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This chapter historicizes the social construction of racism in Brazilian society and its relation to the development of the library and information science (LIS) field. It is a theoretical-reflective research built on the scientific literature of the field of LIS and related areas that aims at reflecting on social justice in Brazilian libraries and creating strategies to confront institutional racism. The authors develop five main points to understand Brazilian racism: the myth of racial democracy, structural and institutionalized racism, the whitening ideology, whiteness, and the epistemicide of black knowledge. The authors then discuss racism and the promotion of white supremacy in library teaching and professional action in libraries. Black US American and Black Brazilian Librarianship movements show that the activism and political action of black librarians advance the development of informational counter-narratives. Finally, the authors recommend three strategies for social, racial, and informational justice in the LIS field: including ethnic-racial studies in basic university courses curricula; building diverse, inclusive collections that account for ethnic-racial themes and authors; and considering “Pretuguese” keywords while indexing, in order to counter exclusion and promote epistemic repair. The authors conclude by advocating for these strategies to steer LIS professional and educational spheres toward contributing to forward an anti-racist society.

Just over a decade after the first universities in Brazil adopted quotas for Afro-Brazilians and other disadvantaged groups, the country has implemented the most sweeping affirmative action policies in the Western Hemisphere. The surrounding controversy has inspired a large number of studies, which seek to evaluate the impact and scope of the policies, in terms of racial and social inequality, as well as to gauge perceptions within the public at large. This paper reviews some of the most significant findings of those studies, which have important implications for the global debate over affirmative action in higher education.

The paper seeks to bridge the already familiar benefits of 3D printing (3DP) to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage, still based on the use of complex and expensive handcrafted techniques and scarce materials.

A compilation of different information on frequent anomalies in cultural heritage buildings and commonly used materials is conducted; subsequently, some innovative techniques used in the construction sector (3DP and 3D scanning) are addressed, as well as some case studies related to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage building elements, leading to a reflection on the opportunities and challenges of this application within these types of buildings.

The compilation of information summarised in the paper provided a clear reflection on the great potential of 3DP for cultural heritage rehabilitation, requiring the development of new mixtures (lime mortars, for example) compatible with the existing surface and, eventually, incorporating some residues that may improve interesting properties; the design of different extruders, compatible with the new mixtures developed and the articulation of 3D printers with the available mapping tools (photogrammetry and laser scanning) to reproduce the component as accurately as possible.

This paper sets the path for a new application of 3DP in construction, namely in the field of cultural heritage rehabilitation, by identifying some key opportunities, challenges and for designing the process flow associated with the different technologies involved.

Crawl space ventilation became essential to avoid moisture damage. Historical houses with wood floor and crawl spaces unventilated correctly often face problems of biological degradation. This paper seeks to address these issues.

In this work a case study of the Egas Moniz museum house, in Estarreja, Portugal, with different building pathologies, such as biological degradation and development of micro‐organisms and fungi, is presented. An experimental campaign was carried out with continuous monitoring of the relative humidity and temperature, to validate the real climatic conditions in the crawl spaces. Additionally, the authors analyse the treatment technologies used in the past and the characteristics of the rehabilitation solutions in order to control the hygrothermal behaviour. Simultaneously, numerical simulation was done using the software tool WUFI‐2D to simulate the hygrothermal building behaviour and a sensitivity study of parameters used was done.

The in‐situ experimental results showed that high values of relative humidity imply biological degradation of the wood floor and the numerical and analytical models used showed the same tendency. The numerical results showed the importance of crawl spaces with a good ventilation to avoid mould growth and, also, suggested that controlled mechanical ventilation is preferable to strongly continuous mechanical ventilation in this type of spaces. The experimental study shows that the continuous functioning of a ventilation system may lead to the occurrence of interior condensation, so a hygro‐regulated system is thus essential to control unwanted condensation, with an appropriate functioning criterion.

In accordance with the numerical and experimental results, the authors proceeded to the implementation of a hygro‐regulated system to ventilate the crawl spaces of the Egas Moniz museum house.

This paper presents a new proposed intervention methodology, in crawl spaces, to avoid mould growth, based on an extraction controlled by a hygro‐regulated ventilator.

Rising damp affects the deterioration and conservation of architectural heritage. Air cavities built next to the base of these buildings on an unsaturated floor can reduce the damage to foundations and walls due to this. These are passive systems, which are usually designed with no objective data to show their functioning and effectiveness. This is why the authors are presenting this study.

This study is presented starting with simple field equipment for representative types for a previous cataloguing of cases in Spain. The physical parameters of the air in this research are air speed and evaporation in the cavities and the base, taking the local climate and the particular formal and construction characteristics of each case study as a reference.

The results of the analysis validate the method and the efficiency of such cavities, whose performance is greater in systems with a variety of features, that is to say, those which work by thermal or wind flow rather than those which only use hygric flow.

This work is novel because there are not in situ experimental works which prove the functioning and effectiveness of these systems.

