Dr Andreza A. De Souza Santos
In September 2018, I joined the Latin American Centre as the Departmental Lecturer and a fellow at St. Antony’s college. I share with my colleagues in LAC the enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research to understand the social, political and economic challenges in Latin American cities. I also look at Latin America comparatively, and apply knowledge gathered while living and studying in places like South Africa and India.
In the LAC, I lecture the courses ‘Cities and Citizenship in Latin America’, discussing mega-cities, informal housing, and social movements; and the course ‘Politics in Brazil’, focussing on Brazil’s contemporary politics. I also contribute to the course 'Political Economy in Latin America', which I taught in 2019, and to the Research Methods courses. As the Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme for the next four years, I have the opportunity to organise seminars and host visiting scholars and students working on a variety of disciplines discussing Brazilian inequalities and democracy.
As a political anthropologist, my research is mainly concerned with the intersections and the dynamics between formal and informal political and economic systems. In my ethnography in Ouro Preto, Brazil, I have observed participatory politics (Policy Councils): who participates in meetings, how do meetings develop, and which impact do participatory politics have in the city? What I have seen is that participating is not the same as voicing concerns, and people may go to meetings but remain silent. Sub-optimal decisions in policy councils are sometimes less costly for participants than confronting established powers in town. Thus, there is a negative relationship between participation and levels of economic dependency. Whereas grassroots politics is a valuable resource to press for urban amenities, it is important to consider which spaces are adequate for effective participation and when poverty mobilizes or discourages participatory politics.
Looking more specifically at heritage policy-making, grassroots activism is vital because city spaces are preserved, presumably with the input of civil society – representing their memories and uses of spaces. My monograph: “The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil” (2019), looks at the challenges of citizens’ political participation. I have also co-edited two books about comparative urbanism, mainly looking at Brazil, South Africa, India and China (Manchester University Press, forthcoming). I have other papers published by Contemporary Social Science, Ethnography, and JLAG.
Before coming to the LAC, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Anthropology in Oxford, where I am still involved teaching on urban ethnographic methods. I completed my DPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, a Masters in Social Sciences at the University of Freiburg, University of KwaZulu Natal and Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science at the University of Brasilia. I also worked at the Ministry of Social Development, helping to establish the Zero Hunger Programme and Family Grant Programme, and at the Indian Embassy to Brazil, setting up collaborations between these two countries. At the United Nations, I worked on reports on transnational organised crime and violence against women and girls.
Research Interests:
- Grassroots Politics
- Informal Economies
- Ethnography
- Social Memory
- Inequality and Social Movements
- Current Project: https://www.lac.ox.ac.uk/article/one-company-towns-in-brazil-0
Countries/Regions:
- Brazil, Latin America, India, and South Africa
Email: andreza.desouzasantos@lac.ox.ac.uk
Website: www.andreza.co.uk
Twitter: @andreza_aruska
Phone: +44 (0) 1865 2-84775
Please visit the Google Scholar profile for an up-to-date list.
Monographs and Edited Books
De Souza Santos, A. A. & Keith, M. (eds.) (2021) Provisional title: “African cities and collaborative futures Urban platforms and metropolitan logistics”. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
De Souza Santos, A. A. & M, Keith (eds.) (2020) “Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city.” Manchester University Press.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil”, London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
De Souza Santos, A. A. , Simcik Arese, N. & Keith, M. (eds.) (in preparation, Manchester University Press) Provisional title: “The Good City: Urban Comparison and Value”
Journal Articles
Buss, L. F., Prete, C. A., Abrahim, C. M., (...) De Souza Santos, Andreza Aruska, et al. (2020). Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic. Science.
Darlan da Silva Candido, Ingra Morales Claro, Jaqueline Goes de Jesus (…) De Souza Santos, A. A. (2020) “Evolution and epidemic spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil”. Science.
William Marciel de Souza, Lewis Fletcher Buss, Darlan da Silva Candido (…) De Souza Santos, A. A. (2020) “Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the early phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil”. Nature Human Behaviour.
De Souza Santos, A. A. with Leigh Payne (2020) “The right-wing backlash in Brazil and Beyond”. Politics and Gender.
De Souza Santos, A. A. “Governance challenges in Latin American cities“. One Earth (February 2020)
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “Trading time and space: grassroots negotiations in a Brazilian mining district”. Ethnography.
De Souza Santos, A. A. with Sue Iamamoto (2019) “The difficult legacy of mining in past and contemporary Potosí and Ouro Preto”. Journal of Latin American Geography.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2018) “Risky closeness and distance in two fieldwork sites in Brazil”. Contemporary Social Science.
Book Chapters
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “Risky closeness and distance in two fieldwork sites in Brazil”. In Abdelhalim, J & Marks, Monique (eds) Identity, agency and fieldwork methodologies in risky environments. Routledge.
De Souza Santos, A. A. and Tom Hulme (2019) “Cultural Marginality and Urban Place Making: the Case of Leicester and Ouro Preto”. In Cupples, J. & T. Slater (eds.) Producing and contesting urban marginality: Interdisciplinary and comparative dialogues. Rowman & Littlefield International.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (Forthcoming 2019) “From protests to silence: social movements in contemporary Brazil”. In Hatzikidi, K & Dullo, E. (eds.) A Horizon of (im)possibilities: A chronicle of Brazil’s conservative turn. London: ILAS.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2013) “Chandigarh and Brasilia: utopias or dystopias?” in Fulquet, G. Janz, C., Kumar, A. (eds.) Analyzing Globalisation in the 21st Century. Argentine: FLACSO, pp. 163-174.
Book Reviews
De Souza Santos, A. A (2020) Review of the book “An Economic and Demographic History of São Paulo” by Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein. Urban History Journal
De Souza Santos, A. A (2018) Review of the book “The limits to citizen power: Participatory democracy and the entanglements of the state” by Victor Albert. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2014, April 9) Review of the book “Space and Society in Central Brazil: A Panará Ethnography” by Elizabeth Ewart. The London School of Economics and Political Science Review of Books.