Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
152
BOOK REVIEWS
André Cicalo
(2012),
Urban Encounters.
Affirmative Action and Black Identities in
Brazil
. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Urban Encounters
is the result of an in-
depth ethnography of university racial
quota systems in Brazil. This is a very
important topic in contemporary Brazilian
society due to the recent adoption of these
racial policies. The author focuses on the
Universidade Estadual de Rio de Janeiro
(State University of Rio de Janeiro –
UERJ), the first public university to adopt
racial quotas. Using a solid methodology
that combines an analysis of students’ life-
paths with a quantitative analisys of the
relevant statistics, Cicalo reviews the
effects of the quotas. The conclusion
emphasizes their potential positive
consequences, as their flexible application
allows each individual to make a self-
declaration about his or her race and color.
Moreover, an analysis of the broad public
debate on racial segregation in Brazil
allows the author to critically reflect on the
consequences of a possible, more rigid,
application of quotas.
The first chapter introduces the
reader to the Brazilian debate on racism,
which has been revitalized in the nearly
thirty years since the end of military
dictatorship. The establishment of the
university racial quotas has been the first
effort to deconstruct the myth of racial
harmony,
a
prevalent
imaginary
construction of Brazilian society. To
illustrate the topic, the author introduces
his research field: the UERJ and the city of
Rio de Janeiro. Racial and economic
segregation are markers that guide his
exploration of social spaces and the
construction of a social map of one of
Brazil’s largest cities.
The second chapter,
Dreams and
Hard Places
, begins this exploration. A
historical
contextualization
of
the
university, a prestigious institution for
middle-class students, brings out the social
barriers that quota students must cross.
There are physical barriers established by
the distances that separate the residential
areas of lower-income residents from the
rest of the university. There are also
economic barriers, given the low-income
social background of the quota students’
families. Here, the author introduces the
complex network of categories that he uses
for interpretation. Skin color, religious
behavior and gender are some of the
categories used to describe the multiple
strategies adopted by the students in
pursuing their ‘dream’ of social and
economic empowerment.
The third chapter presents daily
interactions among students, observed
within the university spaces. Quota
students are differentiated from others
mainly because of their attitude toward the
university, rather than for their skin color.
This resignifies racial categories. The place
occupied in the classrooms distinguishes
the ‘zealous’, usually quota students who
tend to sit close to the teacher, and the
‘barbarians’, as non-quota students call
themselves because of their apparent lack
of discipline. The former try to work hard
to compensate for their weak scholastic
background; the latter, who have studied in
expensive private schools, achieve good
results with apparently little effort and
participation. The author uses these
categories to examine how racial
