Leandro Benmergui | SUNY: Purchase College (original) (raw)

Book Chapters by Leandro Benmergui

Articles by Leandro Benmergui

During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social sci- ence experiments regarding gov... more During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social sci-
ence experiments regarding governance among Japanese Ameri-
cans imprisoned at the Poston, Arizona, camp. Researchers used
an array of techniques culled from anthropological culture and per-
sonality studies, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and public opin-
ion research to probe how the personality traits of the confined
Japanese-Americans and camp leaders affected the social interac-
tions within each group and between them. The research drew on
prior studies of Indian personality in the US Southwest, Mexico's
Native policies, and indirect colonial rule. Researchers asked how
democracy functioned in contexts marked by hierarchy and differ-
ence. Their goal was to guide future policies toward US “minori-
ties“ and foreign races in post-war occupied territories. We show
how researchers deployed ideas about race, cultural, and difference
across a variety of cases to create a universal, predictive social sci-
ence, which they combined with a prewar romanticism and cultural
relativism. These researchers made ethnic, racial, and cultural differ-
ence compatible with predictive laws of science based on notions of
fundamental human similarities.

Book Reviews by Leandro Benmergui

The main contribution of this book is to offer different disciplinary approaches and methodologie... more The main contribution of this book is to offer different disciplinary approaches and methodologies that illuminate and critique the fundamental contradictions of urban housing, experience, and citizenship in Latin America. The essays address the issue of belonging, place formation, and identity, predominantly from the perspectives of sociology, human geography, anthropology, architecture, and urban studies. The case studies put experience, subjectivity, and residents' agency at the center and avoid essentialist definitions of place.

Planning Perspectives, 2017

What a better way for city lovers to visit and learn about a city's history than through a book t... more What a better way for city lovers to visit and learn about a city's history than through a book that gathers the traces left behind by its chroniclers, residents, critics, urban experts, and also its victims? And what if that book is not a city-guide but a careful compilation of primary sources organized and contextualized by three historians and connoisseurs of the city? The Rio de Janeiro Reader, edited by Daryle Williams, Amy Chazkel, and Paulo Knauss, is that book, a thoroughly engaging compendium that compiles almost 90 documents on the history of this haunting and beautiful yet unequal city. The sources, some of them true gems that become accessible to the general public and in English for the first time, cover the history of the city from the first European occupants who surveyed the coast of Brazil looking for economic opportunities for colonial exploitation up to current forms of occupation such as those of the Pacifying Police Units that have taken territorial control of many of Rio's favelas. The 'Marvellous City' (as Rio is popularly known among locals and visitors and also the name of the song that opens and closes Carnival balls) has recently commemorated the 450th anniversary of its foundation and hosted two world megaevents: the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Against this backdrop, The Rio Reader seemed almost an obvious choice to be the first city in the Duke University Press's World's Reader series, which had, until now, focused exclusively on countries , including The Brazil Reader (1999). One of the challenges for the authors was to tell the history of Rio without conflating it with the history of Brazil. Among the different ways in which a guide can be organized, the authors opted for a chronology that highlights the central character of Rio as a bureaucratic/administrative centre of Brazil. This has to do with the centrality of the city in that narrative: Rio was a Portuguese colonial port city that channelled to Europe the wealth produced by African slaves during colonial times; became the administrative capital of the Brazilian viceroyalty in 1763; then the capital city of the Portuguese Empire (1815–1822) when the Portuguese court fled Europe to escape the French occupation. Rio became the capital of the Brazilian Empire (1822–1889) when the South American country achieved independence from Portugal, and the capital of the Republic (1889–1960), a status it lost when the modernist Brasília was inaugurated as the new capital of the country in 1960. From 1960 to 1975, Rio became the administrative centre of the state-city of Guanabara, and the capital city of the state of Rio de Janeiro since 1975. In all those years, Rio was built and rebuilt trying to catch up with the tremendous stress that the natural topography (mountain massifs and hills, the Atlantic Ocean, lagoons) continuously imposed upon the urban infrastructure of an ever-growing political and economic centre. The connection between Rio and Brazil is unavoidable and yet the book manages to cast Rio as the protagonist throughout. Both the book's introductory chapter and the presentation to individual sections are well crafted and balanced for the many possible audiences: urban scholars, students, and well-educated visitors to Rio. Each of them are explained and contextualized with vitality (in some cases, the explanatory text is even longer than the actual document). A thorough index of terms and a final section for further reading and viewing is also very convenient. The reader of Planning Perspectives will find particularly interesting the documents on the construction of the aqueducts to channel water to public fountains in the mid-eighteenth century; the city's beautification programmes during imperial times to accommodate the city to the needs of a royal class; the eugenic and sanitary reforms of the early republican era; the modernization of the urban infrastructure in the 1950s and 1960s, and the world-renowned programme Favela-Bairro that rehabilitated Rio's slums in the 2000s. But the book's strongest contribution is the opportunity to delve into the vibrant social and cultural life of Rio de Janeiro, its contrasts, and complexities.

