Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Media, Law & Policy
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Media, Law & Policy

Burdick Leads Study on Social Housing Projects in Brazil

Tuesday, August 16, 2016, By News Staff
Share
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
John Burdick Portrait

John Burdick

The National Science Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom have awarded $597,000 to a project led by Professor John Burdick (anthropology) to observe differently organized social housing projects in downtown Rio de Janeiro, to see how each impacts, and is impacted by, the people who live in them.  Burdick’s six-person research team (four of whom are Brazilian) includes three anthropologists, a geographer, an architect, and a grassroots housing advocate.

Over three years, the team will observe a state-planned housing project that aims to provide housing titles to its residents; two buildings managed by a partnership between a housing rights organization and the state; a building physically occupied by squatters who are negotiating rights to turn the building into a self-managed cooperative; and a building of state-subsidized rentals.

One of the most urgent challenges facing large cities in the global South is how to provide affordable, dignified housing to low-income populations. Though for many years, governments in the global South have pushed these populations into urban peripheries, a growing number of social movements have pushed back, sometimes joining with allies within municipal, state and federal governments, to create affordable housing in centrally-located urban neighborhoods. While this new approach is promising, little is known about its impact on the people it seeks to benefit.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the goal of providing dignified, non-peripheralized housing to the quarter million residents of the city who cannot afford it, has generated an array of models, each backed by its own assortment of social movements, urban planners, government ministries, NGOs, and ordinary citizens. Not surprisingly, the backers of each model proclaim its potential to integrate the poor into the life of the city, improve their economic and social lives, and create conditions in which they can pursue their citizenship to the fullest. Yet it is only by carefully tracking these models over time, and in close comparison with each other, that the research team believes one can understand the ways and extent to which each housing model actually comes close (or not) to realizing its potential.

Over the course of three years, the team will undertake close ethnographic analysis of each of these projects, and ask to what extent and in what ways each affects its residents’ lives. How do different projects influence, in different ways, the income and material lives of their residents? Their relations with each other and with the people in the immediate neighborhood? Their lives as citizens? Their lives through the lenses of gender, sexuality and family? To address these questions, the research team will participate in the everyday functioning of the different housing projects, and conduct in-depth interviews with their residents.

“Having a three-year grant that can support a six-person team is essential to our task of generating new insights about the interface between sustainable housing, the state, and social movements,” Burdick says. “Much work on these matters tends to have a shorter-term time horizon and to focus on one or two housing projects at a time. The generous funding of the NSF and ESRC will make possible the discovery of processes and factors that become clearer only over time and through close comparative study of multiple cases.”

By bringing together anthropologists, a geographer, an architect/urban planner, and a housing advocate, the project serves as an example of collaboration between disciplines, and seeks to contribute to international policy discussions about affordable housing throughout the global South. The grant is expected to run through July 2019.

  • Author

News Staff

  • Recent
  • Pre-Registration Open for On-Campus Vaccine Clinic
    Friday, April 16, 2021, By News Staff
  • Commencement 2021 Update
    Friday, April 16, 2021, By News Staff
  • Activities for the Weekend of April 15-19 | Submit Proof of Vaccination
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By News Staff
  • ‘Biden is Considering Overhauling the Supreme Court. That’s Happened During Every Crisis in US Democracy’
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By Lily Datz
  • ‘It Was Never All or Nothing in Afghanistan’
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By News Staff

More In Media, Law & Policy

‘Biden is Considering Overhauling the Supreme Court. That’s Happened During Every Crisis in US Democracy’

  Thomas Keck, professor of political science in the Maxwell School, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post titled “Biden is considering overhauling the Supreme Court. That’s happened during every crisis in U.S. democracy.” Keck, who serves as the Michael…

‘Putin’s Rules of the Game’

Brian Taylor, professor of political science in the Maxwell School, wrote an op-ed for Foreign Affairs titled “Putin’s Rules of the Game.” Taylor is an expert on Russian politics and recently authored “The Code of Putinism,” published by Oxford University…

‘Should the COVID-19 Vaccine Be Required for the Military?’

Mark Nevitt, associate professor in the College of Law, authored an op-ed for Just Security titled “Should the COVID-19 Vaccine Be Required for the Military?” Nevitt specializes in national security law and previously served as a tactical jet aviator and…

Alumni Provide Support to WAER Students at the NCAA Tournament

When the Syracuse University men’s basketball team ended its NCAA Tournament run last month, it also marked the end of a long season for the student media broadcast team at WAER. Newhouse School of Public Communications seniors Corey Spector, Cooper…

‘Has Marijuana Changed or Have We?’

Dessa Bergen-Cico, professor of public health in the Falk College, authored an op-ed for Syracuse.com titled “Has marijuana changed or have we?” Bergen-Cico is the coordinator of Falk’s addiction studies program and has expertise in addiction, drug use and mental…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2021 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.