Raven Sinclair (2004) locates the social worker at the heart of the colonial project, carrying out violent and assimilative government policy in Canada (p.50). Social work's connections to colonialism have been consciously and some would say “innocently” mutually dependent (Rossiter, 2001; Heron, 2007). Social work responses over time have been criticized for being non-performative (Ahmed, 2004), upholding institutional power (Bunjun, 2014) and ignoring ongoing colonialism (Lawrence & Dua, 2005). This study explores how self-identified white social work managers and directors reflect on and understand their roles in relation to reconciliation policy. It looks at the way discourse interrupts or maintains ruling relations including white supremacy and other colonial continuities (Heron, 2007). “In order to avoid further complicity, in assimilative and colonial practices, non-indigenous helpers must develop a clear understanding of their privilege and of their professions’ complicity in past and present colonial practices embedded in their practice”(Baskin, 2016). Through qualitative interviewing the study used critical whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis with the concept of relational validity in mind (Tuck & Yang, 2018). “What is valid in research is that which resonates with people’s lives and informs their power to make change” (Tuck & Yang, 2018, p.xiii). The findings suggest that participants orientation to reconciliation in the workplace, is controlled and continually reinforced through state discourses (neoliberal, neocolonial, reconciliation). Interestingly, the findings also suggest that participants may be de-contextualizing AOP discourses to neutralize and depoliticize their professional roles in the colonial project, as well as to rationalize their reluctance to take action. This suggests current approaches are not adequate to address colonial continuities in an era of reconciliation. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Published in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind achieved massive literary success before being adapted into a motion picture of the same name in 1939. The novel and film have amassed numerous accolades, inspired frequent reissues, and sustained mass popularity. This dissertation analyzes evidence of audience reception in order to assess the effects of Gone with the Wind's version of Lost Cause collective memory on the construction of the Old South, Civil War, and Lost Cause in the American imagination from 1936 to 2016. By utilizing the concept of prosthetic memory in conjunction with older, still-existing forms of collective cultural memory, Gone with the Wind is framed as a newly theorized mass cultural phenomenon that perpetuates Lost Cause historical narratives by reaching those who not only identify closely with it, but also by informing what nonidentifying consumers seeking historical authenticity think about the Old South and Civil War. In so doing, this dissertation argues that Gone with the Wind is both an artifact of the Lost Cause collective memory that it, more than anything else, legitimized in the twentieth century and a multi-faceted site where memory of the South and Civil War is still created. My research is grounded in the field of memory studies, in particular the work of Pierre Nora, Eric Hobsbawn, Andreas Huyssen, Michael Kammen, and Alison Landsberg. In chapter one, I track the reception of Gone with the Wind among white American audiences and define the phenomenon as rooted in Benedict Anderson's conception of the nation. I further argue that Gone with the Wind's Lost Causism provided white national subjects with a collective memory of slavery and the Civil War that made sense of continuing racial tensions during Jim Crow and justified white resistance to African American equality. Gone with the Wind, in other words, reconciled the lingering ideological divisions between white northerners and southerners who then were more concerned with protecting white supremacy. In chapter two and three, I analyze Gone with the Wind's continuing popularity throughout the twentieth century and its significant influence on other sites of national memory. Chapter four uses contemporary user reviews of Gone with the Wind DVD and Blu-ray collector's editions to reveal that the phenomenon remains popular. Throughout this study I analyze the history of black resistance to the Gone with the Wind phenomenon. For African Americans, Gone with the Wind's Lost Causism has always been understood as justification for racism, imbuing the white national conscious with a mythological history of slavery and black inferiority. As I argue, black protestors to Gone with the Wind were correct, as the phenomenon has always resonated most during moments of increased racial tension such as during the civil rights era and following the Charleston Church Massacre in 2015. / Ph. D.

