Center for Metropolitan Studies

Abstract

The Centro de Estudos da Metrópole (Center for Metropolitan Studies) – CEM develops advanced studies on themes related to urban processes, with emphasis on the Brazilian context and in a dialogue with the world production in the area. Its central proposal is to investigate the reproduction mechanisms of social inequality in metropolitan environments. It is not the case of merely producing the mapping of these inequalities, but of carrying through an analytical effort in order to understand in depth the dynamics producing and reproducing them, so as to ascertain policies aimed at overcoming them. Researches taken to effect in the first years of the CEM revealed a paradox: even with a negative scenario in the economy and the labor market, an improvement has been observed in several social indicators concerning health, education, housing, and the ownership of durable goods, even in the more vulnerable metropolitan areas. Such improvement has been associated with the existence of multiple survival and social integration strategies, only in part affected by the properly economic dynamics of the 1990’s. From these findings, the present central working hypothesis was elaborated, based on the premise that the social reproduction in São Paulo, and in other similar places, results from the association between general processes inducing the maintenance or the growth of inequality, on one hand, and political and social mechanisms that lessen social vulnerability, on the other. The focuses of the CEM’s studies are as much the reproduction of the inequality as the production of social welfare. The researches developed by the CEM adopt an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together urbanists, sociologists, demographers, anthropologists, political scientists, and communicators. They also emphasize comparative analysis, involving metropolitan areas from different regions of Brazil and other countries. The main objects of study are the access to employment, social services, and social relations (associative movement, religion, and social networks). (AU)