Research Interests
I am interested in studying how people's perception of social categories and social inequality interact with "social structure" (distribution of resources, social networks, family etc) and with government policies, and how these interactions vary in space and time. My current work focuses on how Brazilians think about and use racial categories in a context of increased efforts by Brazilian government agencies to explicitly address racial inequality. In my dissertation, I investigate how students understand official and everyday racial classification systems in one of the first public universities in Brazil to implement race-targeted affirmative action policies for admissions. Another part of my work, based on statistical analysis of a nationally representative survey, looks how the socio-economic status of Brazilian parents affects the racial classificaiton of their children. In the longer term, I plan to expand my research to think about broader ways that people think about (and in the process help shape) inequality and social categories around the world.
Publications
Schwartzman, Luisa Farah, “Does Money Whiten? Intergenerational Changes in Racial Classification in Brazil.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 72, pp. 940-963, December 2007.
De Vos, Susan and Luisa Farah Schwartzman, “Using Union Status or Marital Status to Study the Living Arrangements of Elderly People.” Research on Aging, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 474-487, July 2008.
Schwartzman, Luisa Farah, “Who are the Blacks? The Question of Racial Classification in Brazilian Affirmative Action Policies in Higher Education.” Cahiers de la Recherche sur l'Éducation et les Savoirs, Forthcoming.
Work in Progress
Schwartzman, Luisa Farah, “Seeing Like Citizens: Unofficial Understandings of Official Racial Categories in a Brazilian University.” Revise and Resubmit in Journal of Latin American Studies.
Graziella Moraes D. Silva and Luisa Farah Schwartzman "Glocalizing Affirmative Action." Presented in the American Sociological Association Meeting in 2008.
Contact Info
lschwart "at" ssc.wisc.edu