Three research traditions and their influences over the two major residential segregation studies in Brazil during the last two decades

During the 1990s and the 2000s, two Brazilian academic groups developed major research efforts in the field of residential segregation with outputs that became canonical in the country. In Rio the Janeiro, the Observatório das Metrópoles (OM) started its work in the 1980s checking the hypothesis of the dual social stratification in global cities, adjusting and applying theoretical and methodological inputs stemming from the French school. The Centro de Estudos da Metrópole (CEM), in São Paulo, followed a more empirically-based line of studies along lines of the US research tradition. However neither group abandoned the Latin-American influences of the 1960s and 1970s, founded in the works of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Later on, scholars from Uruguay and Chile developed theoretical and methodological frameworks that became influential in Brazil. Notwithstanding the leading roles and the invaluable knowledge that OM and CEM put out over this period, they stand as isolated experiences limited to certain academic and policy-making circuits. In this sense, their experiences demand a comprehensive analytical assessment in terms of their theoretical and methodological sources as well as their empirical results and policy implications. The objective of this article is to comparatively analyze the origins, influences, trajectories, and results of OM’s and CEM’s research endeavors on residential segregation in order to establish their convergences and divergences. This objective rises from the concern that the Latin American exchanges, influences, and implications of the works of OM and CEM are little-known and mistaken and hence have an underestimated potential. The consequence of this relative isolation is detrimental to the Latin American scientific community in the social science field as well as to policy-makers and the urban population of large urban areas of the continent.