Box 1916

Maxcy Hall

112 George Street

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-2367

Sociology@brown.edu

 

M.A. in Sociology, Brown University

Contact Information:
Brown University
Department of Sociology
Box 1916
Providence, RI 02912
Fax: (401) 863-3213
Esther@brown.edu

Year of Entry: 2003

Previous Degrees:
M.A. in Sociology, Brown University 2005
Master in Public Policy, Harvard University 2003
M.A. in Gender and Development, INTEC (Dominican Republic) 1995
B.A. in Economics, INTEC (Dominican Republic) 1993

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest:
Development, Political Sociology, Latin America and the Caribbean, Gender

I am interested in exploring answers to the following question "When and how are excluded groups able to successfully participate in the public arena?" My purpose is to better understand the conditions that help or prevent disadvantaged groups from transforming their proposals into public policies in developing countries. My main interest is in the interaction between the agency of social movements and innovative institutional mechanisms of democratic participation.

My M.A. thesis in Sociology was on the Participatory Budgeting process in the city of São Paulo, Brazil (2000-2004). I looked at how traditionally excluded groups (such as residents in poor neighborhoods, women, Afro-Brazilians, gay and lesbian groups, among others) utilized the Participatory Budgeting as a vehicle to influence policy-making processes in the city. This work received the “Alden Speare Jr. Memorial Award” for the most distinguished M.A. Thesis from the Sociology Department during the academic year 2004/2005.

My dissertation will build upon this work by looking at citizen participation in urban policies in Mexico City and São Paulo. My goal is to conduct a comparative ethnography to explain the differences in citizen participation between these two cities. Ordinary citizens often have an influential role in selected public policies in São Paulo whereas this is rarely the case in Mexico City. Such differences persist in spite of remarkable similarities especially taking into account that these are the two most integrated cities in the global economy in Latin America. My analysis will focus on: (a) city wide processes of participation regarding urban development, including debates about land use and service provisioning, and (b) case studies of a low-income area and an upper-class area in each city that show high levels of contestation about these issues during the last decade.

I also work as a research assistant for professors Patrick Heller and Gianpaolo Biaocchi in a 10-city project about the impact of Participatory Budgeting in middle-size cities in Brazil. I have worked as a teaching assistant at Brown University and Harvard University in courses about globalization, urban studies, statistics and community organizing. I also taught my own courses in Sociology and Gender and Development at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Dominican Republic. I was a founder and member of the student-run Professional Development Committee at our department. Finally, I have been part of various collaborative projects involving academics, practitioners and community organizations in the United States and in the Dominican Republic where I’m also a member of the Dominican feminist movement.

Publications:

Peer reviewed articles and essays

Hernández-Medina, Esther. 2008. “A Tale of Two Cities: Mexico City, São Paulo, and the Chances for Citizen Participation in Latin America’s Mega-Cities” Essay selected in the international competition and workshop Urban Planet 2008: Collective Identities, Governance and Empowerment in Megacities organized by the Irmgard Coninx Foundation, the Social Science Research Center Berlin and the Humboldt-University, Berlin, 11-16 June 2008

Hernández-Medina, Esther. 2007. “Globalizing Participation: ‘Exporting’ the Participatory Budgeting Model from Brazil to the Dominican Republic” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 51: 69-118

Itzigsohn, José; Carlos Dore Cabral; Esther Hernández Medina; Obed Vásquez. 1999. “Mapping Dominican transnationalism: narrow and broad transnational practices”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 316-39, March 1999

Article under review

Hernández-Medina, Esther. “Social Inclusion through Participation: The Case of the Participatory Budgeting in São Paulo.”

Work in progress

Hernández-Medina, Esther. “Citizenship as ‘Rescuing One’s Dignity’: Deliberation vs. Fragmentation in the Participatory Budgeting of São Paulo”

Hernández-Medina, Esther. “Synergy, Mediation, or Exclusion: Towards a Theory of Citizen Participation in Urban Policy”