The main goal of this thesis was an investigation into the ways in which whiteness is constructed and positioned in the South African soap opera, 7de Laan, and the Flemish soap opera, Thuis, with the emphasis on the possible implications of these constructions for local as well as global discourses on whiteness in the media. In conjunction with the above, this thesis endeavoured to answer a number of subquestions relating to the origin and history of the construct of “whiteness” and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as a theoretical approach and its relevance in the South African and Flemish contexts, specifically as it pertains to the analysis of mass media texts like 7de Laan and Thuis. It, moreover, sought to explore if and how whiteness functions as an organising principle in the narratives and representations of these soap operas with the emphasis on potential similarities, differences and the kinds of whiteness constructed in these texts. Finally, the goal was to draw conclusions on the possible implications of these differences and similarities in the wider context of the way in which whiteness functions in the media. To that end I conducted a controlled case comparison of a sample from these two community soap opera texts, which was informed by a literature review and deep description of each context as part of the qualitative approach I chose to take. Despite a number of similarities between the two contexts, they still differ significantly, and this afforded me an opportunity to highlight both the consistencies and particularities in the ideological patterning of representations of whiteness, across seemingly unrelated domains, to illustrate its pervasiveness. Added to the emergence of three shared rhetorical devices perpetuating whiteness in both texts, I was also able to draw conclusions about the unique way in which whiteness functions in 7de Laan in particular, since South Africa remains the primary context of the study. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

Using the literary device of a fictional interview between the artist and a sympathetic intellectual, I explore concepts relating to subjectivity, pedagogy, memory, “Southernness,” whiteness, the deceptive nature of images, social justice, and 20th century art as they relate to a contemporary artistic practice.

Submitted by Mariana Dornelles Vargas (marianadv) on 2015-03-18T18:12:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 identidade_etnico.pdf: 4196495 bytes, checksum: 0248ef21e29eedeee3c9bdc1a1c63368 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-18T18:12:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 identidade_etnico.pdf: 4196495 bytes, checksum: 0248ef21e29eedeee3c9bdc1a1c63368 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-14 / Nenhuma / A tese busca averiguar a visibilidade da Educação das Relações Étnico-Raciais na implantação da legislação concernente, em universidades de caráter comunitário no sul do Brasil, sendo uma do Vale do Rio Ivaí, no Paraná, uma do Vale do Rio Itajaí, em Santa Catarina e uma do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, no Rio Grande do Sul. Na pesquisa realizada, mediante análise de documentos oficiais, de atividades acadêmicas e de falas de entrevistados, nas três instituições, ao mesmo tempo em que se constataram alguns importantes indícios da visibilidade da temática e da inclusão dos afrodescendentes, deparou-se também com a real realidade da relação entre brancos e negros, em cada um dos três contextos, expressa em resistências à inclusão desta temática e de seus sujeitos, que se misturam com os avanços havidos. Estas resistências são disseminadas e focadas, com maior ou menor intensidade, e dizem respeito a cada contexto. Trabalhando questões relativas à exclusão/inclusão, à identidade, à visibilidade/invisibilidade, ao controle por reações e olhares, e às oportunidades, o estudo ajuda a constatar (ou desvendar): 1) dificuldades muito específicas vividas pela população afrodescendente, sobretudo, envolvendo processos sutis que excluem ou retardam a participação desta população nas decisões sociais, educacionais, inclusive nas decisões concernentes à sua própria identidade; 2) a percepção repetida de que afrodescendentes organizam trabalhos, criam possibilidades e condições, apresentam metodologias e projetos, mas, no final, a branquitude ou a branquidade acaba se apoderando e assumindo o protagonismo, com ou sem a participação desses; 3) o papel importante exercido pelas pastorais da Igreja Católica, nos três contextos, com destaque também ao forte papel exercido pelo diálogo inter-religioso em uma das instituições. A pesquisa, também, ajuda a verificar 1) a existência de processos históricos muito diferentes, comparando os três contextos, do movimento negro e, consequentemente, das relações étnico-raciais, assim como sua repercussão na maior ou menor sintonia das instituições pesquisadas com a temática em pauta; 2) a existência diferenciada de dinâmicas institucionais internas a cada uma das instituições, considerando a sua história institucional e as decisões oficiais recentes no que concerne às iniciativas em prol da institucionalização da Educação das Relações Étnico- Raciais. A constatação geral é de que existe um bom início de esforço pela inclusão e emancipação, mas há muito a fazer, pois prevalecem resistências e silêncios que às vezes se expressam em reações carregadas de sutileza e frieza. O estudo tem como referência na sua construção teórica aportes de Kwame Anthony Appiah, Florestan Fernandes, Alberto Melucci, Vron Ware, Maria Aparecida Bento, Kabenguele Munanga, Paulo Freire, Petronilha Beatriz Gonçalves da Silva e Silva, Nilma Lino Gomes, Frantz Fanon e outros. Dele resulta, de forma renovada, a partir das três instituições e seus contextos, a convicção de que a inclusão dos afrodescendentes é uma questão de ética e moral no que diz respeito a direitos sociais