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The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife
Author(s) -
Davies Archie
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12426
Subject(s) - division (mathematics) , modernity , enclosure , sociology , transformation (genetics) , race (biology) , space (punctuation) , geography , gender studies , political science , law , engineering , philosophy , telecommunications , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , arithmetic , mathematics , gene
In this paper I analyse the making and unmaking of amphibious urban modernity in Recife in the Northeast of Brazil in the first half of the 20th century. I argue that the transformation of the city was predicated on an absorptive and eradicative notion of whiteness that required the enclosure of wet, amphibious space to make dry land. The process of urban transformation proceeded not only through a racial division of space, but through a racial division of nature.