The Invention of the Favela

“Admirable work by Valladares. . . . Her greatest contribution . . . lies in reconstructing the conditions for the production and circulation of sociological ideas and their political and intellectual efficacy. . . . [A] fundamental book not only for scholars interested in marginality in Latin America, but for all social scientists who are sensitive to the ways in which our ideas and representations help to build meaning of the social world and our own political positions as academics.”—Contemporary Sociology

“One of the most important anthropologists of Brazil working today, and a leading specialist on the study of favelas since the 1960s, Valladares challenges all of us scholars to question our assumptions regarding favelas, to stop relying on myths as shorthand for more complex historical explanations, and to acknowledge that favelas can no longer be understood as the precinct of the urban poor. I expect the book to be assigned widely to students of anthropology, sociology, and urban studies, as well as the history of Brazil and Latin America.”—Bryan McCann, Georgetown University

“Valladares’s incisive intellectual history of favelas provides an extremely important framework not only for correcting misperceptions about the history of favelas but also for understanding how contemporary notions of favelas have been constructed and are, in many ways, both contingent and politicized. This new and updated translation will make an important and useful contribution to debates on similar urban studies issues throughout Latin America.”—Enrique Desmond Arias, Baruch College, City University of New York