Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg (via Zoom)
Date and Time
Location
"Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speaker:
Ben Bradlow, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program. PhD, Department of Sociology, Brown University.
Moderator:
Bruno Carvalho, Faculty Associate. Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.
Discussant:
Alisha Holland, Faculty Associate. Associate Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University.
Contact:
Tiago Genoveze
tiago_genoveze@harvard.edu
Co-sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin Studies and the Harvard University Center for African Studies.
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_awuAEUoxSkGxbD9Ml2XCAg
Please note: This event requires registration in advance in order to receive the meeting link and password.
Abstract:
The divergent trajectories of São Paulo and Johannesburg’s distribution of urban public goods — housing, sanitation, and collective transportation — since their respective countries’ transitions to democracy transform questions about the relationship between democracy and equality into an empirical puzzle: Why are some cities more effective than others at reducing inequality? I argue that Sao Paulo’s success relative to Johannesburg was thanks to the sequence and configuration of two factors: the “embeddedness” of the local state in civil society, especially housing movements, and the “cohesion” of the local state to coordinate across scales of government.
Benjamin Bradlow's research explores - why some cities more unequal than others, why government institutions reproduce or reduce urban inequalities, when and how does democracy transform the organizational resources available to people who aim to exploit or overcome urban inequalities. He is currently comparing the distribution of urban public goods - housing, sanitation, and transportation - in two mega-cities (Johannesburg, South Africa and São Paulo, Brazil) after transitions to democracy.