“Indigenous peoples in Brazil” Wiki Critique

For the most part of the Wikipedia article “Indigenous peoples in Brazil” every topic covered was related to the article. The ‘Native people after the European colonization’ topic headline had too many subheadings under and could’ve been broken into two different headings. That was the most distracting about the Wiki itself. Additionally, I was confused with the statistic portion on religion for the Indigenous peoples. Some of the wordage and lack of correct capitalization was bothersome as well. The article at first glance seems to be neutral. However, throughout the article there is an apparent presentation of indigenous peoples and the uncontacted people as either fully assimilated with the rest of Brazil’s society or unable to assimilate. In a more positive bias, the environmental subtopics in this article are clearly biased in favor of the uncontacted peoples in regards to their land and the Amazon.

While reading, I felt like the viewpoints of the underrepresented were from the lack of research on the tribes and their people. While I understand that is implied in the term uncontested, I am hard pressed that not one person has tried to make efforts in historical research to contact and learn about these tribes. Europe’s role in Brazil is undeniable, but it felt overrepresented in parts because it was not directly pertaining to the Indigenous peoples.  Most of the links that I checked both support the article and also were still working links. There were a few bad links, but none that I felt were out of place or non supportive.  Most of the references were reliable secondary sources. There were a heavier amount of environmental articles cited but still academic sources. These were more neutral sources, with only one anthopological article that I read as slightly biased. There were no biased sources noted within the citations.

There is some older information which raises the question of accuracy. Some of the statistics or references are from the late 90’s and show no signs of being followed up on. This is something that could be improved within the article in order to make it more accurate. There were many comments and modifications noted on the Talk page of the article. The conversations were comments about biases and faults that readers had identified in the article. For example, there was a comment about the Bering Strait Myth and its misuse in the article as it was presented as a proven theory. This comment contained an external link to support their claim and changes to the article. External links have also been modified many times throughout the creation of this Wikipage.  This Wikipage has been rated as a C-Class  page. It ironically has also been rated as a Top-importance page. Since we are still just getting into the course content of our class, I am interested to see how we discuss indigenous people in Brazil vs. the way this Wikipage has.