e de identidade étnico-racial, frente a uma dívida histórica da sociedade brasileira, quese deixou embalar em seu berço esplêndido de branquidade. / This dissertation seeks to determine the visibility of the Education of Racial-Ethnic Relations in the implementation of the concerning legislation in southern Brazil community colleges, being one from Vale do Rio Ivaí, in the State of Paraná, another from Vale do Rio Itajaí, in the State of Santa Catarina, and another one from Vale do Rio dos Sinos, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. In the research conducted by analysis of official documents, academic activities and interviewees speeches in the three institutions, while some important clues of visibility of the issue and of the inclusion of African descent people were found, one faces also the real reality of the relationship between blacks and whites in each of the three contexts, expressed as resistance to the inclusion of this subject and its subject, mixed with advances that has taken place. These resistances are widespread and focused, with more or less intensity, are related to each context. Taking into consideration subjects related to exclusion/inclusion, identity, visibility/invisibility, control by reactions and perceptions, and the opportunities, this paper helps to find or unveil 1) very specific difficulties experienced by people of African descent, especially involving subtle processes that exclude or hinder the participation of these people in social, educational decisions, including in the ones concerning their own identity; 2) the repeated perception that African descent people organize work, create opportunities and conditions, provide methodologies and projects, but in the end the whiteness end up taking hold and taking the leading role, with or without their participation; 3) the important role played by the Catholic Churchs pastoral organizations, in the three contexts, highlighting also the strong role played by inter-religious dialog institutions. The research also helps determine 1) the existence of very different historical processes, comparing the three contexts, of the black movement and, consequently, of ethnic-racial relations, as well as its impact with more or less consistency of the institutions researched in the issue in question, 2) the differentiated existence of internal institutional dynamics to each college, considering its institutional history and its official recent decisions regarding the initiatives for the institutionalization of the Education of Racial-Ethnic Relations. The general finding is that there is a good start to struggle for inclusion and empowerment, but there is much to do, because it is prevailing resistance and silences that sometimes manifest themselves in reactions loaded with finesse and coolness. The study is referred in its theoretical construction inputs by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Florestan Fernandes, Alberto Melucci, Vron Ware, Maria Aparecida Bento, Kabenguele Munanga, Paulo Freire, Petronilha Beatriz Gonçalves da Silva e Silva, Nilma Lino Gomes, Frantz Fanon and others. It results, from the three institutions and their contexts, the belief that the inclusion of African descent people is a matter of ethics and morality with regard to social rights and ethno-racial identity, compared to a historical debt of the Brazilian society, which left his pack in splendid cradle of whiteness.

Embora sejam grandes os progressos com a promulgação da Constituição de 1988, que garante constitucionalmente a saúde como direito de todos e dever do Estado, esse direito não tem sido assegurado no mesmo nível e com a mesma qualidade de atenção, em especial, para a população negra. Depois de uma revisão sobre a história a influência das teorias racialistas e de gênero como categoria de análise na medicina, discute-se uma síntese da história recente das práticas médicas no Brasil e a reflexão critica sobre essas práticas centradas no tecnicismo. O objetivo deste estudo, parte da linha de pesquisa Pesquisa Psicossocial da Desigualdade: Relações Étnico-raciais, foi descrever que sentidos e significados médicos e médicas conferem aos temas médico-sociais na sua trajetória e formação, especialmente como concebem os determinantes sociais de gênero e raça Foram entrevistados 25 médicos (13 médicos e 12 médicas) que orientam e são preceptores de alunos da residência médica em um hospital universitário. O roteiro abordava o perfil sócio-demográfico e sua trajetória profissional; o seu nível de conhecimento e contato com os determinantes sociais (pobreza, gênero, cor/raça, nacionalidade, religião dos diferentes grupos populacionais) durante a formação acadêmica; que fatores consideravam relevantes para uma boa relação médico-paciente; seu conhecimento sobre Direitos Humanos e os princípios do Sistema Único de Saúde; as experiências na relação médico-paciente e de cuidado. Depois de um aquecimento propiciado pela situação da entrevista, entre os resultados, o estudo permitiu observar como os médicos entrevistados reconhecem alguns marcadores sociais da diferença que se transformam em desigualdade, os lugares sociais diferentes para homens e mulheres, brancos, amarelos e negros, lugares de maior ou menor privilégio e de obstáculo para o sucesso técnico. As diferenças e desigualdade de gênero foram mais fáceis de serem explicitadas e os entrevistados articulavam um repertório levemente maior para o tema. Todos os entrevistados, em algum momento, usaram o discurso sobre o instintivo e natural, e a maior parte deles compreende o masculino e o feminino de um modo muito conservador, com problemas para encontrar definições para perguntas supostamente simples. No caso da desigualdade racial, observamos que houve uma polarização: de um lado a negação das desigualdades entre brancos e não brancos, do outro temos a valorização da identidade branca, compondo bem com o racismo à brasileira. O