Abstract

VIVEROS VIGOYA, Mara. Racial Discrimination, Social Intervention and Subjectivity: Reflections on a Case Study from Bogotá. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2007, n.27, pp.106-121. ISSN 0123-885X.

Based on a case study in one of Bogotá’s poorest neighborhoods, this article contributes to the ongoing analysis of discourses of racial discrimination in Colombia. It does not examine the experiences of people who are supposed to be the victims of discrimination, but focuses rather on some of the social agents implicated in its regulation: the officials who develop and implement the government’s social policies and programs in the aforementioned neighborhood. The article first describes the officials interviewed for the study, as well as the programs in which they are engaged. Second, it examines how these social agents perceive, name, and experience their relationship with the "Afro-Colombian" residents of the neighborhood. And third, it analyzes their views on whether or not these people suffer from racial discrimination, and how the interviewees, as government officials, respond to their demands. The purpose of this article is to relate these different perceptions with their daily work experience and the philosophy behind the programs in which they work.

Keywords : Racial Discrimination; Social Intervention; blackness; Afro-Colombianness; Colombia; Bogotá.

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