Social Science Research Council

11/10/2022

In their research, Anjuli Fahlberg, Cristiane Martins, Joiceane Lopes, Ana Cláudia Araújo, Lidiane Santos, Sophia Costa, and Guilherme Baratho examine how democracy is being recreated in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, particularly Cidade de Deus, where Covid-19 was first recorded. Drawing on their research on the pandemic’s impact on local residents vis-à-vis emergent forms of autonomous governance and how these are shaped by gender and racial dynamics, they argue that civic associations’ mobilization tactics in Cidade de Deus can help us understand how democracy is being reinvented in these spaces under conditions of extreme governmental neglect.

Brazil’s dying democracy On November 1, 2021, Foreign Affairs published an article entitled “Democracy is Dying in Brazil.”[footnote]Oliver Stuenkel, “Democracy Is Dying in Brazil,” Foreign Affairs, November 1, 2021.[/footnote] The...

04/10/2022

Following the weakening of the Voting Rights Act in the United States, many Republican-controlled states enacted restrictive voting ID laws aimed at limiting franchise access to communities of color. In their research, Hajar Yazdiha and Blanca Ramirez examine how immigrant-serving organizations in five Southern states recalibrated their resources to help immigrants vote. Focusing on Alabama, they investigate five shifts these immigrant-serving organizations have made to address the impact of voter ID laws, which, the authors argue, shows how these restrictive laws can lead to new forms of organizing and resistance.

“The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have.” —John Lewis.[footnote]Ari Berman, “John Lewis’ Legacy Is the Right to Vote. And It’s Under Attack,” Mother Jones, July 18, 2020.[/footnote]...

28/09/2022

The conflict between communities in the Peruvian Andes and multinational mining companies has often been told by national media controlled by elites in the capital of Lima. However, the advent of online livestreams has allowed local communities to make their demands and reveal their circumstances to the public at large. Here, Adela Zhang examines how these popular forms of journalism present a different version of the “reality” of extractive capitalism to the one shown by the mainstream press.

English | Spanish The police shot at those livestreaming first. More than four thousand meters above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, overlooking one of the world’s largest open-pit copper...

15/09/2022

Many countries struggled with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as it overwhelmed health services and forced everyone into lockdown. In Ecuador, inadequate public funding for healthcare and longstanding unequal access to resources heightened the damage of the virus. Here, Michael D. Hill and Consuelo Fernández-Salvador examine how Ecuadorians adapted to the digital divide apparent in the shift to virtual classes and state abandonment in healthcare. They found people opted for collaboration, solidarity, and medical pluralism to tackle the inequalities heightened by the pandemic.

By late March 2020, reports began to surface of abandoned cadavers in the streets of the coastal Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil and, by April, the city’s residents reported waiting up...

01/09/2022

People experiencing homelessness (PEH) have been some of the most impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic; however, the crisis has also allowed for new opportunities to provide some of the most vulnerable with housing. Looking at San Francisco’s Shelter in Place Hotel Program, Naomi Schoenfeld argues that the pandemic created new viropolitical circumstances that made housing for PEH a priority to lessen the stress on local health systems. However, PEH and their advocates went further, Schoenfeld finds, applying a logic she calls viropragmatism to demand improved and more dignified housing options.

“So, when you go out the door, you're taking the chance of dying, of getting in this s**t (Covid). Stay your ass indoors... I know one thing. I know how...

25/08/2022

As part of their SSRC-funded Covid-19 research, Lu Liu and Marjorie Orellana study the role care and kindness played during the pandemic. Through an ethnographic diary-based study, they investigate how US families are navigating the pandemic and what they are learning from it. These families, they found, gained new insights into the importance of care, focusing on self-care, family-care, and community-care.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted everyday life in pervasive ways around the world. It has been over two years since the first coronavirus case was identified in January 2020 in...

