Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Stranded Cosmopolitans: Imagined Belonging in an Out-Of-The-Way Brazilian City

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

University of California-Davis doctoral student, Timothy E. Murphy, supervised by Dr. Donald L. Donham, will undertake research on the growth of provincial urban culture outside of global cities and how this culture affects social divisions of race, class, and gender. The project will provide insight into significant changes taking place in provincial cities throughout the world, as previously isolated people are cognitively incorporated into larger worlds, even when those worlds remain outside their physical reach. The research is important for increasing our understanding of the diffusion and authority of new ideas. The research will be carried out on a network of middle-class Brazilians who live in a city located at the heart of the impoverished Brazilian Northeast. The study will focus on non-elite residents who are considered cosmopolitan, knowledgeable about sophisticated cultures from outside, despite the reality that poverty makes it impossible for them to travel. Data collection will begin with participant observation by accompanying informants throughout occupational, leisure, and consumer activities to 1) learn where and how they acquire their cultural knowledge; 2) assess the extent to which their daily practices and perceptions are linked to the world outside the city; and 3) analyze how they understand and operationalize dominant norms of race, class, and gender. The researcher will also conduct focus groups and surveys to collect comparative data on the dominant (non-cosmopolitan) local culture. The research is important because it will advance our understanding of how even disadvantaged people in remote locales may connect to and identify with distant places and ideas. This is significant beyond the local case of "stranded cosmopolitans" in provincial Brazil because it may be through similar personalized pathways that new concepts -- be they political, cultural, or religious -- diffuse from global centers into local lives. The project also contributes to the education and training of a social scientist.