contexto social foi associado à pobreza mais que qualquer outro indicador da desigualdade social. Cenas de racismo e sexismo institucional foram frequentes. Os poucos entrevistados que tinham uma noção mais sofisticada sobre gênero e raça eram aqueles que contaram com a oportunidade de desenvolver uma atividade de extensão, a iniciação científica ou que tiveram uma formação mais generalista, mais social. A trajetória trilhada na faculdade contribui, portanto, para a formação / Brazil\'s 1988 Constitution grants health as a human right to all and a duty of the State. Although great progress has been made since its enactment, this right has not been ensured at the same level and with the same service quality, particularly with regard to Afro-Brazilians. With close attention to history and the influence of racial and gendered theories, this article discusses the recent history of medical practices in Brazil and provides critical reflection on those practices that are centered on technique. The main purpose of this study, a part of the Psycho-social research on inequality: ethnic-racial relations research line, is to describe the meanings and significance that doctors give to medical social issues in their education. Special attention is given to their conception of the social determinants of gender and race. Twenty-five doctors (13 men and 12 women) were interviewed. All of them mentor medical students pursuing their residency at a University Hospital. The interviews script centered on their socio-demographic profile, their professional path and the degree of knowledge or contact with social determinants (poverty, gender, race/color, nationality, religion of the different population groups) during their academic formation, the factors they considered as relevant to a good doctor-patient relationship, their knowledge of Human Rights and the principles of the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) and their experiences in the care and doctor-patient relationships. Among its results, the study shows how the interviewed doctors recognize several social markers of difference that convert into inequity, the different social places for men and women, the white, the people of Asian descent and the black, places of greater or lower privilege and obstacle for technical success. The gender differences and inequalities were more easily explained and respondents articulated a slightly larger repertoire for the topic. All of the interviewees, at some moment, used the discourse on the instinctive and the natural, and most of them have a very conservative comprehension of the feminine and the masculine, and encountered problems in finding definitions for apparently simple questions. With regards to racial inequality, there was a polarization: on the one hand, the denial of inequalities among the white and the non white, on the other, a consistent evaluation of white identity, linked to the Brazilian racism. The social context was associated with poverty rather than any other indicator of social inequality. Evidence of racism and sexism were frequently observed in the interviews. The few interviewees that had a more sophisticated notion of gender and race were those who had had the chance to develop an extracurricular activity, the scientific initiation, or those who had had a more generalist and social education. Thus, the experience acquired during university contributes to the formation of their notions of social determinants in health

Embora sejam grandes os progressos com a promulgação da Constituição de 1988, que garante constitucionalmente a saúde como direito de todos e dever do Estado, esse direito não tem sido assegurado no mesmo nível e com a mesma qualidade de atenção, em especial, para a população negra. Depois de uma revisão sobre a história a influência das teorias racialistas e de gênero como categoria de análise na medicina, discute-se uma síntese da história recente das práticas médicas no Brasil e a reflexão critica sobre essas práticas centradas no tecnicismo. O objetivo deste estudo, parte da linha de pesquisa Pesquisa Psicossocial da Desigualdade: Relações Étnico-raciais, foi descrever que sentidos e significados médicos e médicas conferem aos temas médico-sociais na sua trajetória e formação, especialmente como concebem os determinantes sociais de gênero e raça Foram entrevistados 25 médicos (13 médicos e 12 médicas) que orientam e são preceptores de alunos da residência médica em um hospital universitário. O roteiro abordava o perfil sócio-demográfico e sua trajetória profissional; o seu nível de conhecimento e contato com os determinantes sociais (pobreza, gênero, cor/raça, nacionalidade, religião dos diferentes grupos populacionais) durante a formação acadêmica; que fatores consideravam relevantes para uma boa relação médico-paciente; seu conhecimento sobre Direitos Humanos e os princípios do Sistema Único de Saúde; as experiências na relação médico-paciente e de cuidado. Depois de um aquecimento propiciado pela situação da entrevista, entre os resultados, o estudo permitiu observar como os médicos entrevistados reconhecem alguns marcadores sociais da diferença que se transformam em desigualdade, os lugares sociais diferentes para homens e mulheres, brancos, amarelos e negros, lugares de maior ou menor privilégio e de obstáculo para o sucesso técnico. As diferenças e desigualdade de gênero foram mais fáceis de serem explicitadas e os entrevistados articulavam um repertório levemente maior para o tema. Todos os entrevistados, em algum momento, usaram o discurso sobre o instintivo e natural, e a maior parte deles compreende o masculino e o feminino de um modo muito conservador, com problemas para encontrar definições para perguntas supostamente simples. No caso da desigualdade racial, observamos que houve uma polarização: de um lado a negação das desigualdades entre brancos e não brancos, do outro temos a valorização da identidade branca, compondo