“Sovereign Parenting” in Affluent Latin American Neighborhoods: Race, and the Geopolitics of Childcare in Ipanema (Brazil) and El Condado (Puerto Rico)
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - 4:10pm
Linderman Library, Room 200
The Independence(s) Lecture Series
“Sovereign Parenting” in Affluent Latin American Neighborhoods:
Race, and the Geopolitics of Childcare
in Ipanema (Brazil) and El Condado (Puerto Rico)
Dr. Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas
Professor in the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College
and the Department of Psychology (Social Critical Psychology Program) at the CUNY Graduate Center
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 • 4:10 PM • Linderman Library, 200
Drawing from ethnographic research among parents in the affluent neighborhoods of Ipanema in Brazil and El Condado in Puerto Rico, Ramos-Zayas examines how Latin American urban elites recast understandings of race and class in relation to parenting practices. Ramos-Zayas focuses on how parents viewed their relationship with poor, darker-skin women whom they hired to care for their children. Domestic workers enable parents to teach their children social conventions while simultaneously sustaining their privileged status and whiteness.
An anthropologist by training, Ramos-Zayas is also affiliated with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies. She occupied the Valentin Lizana y Parrague Endowed Chair in Latin American Studies upon arriving at Baruch in 2012.Ramos-Zayas’ body of work aims to understand and disentangle systems of power and privilege at a variety of scales, ranging from U.S. imperial and white supremacist politics to the ways in which individuals and communities make sense of everyday forms of power and subordination. Issues of social justice and the intersection of intimate worlds and political economic structures are fundamental concerns in her empirical analyses.
