1. Research Methods
1.1. Main Informant: Gloria
1.1.1. Gloria, and her 13 living children and family live in the slums Felicidade Eterna.
1.1.1.1. Represented the poorest end of the working classes.
1.1.1.2. Confidentiality: Hides the identities of the people being studied
1.1.2. Research is obtained by observation of informants daily life, as well as interviews
1.2. Incorporation of Brazil's political and economic history
1.2.1. Dependency Theory
1.2.2. World Systems Theory
1.2.3. History
1.2.3.1. Brazil become one of the largest slave economy in the world.
1.2.3.1.1. Brazil never become a country with a diversified economy, it remained exporter-oriented with a firmly intact feudal landowning system.
1.2.3.2. Brazil lead expporter of sugar by early 1800s.
1.2.3.2.1. Sugar's history connected to the transformation of social behavior through trade.
1.2.3.3. San Paulo, industrialized power
1.2.3.3.1. Waves of immigration
1.3. Utilizes the oral nature of the culture
1.3.1. This is because popular culture in Rio, specifically women, is oral, but also "predominantly inaccessible in an obviously public form."
1.3.1.1. Humor was used by the women in Rio for "expressing sentiments that are difficult to communicate publicly or to point to areas of discontent in social life, and therefore informed Goldstein on specific cracks in the system perpetuating these issues.
2. Theoretical Issues or Dilemmas of an Ethnographic Study
2.1. Attempts to avoid presenting as a "culture of poverty"
2.2. Although postmodern cautions againist giving a voice to the powerless, Goldstein attempts to accomplish this with dignity, rather than allow the voices of these women remain silent and their struggle unheard
2.2.1. Survey research "by design is distanced and broad rather than deep"
2.2.2. Goldstein desired to "find out how the working poor-experienced living within social apartheid that characterized Rio, how they understood it, tolerated it, and even at times, made fun of it."
3. Humor
3.1. Used as a one of the main consolidating theme of Goldstein's ethnography that desires to document the intricate interactions among the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality at work in an extremely poverty-stricken community in Rio de Janeiro.
3.1.1. Reveals the fault lines in a society.
3.2. Laughter
3.2.1. "An interpretative method for beginning to unravel the complex ways in which people comprehend their own lives and circumstances."
3.2.1.1. A survivalist response
3.2.1.1.1. Forms part of a shared oppositional aesthetic forged within a class-polarized context.
3.2.1.1.2. Form of power that is both conservatory and liberatory
3.3. An organizing theme, but not the central focus of the ethnography, as it is the preferred type of communication, it is a vehicle used by the people in the study as the easiest way to express the power issue.
4. Core Focus: Power relations and how they are experienced by the poor.
5. Theoretical Issues
5.1. Power
5.1.1. Hegemony, is where the ruling/upper class interests accepted by lower classes aganists whose interests they operste, who they indeed subordinate. Leads to habit-forming, of the lower classes that do not necessarily confront the upper classes.
5.1.1.1. Hides of naturalizes the dominance of one economic class over another
5.1.2. Habitus - a historically structured, reproducing, and durable ordering that refers to the maintenance of a class divided social structure.
5.1.2.1. "Taste, is the mechanism through which differences and privilege are structured and embedded in one's habitus, naturalizing schemes of perception."
5.1.2.1.1. Therefore, "while taste may change or shift according to historical context, the relationship between classes is maintained through this constant reproduction of taste-based distinction."
5.2. Carnival and Class Formation
5.2.1. Festival is a huge "contrast of affluence shoulder to shoulder with poverty" that becomes clearly visible.
5.2.2. Carnival "is a looking glass image through which Brazilians define themselves and by which they present themselves to the world"
5.2.2.1. "Carnival's meanings are multiple and shifting with regard to community and historical context. Indeed, Carnival can ultimately serve as a conservative ritual that reinforces class positions and gender and sexual hierarchies. As Scheper-Hughes notes , 'There would be no need for carnival in the first place if there were not monstrous things that needed to be banished and forgotten'."
5.2.3. Carnival clearly displays contridictions
6. Ethnographic objectives the study
6.1. Importance of Humor, specific due to class based suffering
6.1.1. The source of the "black humor" is not joy, but deep sorrow
6.1.1.1. Vocies of the "subordinated classes are windows into the sense of injustice oppressed people feel about their conditions."
6.1.2. Humor is connected to "the sensibilities of a particular group, it is intimately connected to one's position within the class structure."
6.1.2.1. More specifically humor plays an "important role in boundary formation and the reinforcement of class positions, hierarchies, and structures."
6.2. Sources of Data: Gloria (Informant) and her family and friends
6.2.1. Old fashioned participant-observer role
6.2.2. Interviews individual, and group.
6.2.3. Spent extensive time with Gloria and family.
6.3. Analytical objectives and theory focus behind the study
6.3.1. Embodied effects of power
6.3.1.1. Effects of individuals or a communities lack of power includes illness, hunger, discomfort, violence, abandonment, and imprisonment
6.3.1.1.1. Goldstein explains "their laughter contains a sense of absurdity of the world they inhabit."
6.3.1.1.2. Women in the study are located underneath numerous "complex and interacting hierarchies."
6.3.2. How power is experienced by the poor
6.3.2.1. Bakhtin suggests this idea of circularity, "an idea that refers to the interactions between popular elite cultures, and perhaps, more accurately describes the processes involved."
6.3.3. Class, violence, family, history, and sexuality
6.4. Important historical, politcal, and economic events that contributed to the current issues in Brazil, that is the current political and economic issues plaguing Brazil.
6.4.1. Formation of power among communties in Brazil's slums is based on an extensive history of class differences
6.4.1.1. Rio has been referred to as "a city of contrasts. Poverty, inequality, racism, and violence are everywhere, so pervasive that they are sometimes hard to see."
6.4.1.1.1. Most unequal city.
6.5. Explain how she (Goldstein) came to Brazil, and the story behind her reasoning for the study
6.5.1. Latin Americanist Scholar, anthropologist, interested in sociology, women's issues and politics
6.5.2. 1990 - 1st arrival in Brazil to begin research dissertation.
6.5.2.1. Research focused on analyzing the effects of the AIDS endemic on low-income women.
6.5.2.1.1. Became interested in doing fieldwork among the poorest women after realizing coworkers and fellow researchers, that were mostly middle and upper class activists, "did not seem to have a very grounded sense of the lives of the poor, despite their good politics and good works."