s superb analysis of the internationalization of US housing programmes in very different regions ... more s superb analysis of the internationalization of US housing programmes in very different regions of the world shows the effects of housing aid reinforcing the global political and social order, and with it US hegemony. Kwak's novel approach to transnational urban history goes full circle and comes back to the US to show how policies shaped abroad were then reimported as if to its own 'colonized' minorities.

Symposium by Leandro Benmergui

http://www.encontro2018.sp.anpuh.org/simposio/view?ID\_SIMPOSIO=29 Resumo: A história da questão ... more http://www.encontro2018.sp.anpuh.org/simposio/view?ID_SIMPOSIO=29

Resumo: A história da questão da habitacional na América Latina foi abordada tradicionalmente a partir da perspectiva da nação. Quer do ponto de vista das políticas públicas, de linguagens estéticas e arquitetônicas, como desde a perspectiva de direitos de cidadania das populações residentes em favelas ou em assentamentos de diferente tipo, o problema da habitação foi estudado quase exclusivamente como um problema estadual ou nacional. Nos últimos 15 anos a perspectiva sobre estudos urbanos, e, portanto, de habitação, por conseguinte, tem incorporado dimensões mais amplas que não negam a dimensão local, mas a contextualiza dentro de processos históricos mais abrangentes. Um grupo importante de historiadores tem analisado as relações internacionais e os contatos entre arquitetos, urbanistas, engenheiros, planejadores e políticos, vinculando questões nacionais e locais a um escopo mais internacional, permitindo uma revisão importante sobre regimes autocráticos e tecnocráticos nas Américas. Recentemente, historiadores têm utilizado as perspectivas transnacionais e comparativas, estudando como a questão da localidade é também produto de fluxos de ideias, personalidades, linguagens estéticas e capitais, já não somente “incorporados” às situações nacionais ou locais, mas configurados transnacionalmente. Nesses trabalhos, a especificidade local e nacional ainda é importante para pensar a questão habitacional, mas forma parte de processos, debates e discussões mais amplos, que em muitos casos foram intencionalmente velados nas fontes mais comuns utilizadas na escrita da história das políticas habitacionais.
Este simpósio temático procura, então, contribuições de pesquisadores que tenham estudos que problematizem as políticas públicas ligadas à produção habitacional em perspectiva transnacional e também comparativa. O foco é tentar entender como a história da habitação na América Latina foi forjada. Para tanto, estudos com foco mais historiográfico são bem-vindos, mas, também, estudos de casos, em que análises locais/nacionais permitam perceber ligações para além da ideia nacionalista. Igualmente, nos interessam estudos que problematizem fontes contemporâneas ou mesmo proponham reavaliação de outras mais consolidadas para a escrita da história que enfoque a habitação em sentido amplo, nunca a desvinculando dos processos políticos. Os artigos desejados devem trabalhar, prioritariamente, com os séculos XX e XXI, e em especial com o ambiente americano, entendendo as relações entre as Américas, e entre os países latinos, europeu e africanos.

A one-day event gathering together faculty, students, and community members to think about the ma... more A one-day event gathering together faculty, students, and community members to think about the making and uses of oral history and ethnographic work. Morning and afternoon presentations featuring faculty and librarians. Special Guest Mary Marshall Clark (Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research) commenting on a live oral history interview, 3:00-5:00pm (schedule available here: https://goo.gl/m7hjtX).

Modernization Takes Command? Latin American Cities During the Cold War A taller urbano de las amé... more Modernization Takes Command? Latin American Cities During the Cold War
A taller urbano de las américas conference
Sponsors: NYU (History), UConn (History & El Instituto), Purchase College SUNY (Latin American Studies & Casa Purchase)
1 April 2015, 9am – 5pm.

