I'll Samba Someplace Else: A Spatial History of Race, Ethnicity, and Displacement in São Paulo - Softcover

Andrew G. Britt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1478032812 ISBN 13: 9781478032816

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2026

Synopsis

In I’ll Samba Someplace Else, Andrew G. Britt maps the interwoven histories of three of the city of São Paulo’s most iconic ethnoracialized neighborhoods, popularly known as “African” Brasilãndia, “Japanese” Liberdade, and “Italian” Bexiga. Following these spaces over the mid-twentieth century through inventive methods of spatial history, archival research, and sustained engagement with African descendent cultural organizations, Britt shows that these ethnoracialized neighborhoods did not accrue naturally over time. Instead, they were planned, produced, and contested by an array of individuals, from powerful urbanist-politicians and neighborhood businessowners to celebrated samba composers and historic preservationists. The ethnoracialization of these neighborhoods, Britt argues, served paradoxical ends: they reproduced consequential racialized inequities while, simultaneously, bolstering discourses of multicultural harmony. By untangling the paradoxes of ethnoracial space in Brazil’s most populous, diverse, and unequal city, I’ll Samba Someplace Else elucidates how popular ideologies of multiculturalism endure despite persistently high levels of racialized inequity and anti-Black violence in Brazil and beyond.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew G. Britt is Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478032812
• ISBN 13: 9781478032816
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 406