The historic rescue of the processes of production and accumulation of wealth/riches, based on coffee, cotton and slavery in Brazil and the US, and the sociospatial repercussions of exclusion and poverty in a comparative analysis between their cities.

Abstract

This research project, at a post-doctoral level, aims to carry on the doctoral dissertation studies of this researcher/proponent, that carried out a comparative study between São Paulo and New York/New England, through an urbanistic approach and a historic approach. For the present and future analyses the approach sequency was inverted and the broader scope is a comparative historic analysis between São Paulo (Brazil) and New York + New England (USA), by means of a historic rescue of the processes of production and accumulation of wealth based on the global commodities coffee and cotton, respectively, besides the African enslavement as main vectors of economic growth (European immigration, urbanization, and industrialization), along the 18th and 19th centuries, colonial and slavery periods, where and when black enslaved workforce was used to transform natural resources into wealth by giving birth to the present modern cities, among other institutions, with their contradictions and inequalities, still visible in neighborhoods of São Paulo, New York, Boston, among others. And in sequence, the project will focus on the so called symbolic and physical degradation of neighborhoods in São Paulo, New York, and New England, mostly inhabited by people of African descent and/or people of color, to hone the socio spatial resonance of the capitalist contradictions in play in times of neoliberalism.