11/08/2022

As part of their SSRC-funded Covid-19 research, Marlie Holtzhausen and Cori Wielenga examine what a relational approach can tell us about the efficiency of development interventions and how a relational approach can inform whether certain interventions are sustainable during a crisis. Looking at two development organizations in South Africa, they find that “success” for these organizations was not defined by a quantifiable measures like funds raised or people helped but by the dignity of the care and aid provided, which is possible thanks to a foundation of strong relationships.

While some development organizations have faltered during the Covid-19 crisis, others have managed to broaden their reach in response to the unfolding human crisis. One of the central reasons why...

09/08/2022

For our “Where Heritage Meets Violence” essay series, Nick Shepherd considers how the violence of colonialism is deeply inscribed in space and landscape. He traces the history of the University of Cape Town, where a protest against a statue of Cecil Rhodes initiated the movement. Shepherd examines the persistent materializations of power, showing how enduring coloniality shapes embodied ways of seeing and being in the world.

A moment On March 9, 2015, in an event choreographed for the press, Chumani Maxwele, a student at the University of Cape Town, threw the contents of a port-a-potty...

28/07/2022

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a new wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in India. Focusing on the aftermath of the March 2020 Tablighi Jamaat event, Anirban Baishya, with funding from the SSRC’s Rapid-Response Covid-19 grant, investigates how mis/disinformation and anti-Muslim messages spread through media, jumping from social media to mainstream outlets.

Readers are advised that this essay contains potentially offensive images. When I wrote this article on Covid-19 in India, vaccinated and relatively safe, India was reeling from a new, tragic...

26/07/2022

Andrew Simon, a 2015 International Dissertation Research fellow, speaks with IDRF program assistant Ava McLaughlin about his recent book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt, and the role cassette tapes played in shaping Egyptian culture in the second half of the twentieth century.

We recently sat down with Andrew Simon (IDRF 2015) in order to celebrate and discuss the publication of his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt....

21/07/2022

As part of their SSRC-funded research, Olívia Bandeira, Alex Hercog, Iury Batistta, and Réia Gonçalves Pereira investigate the impact of right-wing evangelical media on Brazil’s response to the pandemic, paying close attention to how mis/disinformation spread through mainstream and social media run by popular pastors. Echoing the rhetoric of the Bolsonaro government, evangelical media sowed doubt about Covid-19’s impact in Brazil and later distrust about the vaccine. Brazilian evangelical media mis/disinformation about Covid-19, the authors argue, signals support for Bolsonaro’s neoconservative project, which aligns with their beliefs, such as viewing Brazil as a “Christian nation” and bringing an end to the secular state.

The image above, published by Pastor Silas Malafaia—a well-known Brazilian televangelist—on his social media accounts, summarizes the contemporary evangelical universe in its most visible version, that of religious leaders with...

12/07/2022

The authors reflect on how research on an environment already experiencing significant social and physical change was further impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic. In considering the potential impact of a “Blue Economy” policy scheme, the research team confronted the need to examine the power dynamics inherent in the research process, as well as those inherent to their analysis.

Over the last year, our research team negotiated the challenges of communicating online and doing fieldwork on fisheries and the Blue Economy during a pandemic. Initiated by a few of...

06/07/2022

Based on their IDRF-supported research, Alex Wolff explores how many q***r folk in South Korea face a conflict between achieving economic stability and a sense of selfhood. Following economic transformations that decreased employment opportunities for young adults, civil servant jobs have become valued for their “stability.” However, Wolff finds that q***r South Koreans who choose “stable” jobs to achieve feelings of financial security, are paradoxically beset by “other feelings of insecurity,” as q***r self-representation and political participation lead to workplace discrimination, and potential dismissal. Wolff proposes complicating the concept of precarity by looking at it through a q***r lens—examining how structural exclusions and heteronormativity shape the conditions for economic security and insecurity.

After graduating from college three years ago Jisoo decided to become a civil servant. As underemployment has increased for those in their 20s and 30s over the past two decades,...

Social Science Research Council - Items