The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Houses from a favela are photographed through the Olympic rings prior to the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics. PAimages/Jae C Hong. All rights reserved.
In the mid-1990s, amid a crisis of rampant violence in Rio de Janeiro, an influential Brazilian journalist, Zuenir Ventura, published a book with the title Cidade Partida. The expression could be translated as broken or split city, as if Rio had an integrity that contemporary violence shattered. A more apt translation is an increasingly prevalent phrase used to describe urban conditions in the United States: divided city. Given the striking contrasts between Rio de Janeiro’s upper-class buildings and hillside favelas, it is not surprising that the epithet found broad resonance.
