Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro

ISBN-13: 9780195368369 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 448 str.

JaniceE Perlman

Opis

Janice Perlman wrote the first in-depth account of life in the favelas, a book hailed as one of the most important works in global urban studies in the last 30 years. Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she had first met in 1969--as well as their children and grandchildren--Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better life.

Perlman discovers that while educational levels have risen, democracy has replaced dictatorship, and material conditions have improved, many residents feel more marginalized than ever. The greatest change is the explosion of drug and arms trade and the high incidence of fatal violence that has resulted. Yet the greatest challenge of all is job creation--decent work for decent pay. If unemployment and under-paid employment are not addressed, she argues, all other efforts will fail to resolve the fundamental issues. Foreign Affairs praises Perlman for writing "with compassion, artistry, and intelligence, using stirring personal stories to illustrate larger points substantiated with statistical analysis."

Recenzje

in the late 1960s ... Ms Perlman and her team completed a study of 750 people. The book that came out of this, The Myth of Marginality (1976), argued that far from being a cancerous growth that was harming the city, favela dwellers actually kept the place going, by doing all of the low-income jobs that a city needs to get done. Earlier this decade Ms Perlman went back and tried to track down as many of the original participants as she could, to see how they had fared. She managed to find just over 40% of the original study group Her findings were surprising. More than half of the original study group had moved out of the favelas, suggesting they are not the dead-end that many people suppose. In general, Ms Perlman finds far more social mobility than the reams of favela studies would suggest.

O autorze

Janice Perlman is President and Founder of the Mega-Cities Project. Winner of a Guggenheim Award, she has been Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California-Berkeley, Visiting Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Columbia University, and a Senior Research Scholar at New York University. She lives in Nyack, New York.