The Color of Modernity

In The Color of Modernity, Barbara Weinstein focuses on race, gender, and regionalism in the formation of national identities in Brazil; this focus allows her to explore how uneven patterns of economic development are consolidated and understood. Organized around two principal episodesthe 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution and 1954s IV Centenrio, the quadricentennial of So Paulos foundingthis book shows how both elites and popular sectors in So Paulo embraced a regional identity that emphasized their European origins and aptitude for modernity and progress, attributes that becameand remainassociated with whiteness. This racialized regionalism naturalized and reproduced regional inequalities, as So Paulo became synonymous with prosperity while Brazils Northeast, a region plagued by drought and poverty, came to represent backwardness and So Paulos racial Other. This view of regional difference, Weinstein argues, led to development policies that exacerbated these inequalities and impeded democratization.