The trajectory of social ascension and success of a black army officer and entrepreneur in Curitiba in the second half of the twentieth century

• Grant number: 12/21097-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: January 01, 2013
• End date: April 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães
• Grantee: Benno Victor Warken Alves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project`s proposal is to investigate the trajectory of Sydnei Lima Santos. Black and born in 1925 in Rio de Janeiro, where he entered the military career, Santos moved in 1951 to Curitiba and made in the city simultaneously a movement of social ascension in the military career and a successful activity as a private education entrepreneur. When he died, in 2002, he was the owner of one of the biggest universities in the state of Paraná, the Universidade Tuiuti. We will reconstitute his trajectory, trying to understand especially the web that links his history with the history of Curitiba in the second half of the twentieth century. This period, in which the city changed rapidly becoming what it is today, was decisive to the processes of identitary elaborations that ended up in the consolidation of ideas such the one according to which Curitiba is Brazil`s "European capital". We are interested in finding out how the success of "colonel Sydney" - the way he became widely known in the city - articulates with these processes, since they comprehended the mobilization of racial ideas. Thus, we also wish to contribute to the knowledge of the racialization of the social identities in Curitiba`s recent history.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

ALVES, Benno Victor Warken. Colonel Sydnei: social ascension and dominant class in the trajectory of a black army officer. 2014. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.