Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz - Urban Laboratory Lecture Series

White Middle-Class households: race, class and sex inequalities in the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro

In this talk, Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz (University of Modena and Reggio Emili) will present research in urban anthropology focused on the imbrication of racism, sexism and class inequalities, based on interviews with a group of self-identified white and upper-middle class men, who lived in the wealthiest neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro.

The talk will focus on a particular aspect: the relationship between young white middle-class men and working class female domestic workers, generally non-white. Interviewees represented this relationship as a moment where hierarchical poles can meet inside the space of the white middle-class home and produce a form of what is conceived by the interviewees as "intimacy" and "love care" between black poor people and white rich people. Valeria argues however that this relationship between poor non-white domestic workers and white middle-class families represents and reproduces an inequality structure based on race, class and gender relations and that it takes shape in the urban area, in which middle and high class white people, while living separated from poor, working class non-white people, reproduce their privileged position through the exploitation of their labour.

The analysis of the relations that take place inside white middle-class homes gives us the opportunity to observe how conflicts and violence that occur in the poor areas of the city are also deeply linked to the organisation of domestic spaces, and how the urban landscape produces spatial injustice and privilege. This analysis helps us also to understand the strong reaction to policies that aim to transform this unequal structure, especially when they attack the privileges of the dominant groups by giving more study and work opportunities to the most oppressed groups.

• Dr Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. She earned her doctorate in social anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris and the University of Siena in 2003. Since 1996 she has been conducting fieldwork in Brazil, and has published several articles and book, including White middle-class men in Rio de Janeiro: The making of a dominant subject (Lexington Books, 2018).
• This lecture is chaired by Dr Clare Melhuish (UCL Urban Laboratory)
  

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Urban Laboratory Lecture Series

The talk is part of our new autumn fortnightly lecture series, investigating the meaning and renewed relevance of the term 'urban laboratory'. The lectures are free and no booking is required. Step free access to the room at 26 Bedford Way.

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