bem com o racismo à brasileira. O contexto social foi associado à pobreza mais que qualquer outro indicador da desigualdade social. Cenas de racismo e sexismo institucional foram frequentes. Os poucos entrevistados que tinham uma noção mais sofisticada sobre gênero e raça eram aqueles que contaram com a oportunidade de desenvolver uma atividade de extensão, a iniciação científica ou que tiveram uma formação mais generalista, mais social. A trajetória trilhada na faculdade contribui, portanto, para a formação / Brazil\'s 1988 Constitution grants health as a human right to all and a duty of the State. Although great progress has been made since its enactment, this right has not been ensured at the same level and with the same service quality, particularly with regard to Afro-Brazilians. With close attention to history and the influence of racial and gendered theories, this article discusses the recent history of medical practices in Brazil and provides critical reflection on those practices that are centered on technique. The main purpose of this study, a part of the Psycho-social research on inequality: ethnic-racial relations research line, is to describe the meanings and significance that doctors give to medical social issues in their education. Special attention is given to their conception of the social determinants of gender and race. Twenty-five doctors (13 men and 12 women) were interviewed. All of them mentor medical students pursuing their residency at a University Hospital. The interviews script centered on their socio-demographic profile, their professional path and the degree of knowledge or contact with social determinants (poverty, gender, race/color, nationality, religion of the different population groups) during their academic formation, the factors they considered as relevant to a good doctor-patient relationship, their knowledge of Human Rights and the principles of the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) and their experiences in the care and doctor-patient relationships. Among its results, the study shows how the interviewed doctors recognize several social markers of difference that convert into inequity, the different social places for men and women, the white, the people of Asian descent and the black, places of greater or lower privilege and obstacle for technical success. The gender differences and inequalities were more easily explained and respondents articulated a slightly larger repertoire for the topic. All of the interviewees, at some moment, used the discourse on the instinctive and the natural, and most of them have a very conservative comprehension of the feminine and the masculine, and encountered problems in finding definitions for apparently simple questions. With regards to racial inequality, there was a polarization: on the one hand, the denial of inequalities among the white and the non white, on the other, a consistent evaluation of white identity, linked to the Brazilian racism. The social context was associated with poverty rather than any other indicator of social inequality. Evidence of racism and sexism were frequently observed in the interviews. The few interviewees that had a more sophisticated notion of gender and race were those who had had the chance to develop an extracurricular activity, the scientific initiation, or those who had had a more generalist and social education. Thus, the experience acquired during university contributes to the formation of their notions of social determinants in health

The ways in which white Americans understand the racial landscape and their own racial identities are not well understood. Through the lens of the racial past, in this study I investigate how memory operates within the white racial frame, the dominant white-centric worldview, to uphold systemic racism and to maintain whites’ collective and individual identities. Through a narrative analysis of original in-depth interviews conducted with 44 ordinary white southerners – lifetime residents of Greensboro, North Carolina – who lived through the legal segregation and civil rights eras, this research demonstrates the interviewees’ contemporary investment in positive notions of the white self and white society. The respondents' autobiographical narratives of life during legal segregation, a time of overt white supremacy, are typified by nostalgia for a childhood era of safety, security, and "good" race relations. Interviewees' narratives of the civil rights era, including nonviolent student sit-in protests for which Greensboro is known and school desegregation, have themes of disruption, danger, and white victimization. Overall, respondents portray Jim Crow segregation as a calm and peaceful time and the civil rights era as chaotic and harmful to whites, at the same time as they acknowledge, to a limited extent, the unfairness of Jim Crow's blatant racial inequalities. In this work I propose the concepts white victimology, white protectionism, and white moral identity. I argue that white victimology – whites' perception, largely imagined, of their own racial victimization – is a major ideological and emotional facet of the white racial frame, whereby whites dismiss the historical and contemporary reality of white racism. My analysis demonstrates that white victimology is a primary way in which whites assert themselves, individually and collectively, as racial innocents and "good" people. In this work I also conceptualize the dynamic of white protectionism, explanatory and rhetorical ways in which whites "rescue" white acquaintances and family members from potential accusations of racism. Ultimately, I argue that whites' investment in perpetuating white dominance and upholding the white racial frame occurs through white moral identity-making, myriad active and subtle ways that whites continue to construct themselves positively and construct people of color, especially black Americans, negatively.