Location: King Juan Carlos Center Auditorium, NYU, 53 Washington Square S.

Co-organized by Mark Healey (UConn) and Leandro Benmergui (Purchase College, SUNY)

https://modernizationtakescommandsymposium.wordpress.com/

Call for Papers by Leandro Benmergui

The Eighth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association “The Working Urban” Chicago, ... more The Eighth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association

“The Working Urban”

Chicago, Illinois
October 13-16, 2016

The Urban History Association Program Committee seeks submissions for sessions on all aspects of urban, suburban, and metropolitan history. We welcome proposals for panels, roundtable discussions, and individual papers, and are receptive to alternative session formats that foster audience participation in the proceedings.

The Program Committee is pleased to announce that Loyola University Chicago will serve as the local host for this year’s conference, which will be held on October 13-16, 2016.

The conference theme – The Working Urban – highlights the importance of labor and of historians’ working definitions of “urban history.” We therefore encourage submissions that explore how the racial and gendered aspects of work impact our understanding and experience of the built environment. Panel and paper proposals are not restricted to the conference theme, however.

Being fifty years removed from the 1960s and a century from the Progressive Era, the program committee will also pay special attention to panels marking the anniversaries of events that profoundly impacted cities, including the opening of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic in 1916, the Watts uprising in Los Angeles, the Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966, the Model Cities Program, Martin Luther King’s Chicago campaign, the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision, the founding of the Black Panther Party, and more.

Finally, in recognition of urban history’s considerable breadth, we seek contributions that make global comparisons and explore metropolitan politics in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sessions on ancient and pre-modern as well as modern periods are welcome. Graduate student submissions are encouraged.

We prefer complete panels but individual papers will be considered. Please designate a single person to serve as a contact for all complete panels. For traditional panels, include a brief explanation of the overall theme, a one-page abstract of each paper, and a one- or two-page c.v. for each participant. Roundtable proposals should also designate a contact person and submit a one-page theme synopsis and a one or two page c.v. for each presenter. Proposals involving alternative formats should include a brief description of how the session will be structured. All those submitting individual papers should include a one-page abstract and a one or two page c.v. E-mail submissions by March 1, 2016 to N. D. B. Connolly at nconnol2@jhu.edu and Donna Jean Murch at dmurch@history.rutgers.edu. Submissions should be included in attachments as Word or PDF documents.

As part of the conference the UHA will organize workshops for graduate students writing dissertations in urban and suburban history. Students who have written a prospectus and who wish to participate in a workshop should apply with a two to four page letter of interest by March 1, 2016 to Timothy Neary at timothy.neary@salve.edu.

Papers by Leandro Benmergui

Periferia e Favela ... por muito tempo, esses dois conceitos foram construidos a partir de dois e... more Periferia e Favela ... por muito tempo, esses dois conceitos foram construidos a partir de dois eixos que os definiam: o da distância e/ou o da ausencia . Esses eixos em si, mais do que explicar, acabavam por criar quimeras sobre a favela e a periferia, reificando os seus lugares mais simbolicamente do que espacialmente; mais tratando-os como locus de problemas do que de solucoes; mais vendo seus moradores como vitimas do que como sujeitos.

Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, Jan 14, 2018

During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social science experiments regarding gover... more During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social science experiments regarding governance among Japanese Americans imprisoned at the Poston, Arizona, camp. Researchers used an array of techniques culled from anthropological culture and personality studies, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and public opinion research to probe how the personality traits of the confined Japanese-Americans and camp leaders affected the social interactions within each group and between them. The research drew on prior studies of Indian personality in the US Southwest, Mexico's Native policies, and indirect colonial rule. Researchers asked how democracy functioned in contexts marked by hierarchy and difference. Their goal was to guide future policies toward US "minorities" and foreign races in post-war occupied territories. We show how researchers deployed ideas about race, cultural, and difference across a variety of cases to create a universal, predictive social science, whic...

NACLA Report on the Americas, 2019

rio de Janeiro's poor communities face increasing vulnerability as armed groups expand control of... more rio de Janeiro's poor communities face increasing vulnerability as armed groups expand control of entire neighborhoods, operating illicit businesses from protection rackets to real estate, with dire consequences for local residents living under a violent parallel state.