XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

An Urban Community: The Shift of the Community Study from Village to Metropolis

• In Event: American Exchanges: Ideas and Policies across Brazil and the U.S. 1930s-1970s

Abstract

This paper considers how the community study, originally formulated by U.S. anthropologist Robert Redfield in Mexico, came to be used in Brazil within the urban context of São Paulo and examines what was gained and lost in the process. The genre of the community study has gained attention recently from scholars who have pointed to the dynamic exchanges in academic worlds between those from Brazil and those from abroad, principally the United States. Originally formulated as a way to chart the intrusion of “modernity” into “folk life,” the community study once translated to Brazil eventually became a key instrument in the UNESCO studies. I turn to the early work of U.S. historian Richard Morse, around this same time, for a sense of how these intellectual ties developed across the U.S. and Brazil, and for new insight into how a methodology once envisioned for rural village communities became wrapped up with other concerns and contexts.

Author

• Anadelia Romo, Texas State University