Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Natalia Salgado Bueno
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2010-09-16 |
| Examining board members: |
Adrian Gurza Lavalle;
Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimaraes;
Bruno Pinheiro Wanderley Reis
|
| Advisor: | Adrian Gurza Lavalle |
| Abstract | |
The main goal of this thesis is to discuss races role in non-electoral political behavior (participation in political organizations and political activism). Based on the resource-based approach to political participation, especially on works done by Sidney Verba and his coauthors, we describe and discuss the analytical meanings given to race in the debate on political participation. We not only identified the way race was dealt with in the resource-based approach, but we also discussed the main hypotheses on race and political behavior found in the literature on Brazil and South Africa since our empirical cases are Belo Horizonte and Cape Town. In order to further specify our empirical hypotheses on both cases, we discussed the literature on racial classification in Brazil and South Africa. In summary, we found that, in Cape Town, identifying oneself as African greatly increases the probability of participating politically, whereas having resources such as income and schooling does not affect ones likelihood of being political active. On the other hand, in Belo Horizonte, resources such as income and schooling substantively increase ones probability of participating politically while race does not seem to affect an individuals probability of being politically active. In both cities, taking part in non-political organizations plays an important role in determining who participates. Based on these findings, we argue four main points. Firstly, the experience of racial discrimination and prejudice suffered by negros in Brazil does not seem lead to a distinctive pattern of political behavior between negros e brancos differently from what the literature on race and political behavior in Brazil had expected. Secondly, our findings in Cape Town allow us to plausibly argue that are factors related to the way how racial cleavages and social bases of political institutions greatly overlap in South Africa which leads to the prominence of race in Cape Town. Thirdly, we argue that, even though by incorporating race as an endogenous variable in the model developed by Verba in his last works, makes his own model more accurate and internally coherent, his last model did not seem to be more analytically accurate to understand our findings when compared to Verbas first models. Finally, we argue that in order to development a more robust theory on the roles race play in political behavior, one has to take seriously into account that varied meanings of race in different polities, so that the explanatory mechanisms are more precise and accurate. (AU) | |