This thesis explores the symbolic place occupied by a racialized neighbourhood within the Uruguayan national imaginary. I study the conventillos (tenement buildings) of two traditionally Afro-Uruguayan neighbourhoods in Montevideo, Barrio Sur and Palermo. These neighbourhoods are considered the cradle of Afro-Uruguayan culture and identity. The conventillos have been immortalized in paintings, souvenirs, songs, and books. Over the years most of the residents were evicted due to demolitions, which peaked during Uruguay’s military dictatorship (1973-1984). I address the paradox of how a community can be materially marginalized, yet symbolically celebrated, a process that is evident in other American nations (Brazil, Colombia, etc.). I show how race, class, and gender are entangled in folkloric depictions of the conventillo to constitute a limited notion of blackness that naturalizes the relationship between Afro-Uruguayans, music, sexuality, and domestic work. The folklorization of the space and it residents is shown to be a “fetishization” which enhances the whiteness of the national identity, while confining the parameters of black citizenship and belonging. Utilizing a methodology that draws on cultural geography, critical race, postcolonial, and feminist theory, my dissertation analyzes the various ways that the Barrio Sur/Palermo conventillo has been imagined, represented, and experienced. Specifically, I examine 1) autobiographical, literary and popular (media, songs) narratives about these neighbourhoods; 2) the depiction of the conventillo by a prominent artist (Carlos Páez Vilaró); 3) spatial practices; 4) the performance of a dancer who emerged from the conventillo to become a national icon (the Carnival vedette Rosa Luna); and 5) interviews with nine key informants. My analysis focuses on how bodies, subjects, and national belonging are constituted through relations to particular spaces. By foregrounding the “geographies of identity” (Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996, p. 27), I show that the symbolic celebration of black space goes hand in hand with material disavowal. This study thus connects the imagining of a local, racialized space to how national belonging is constituted and experienced.

This thesis explores the symbolic place occupied by a racialized neighbourhood within the Uruguayan national imaginary. I study the conventillos (tenement buildings) of two traditionally Afro-Uruguayan neighbourhoods in Montevideo, Barrio Sur and Palermo. These neighbourhoods are considered the cradle of Afro-Uruguayan culture and identity. The conventillos have been immortalized in paintings, souvenirs, songs, and books. Over the years most of the residents were evicted due to demolitions, which peaked during Uruguay’s military dictatorship (1973-1984). I address the paradox of how a community can be materially marginalized, yet symbolically celebrated, a process that is evident in other American nations (Brazil, Colombia, etc.). I show how race, class, and gender are entangled in folkloric depictions of the conventillo to constitute a limited notion of blackness that naturalizes the relationship between Afro-Uruguayans, music, sexuality, and domestic work. The folklorization of the space and it residents is shown to be a “fetishization” which enhances the whiteness of the national identity, while confining the parameters of black citizenship and belonging. Utilizing a methodology that draws on cultural geography, critical race, postcolonial, and feminist theory, my dissertation analyzes the various ways that the Barrio Sur/Palermo conventillo has been imagined, represented, and experienced. Specifically, I examine 1) autobiographical, literary and popular (media, songs) narratives about these neighbourhoods; 2) the depiction of the conventillo by a prominent artist (Carlos Páez Vilaró); 3) spatial practices; 4) the performance of a dancer who emerged from the conventillo to become a national icon (the Carnival vedette Rosa Luna); and 5) interviews with nine key informants. My analysis focuses on how bodies, subjects, and national belonging are constituted through relations to particular spaces. By foregrounding the “geographies of identity” (Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996, p. 27), I show that the symbolic celebration of black space goes hand in hand with material disavowal. This study thus connects the imagining of a local, racialized space to how national belonging is constituted and experienced.