Brazil Initiative Events

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São Paulo, long the most populous and economically dynamic state of Brazil, has many of the attributes of a highly industrialized nation, whereas the northeast of Brazil has struggled with elevated rates of poverty and economic stagnation.  In her new book, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil, Barbara Weinstein explores the “explanations” for these regional differences, and focuses particularly on the way in which the various narratives and discourses of regional difference draw on race as an explanatory factor.  In this talk she will consider to what extent contrasting identities do not merely reflect existing regional differences but have actual material effects—that is, they serve to heighten and reproduce regional inequalities.