Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York
About
Dr. Alves holds a PhD in anthropology and black studies from The University of Texas at Austin. His research interest includes racialized policing practices, mass incarceration, and black urban life in Brazil and Colombia. Before joining the College of Staten Island (CSI) and the City University of New York (CUNY), he served as an affiliated researcher at the Africana Research Center (Penn State) and as a visiting professor at the Centro de Estudios Afrodiaspóricos, Universidad Icesi (Colombia). As an activist anthropologist, Dr. Alves has worked with the black movement and abolitionist projects in Brazil, Colombia, and the United States. His current project analyzes racialized forms of urban governance in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, within the context of the post-peace deal between the government and the leftist guerrilla FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia / Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
Current Work:
Dr. Alves' current research analyzes localized forms of authority within the context of gang territorial control and police violence in urban Colombia. This research focuses on gang violence as both a form of order-making and a practice of racial un-governability within the context of enduring anti-blackness. More specifically, Dr. Alves is looking at both licit and illicit form of contentious collective action among gang members and local residents to resist police abuse and other forms of state control. Dr. Alves' is that in order to understand the production of local forms of political authority, like street gangs, we must explore the conditions those engaged in outlawed practices are responding to, as well as consider the popular appeal their practices have among the racialized urban poor in areas they experience the state through policing, incarceration and death.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Racial violence, gang violence, urban governance, state formations, gendered antiblackness
