2001-2002 AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship Winner

2001-2002
AAA Minority Dissertation
Fellowship Winner

Ivelisse Rivera-Bonilla

The AAA and the Minority Affairs Committee are pleased to announce the selection of Ivelisse Rivera-Bonilla as the recipient of the 2001-2002 AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship. Ms. Rivera-Bonilla is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at the U of California-Santa Cruz. A native of Puerto Rico, she received her BA in Latin American Studies from the U of Puerto Rico in 1992. She was part of a student exchange program at SUNY-Buffalo.

Rivera-Bonilla’s dissertation, titled “Gated Communities: Residential Segregation and Fear of Crime in Puerto Rico During the 1990s,” explores the spatialization of inequality in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She analyzes how sealing off residential areas—by building up walls and gates—not only affects the ways in which people move around the city, but also recreates spatial markers of class and racial differentiation. The study is based on fieldwork she conducted in San Juan from 1988-2000 and her own experience as a long-time resident. Her research specifically focuses on middle-class communities that once were open to through-traffic, now retrofitted with gates. Ms. Rivera-Bonilla states, “By studying issues of housing segregation, I am invested in critiquing public policy that does not fully contemplate its social implications. I am also committed to do ethnographic research that is critical of social policy that perpetuates inequality.” She notes that legislation in support of the gating of middle-class neighborhoods was passed at the same time the government conducted quasi-military occupations in public housing projects. Some of these housing projects subsequently were gated and thus subject to new forms of state-sponsored control and surveillance. Interestingly, neither the legislation that allowed for such differential roles in the war against crime nor the long-term repercussions of both types of gating in the geography of the city are topics that have been researched on the island to date. She notes that besides the contribution to Puerto Rican politics and scholarship, the interconnections of space/place, segregation and race and class differences explored in the study also speak to the interests of many US minority communities who predominantly constitute the urban poor, and as such experience particular forms of surveillance and segregation.

During the past year, Rivera-Bonilla moved to Philadelphia, PA, to begin work on her dissertation. She also has presented papers on her work in progress at the AES Meetings in Montreal, at the Off the Grid: Urban Ethnography ant Radical Politics conference held at New York U and at the Anthropology Colloquium at the U of South Carolina-Columbia. She also has submitted a panel proposal for the 2001 AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, titled “Gated Communities and the Spatialization of Difference: Views from Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Turkey and the US.” Panelists will discuss the challenges posed by the proliferation of gated communities and other fortified enclaves to the theorization of the city, public life, citizenship, democracy, and class- and race-based spatial segregation.

Rivera-Bonilla will be recognized at the 2001 AAA Annual Meeting during the awards ceremony on Saturday night, as well as at the annual reception sponsored by the MAC, ABA, ALLA and Native American Interest section. Clinton Nichols III and Monique R Scott received the “honorable mention” designations from the Minority Affairs Committee; they also will be recongnized at the reception.

Information on the current application process

About AAA / Join AAA / Jobs & Careers / AAA Meetings / AAA Publications
Sections & Interest Groups / Staff Directory / Anthro Links / Support AAA

Questions or comments? We want to hear from you!
Contact us / AAA Privacy Policy