As Rio de Janeiro looks back on the Olympics and gears up for the 2016 Paralympic Games, one Syracuse University professor is setting his sights on the city for another reason. 

John Burdick, chair and professor of anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and a research team recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom to study various differently-organized housing projects in Rio de Janeiro.

“Our question is, ‘How are these experiments with housing the poor, how are they doing? Are they reaching their goals? Are some reaching them more than others?’” Burdick said. 

Burdick and his fellow researchers, some of whom are based in Rio themselves, will study different models of housing projects through observation as well as extensive interviews with families who reside in them.

One of those native Rio de Janeiro researchers, Rolf Malungo de Souza, explained the project in an email as one that “shed(s) light on how housing developments influence social relationships, interactions and exchanges between the residents of these enterprises and between them and their external neighbors.”

There are two categories of housing projects the team is studying, Burdick said. 

In one set are projects that have not been built yet. The team will follow families from their current living situations to the new housing projects, addressing a multitude of questions such as why they are moving and what impacts the move will have on them, he said.

The other set includes housing projects that are already completed and have occupants currently living in them. Burdick and the team will address similar questions with them, he said.

The team will look at four specific dimensions of life: social life; material life; political and civic life; and family, gender and sexual effects, he said. 

One of the housing projects encourages women to learn skills such as bricklaying and participate in the construction of the physical building, Burdick said. Others do not address gendered divisions of labor.

“Gender is often taken for granted, but it’s a very, very big part of how people experience home differently. And housing is about homes,” he said.

Burdick added that the research team will focus on evaluating claims, for example, that integrating the poor into the city, instead of “peripheralizing” them, will better their economic prospects or will inspire more engagement with politics and leadership in their communities.

In a project like this, Burdick said, participant observation is essential, meaning spending time with people, getting to know them, their families, their values and cultures and their goals.

“We’re trying to understand some of the diversity and heterogeneity of the experiences of the poor and not to privilege anyone, but to understand all the differences from where they’re at right now,” he said.

The nearly $600,000 grant will go toward the team of seven people for its work throughout the three or four years it will be conducting research.

Burdick said each member agreed to a total of 56 days of research — interviewing and doing participant observation — for each year. The team will be joined by a documentarian, he added, who will track three different families from three different housing projects over the course of the research.

“I hope we can produce work that is relevant to the people who fight for the right to the city, not only in my city, but also in other places around the world,” de Souza said. 

Published on August 29, 2016 at 9:40 pm

Contact Danny: dmantoot@syr.edu