This book focuses on how the political, cultural, and technical networks within the field of engineering provided the space within which an important professional middle class prospered in the city of São Paulo and made lasting contributions to the development of modern Brazil.

This book focuses on how the political, cultural, and technical networks within the field of engineering provided the space within which an important professional middle class prospered in the city of São Paulo and made lasting contributions to the development of modern Brazil.

Public and Private: Crossed Paths In the Paulista Process of Urban Consolidation * The Dynamics of Paulista Urban Institutions In the 1930s * The Making of Urban Middle-Class Employees In the 1930s * The Symbolic Construction of Paulista Urban Identity * Politics and Urban Change: The Pacaembu Scheme, 1933-1940.

In The Color of Modernity, Barbara Weinstein focuses on race, gender, and regionalism in the formation of national identities in Brazil; this focus allows her to explore how uneven patterns of economic development are consolidated and understood. Organized around two principal episodes—the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution and 1954’s IV Centenário, the quadricentennial of São Paulo’s founding—this book shows how both elites and popular sectors in São Paulo embraced a regional identity that emphasized their European origins and aptitude for modernity and progress, attributes that became—and remain—associated with “whiteness.” This racialized regionalism naturalized and reproduced regional inequalities, as São Paulo became synonymous with prosperity while Brazil’s Northeast, a region plagued by drought and poverty, came to represent backwardness and São Paulo’s racial “Other.” This view of regional difference, Weinstein argues, led to development policies that exacerbated these inequalities and impeded democratization.

São Paulo, by far the most populated state in Brazil, has an economy to rival that of Colombia or Venezuela. Its capital city is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the world. How did São Paulo, once a frontier province of little importance, become one of the most vital agricultural and industrial regions of the world? This volume explores the transformation of São Paulo through an economic lens. Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein provide a synthetic overview of the growth of São Paulo from 1850 to 1950, analyzing statistical data on demographics, agriculture, finance, trade, and infrastructure. Quantitative analysis of primary sources, including almanacs, censuses, newspapers, state and ministerial-level government documents, and annual government reports offers granular insight into state building, federalism, the coffee economy, early industrialization, urbanization, and demographic shifts. Luna and Klein compare São Paulo's transformation to other regions from the same period, making this an essential reference for understanding the impact of early periods of economic growth.

From the first encounters between the Portuguese and indigenous peoples in 1500 to the current political turmoil, the history of Brazil is much more complex and dynamic than the usual representations of it as the home of Carnival, soccer, the Amazon, and samba would suggest. This extensively revised and expanded second edition of the best-selling Brazil Reader dives deep into the past and present of a country marked by its geographical vastness and cultural, ethnic, and environmental diversity. Containing over one hundred selections—many of which appear in English for the first time and which range from sermons by Jesuit missionaries and poetry to political speeches and biographical portraits of famous public figures, intellectuals, and artists—this collection presents the lived experience of Brazilians from all social and economic classes, racial backgrounds, genders, and political perspectives over the past half millennium. Whether outlining the legacy of slavery, the roles of women in Brazilian public life, or the importance of political and social movements, The Brazil Reader provides an unparalleled look at Brazil’s history, culture, and politics.

The City as Photographic Text offers the first comprehensive presentation of photography on São Paulo. But more than just a study of one city’s photographic legacy, this book is a manual for how to understand and talk about Latin American photography in general. Focusing on major figures and referencing widely available books of their work, David William Foster offers a unique analysis of how photographers have contributed to our understanding of the megalopolis São Paulo has become. Eschewing a conventional historical approach, Foster explores how best to interpret visual urban life. In turn, by focusing interest on the photographic text and the ways in which it creates an interpretive meaning for the city, rather than rehearsing the circumstances under which the photographs were taken, this study provides a model for productive comment on urban photography as a project of visual meaning with important artistic attributes. As a unique entry in the inventory of scholarly writing on São Paulo, The City as Photographic Text adds to our understanding of the enormous cultural significance this city holds as a world-class urban center.

This volume examines the experiences of São Paulo’s working class during Brazil’s Old Republic (1891–1930), showing how individuals and families adapted to forces and events such as urbanization, discrimination, migration, and World War I. In this unique study, Ball combines social and economic methods to present a robust historical analysis of everyday life along racial, ethnic, national, and gender lines. Drawing from both statistical data and primary sources such as letters, newspapers, and interview transcripts, Ball demonstrates how the nation’s coffee boom drew immigrants from Italy, Portugal, Germany, Lebanon, and northeastern Brazil. She examines the ways these workers responded to inflation; fluctuating immigration patterns; and labor market discrimination, which especially affected Afro-Brazilians, Portuguese immigrants, and women. This analysis emphasizes the family-centered nature of immigration to São Paulo in comparison with other immigrant destinations such as Buenos Aires and New York City. Ball’s rich scholarship considers how World War I exacerbated tensions and divisions within São Paulo’s working class, which resulted in a deeply segmented labor market by the time Getúlio Vargas came to power in 1930. Shedding light on many reasons why Brazil experienced slower industrial innovation than other countries during this era, Ball provides invaluable context for the region’s continued high inequality and sociocultural imbalances.

As a collective effort, this volume locates the formation of the middle classes at the core of the histories of Latin America in the last two centuries. Featuring scholars from different places across the Americas, it is an interdisciplinary contribution to the world histories of the middle classes, histories of Latin America, and intersectional studies. It also engages a larger audience about the importance of the middle classes to understand modernity, democracy, neoliberalism, and decoloniality. By including research produced from a variety of Latin American, North American, and other audiences, the volume incorporates trends in social history, cultural studies and discursive theory. It situates analytical categories of race and gender at the core of class formation. This volume seeks to initiate a critical and global conversation concerning the ways in which the analysis of the middle classes provides crucial re-readings of how Latin America, as a region, has historically been understood.

This book addresses a wide range of social issues in connection with urbanization, which is providing new momentum for China’s economic restructuring and social progress, including the educational gap; the middle class in urbanization; consumption; division of labor; and social integration. All chapters are based on updated nation-wide sampling survey data. Taken together, they provide a lens for understanding various aspects of urbanization and its impacts on China’s economy and society.