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Author Mitchell, Sean T., author

Title Constellations of inequality : space, race, and utopia in Brazil / Sean T. Mitchell
Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: relaunching Alcântara -- Mimetic convergence and complementary hierarchy -- Alcântara in space and time -- Interpreting an explosion -- Expertise and inequality -- Racialization and race-based law -- The making of race and class -- Space at the edge of the Amazon -- Conclusion: space and utopia
Summary Winner of the 2018 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Brazil Section Book Prize In 1982, the Brazilian Air Force arrived on the Alcântara peninsula to build a state-of-the-art satellite launch facility. They displaced some 1,500 Afro-Brazilians from coastal land to inadequate inland villages, leaving many more threatened with displacement. Completed in 1990, this vast undertaking in one of Brazil's poorest regions has provoked decades of conflict and controversy. Constellations of Inequality tells this story of technological aspiration and the stark dynamics of inequality it laid bare. Sean T. Mitchell analyzes conflicts over land, ethnoracial identity, mobilization among descendants of escaped slaves, military-civilian competition in the launch program, and international intrigue. Throughout, he illuminates Brazil's changing politics of inequality and examines how such inequality is made, reproduced, and challenged. How people conceptualize and act on the unequal conditions in which they find themselves, he shows, is as much a cultural and historical matter as a material one. Deftly broadening our understanding of race, technology, development, and political consciousness on local, national, and global levels, Constellations of Inequality paints a portrait of contemporary Brazil that will interest a broad spectrum of readers
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara.
Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara
Quilombos -- Brazil -- Alcântara -- Government relations
Economic development projects -- Political aspects -- Brazil -- Alcântara
Launch complexes (Astronautics) -- Brazil -- Alcântara
Black people -- Land tenure -- Brazil -- Alcântara
Equality -- Brazil -- Alcântara
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies.
Black people -- Land tenure
Economic development projects -- Political aspects
Equality
Launch complexes (Astronautics)
Race relations
Social conditions
Alcântara (Brazil) -- Race relations
Alcântara (Brazil) -- Social conditions
Brazil -- Alcântara
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780226499437
022649943X