The social role of women in Brazil is subject to significant change in both capacity and scope. While women constitute the majority of the population in Brazil, they account for 40 per cent of the workforce, and thus, they remain comparatively invisible in public life. This is evident in political representation, as although Brazilian law stipulates that political parties must reserve at least 30 per cent of their nominations for women for legislative elections, this does not occur in reality. Furthermore, despite Afro-descendant Brazilians constituting the majority of the population, in the Chamber of Deputies, for instance, there are only 9 per cent Afro-descendant representatives. Therefore, this study focuses on understanding issues of political representation of Afro-descendant women in political spaces in Brazil – a country where politics is still predominantly white and male. Thus, despite a rhetorical position of an ‘open country’ with opportunities for all, the whiteness and masculinity of Brazilian politics illustrates the degree of mythology concerning the rhetoric of Brazil’s racial democracy. We employ a qualitative research approach in this study and we employ an oral-history-informed post-structuralist approach. We focus our empirical analysis on in-depth interviews with an Afro-descendant female accounting professor who was elected to an important political position. We argue that discussions about democracy in Brazil go beyond formal aspects of civil rights, as our study highlights the necessity of reshaping political processes to engender greater female and Afro-descendent participation, to engender both groups to seek political careers as well as to encourage political parties to include more female and more Afro-descendent candidates. The ultimate goal of such institutional reform is a reformation of ‘racial democracy’ as Afro-descendent women interact with, stand and succeed in Brazilian elections.

This paper analyzes affirmative action policies that include racial and socioeconomic criteria in order to enhance the opportunity of access of underrepresented groups in Brazilian elite universities. It focuses on the public system of higher education since research universities in Brazil are mainly public and are free of charge. This renders them very competitive and highly selective. Emphasis is given to issues related to racial quotas, as the latter has been the subject of great controversy in Brazilian society. The experiences of three universities are analyzed.

While sharing fundamental similarities with other colonial and post-colonial experiences, Latin America has a unique history of having been the proving ground for early Spanish and Portuguese imperial projects, of having experienced a relatively long duration of – but also historically early end to – these projects, and of negotiating a particular and complex trajectory of internal and external post-colonial relations. What can the study of this distinct colonial and post-colonial experience contribute to a broader program of postcolonial sociology? Conversely, what can a revitalized postcolonial sociology contribute to the study of Latin America? This article develops provisional answers to these questions by reviewing major currents in South and North American scholarship on the Latin American colonial and post-colonial experience. Some of this scholarship self-consciously identifies with broader movements in postcolonial studies; but much of it – both historical and contemporary – does not. By bringing together diverse strands of thought, this article sheds new light on what postcolonialism means in the Latin American context, while using the comparative leverage that this set of often overlooked cases provides to contribute to a new program of postcolonial sociology.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate how place making and belonging are still largely governed by race in Brazil and South Africa. As such, it engages with debates about the postracial informed by the study of two urban settings that are discernible by their relationship with race issues: Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships.

The study provides a brief account of post-racial discourses in each country: Brazilian racial democracy and South Africa’s self-imagination as rainbow nation. Subsequently, these two major national self-understandings are probed using data gathered in the fieldwork (participant observation and in-depth interviews) carried out in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships between 2013 and 2015.

The main accomplishment of the study is to approach debates about senses of place, understood here as place making and belonging, from the everyday experiences of favela and township inhabitants. The study suggests discrepancies between the racialized senses of place in Brazilian and South African urban milieus and any sort of post-racial rhetoric. Despite the existence of norms and institutions promoting equal rights of citizenship in Brazil and South Africa, place making is still largely encumbered by the legacy of racial domination in both countries.

By adding new evidence to the research on everyday racism, the study explores the mutual influences between senses of place and the persistent patterns of racial segregation in two urban contexts of the global South. Beyond this, it offers a comparative approach that connects micro-level social dynamics and macro-level discourses.

The application of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology in construction projects is of increasing interest to researchers and construction practitioners. Although the application of 3D printing technology at various stages of the project lifecycle has been explored, few studies have identified the relative importance of critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects. To address this research gap, this study aims to explore the academics (i.e. researchers) and construction practitioners’ perspectives on CSFs for implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects.

To do this, a questionnaire was administered to participants (i.e. academics and construction practitioners) with knowledge and expertise in 3D printing technology in construction projects. The collected data were analysed using mean score ranking, normalization and rank agreement analysis to identify CSFs and determine the consistency of the ranking of CSFs between academics and construction practitioners. In addition, exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the relationships and underlying constructs of the measured CSFs.

Through a rank agreement analysis of the collected data, 11 CSFs for implementing 3D printing technology were retrieved (i.e. 17% agreement), indicating a diverse agreement in the ranking of the CSFs between academics and construction practitioners. In addition, the results show three key components of CSFs including “production demand enabling CSFs”, “optimize the construction process enabling CSFs” and “optimized design enabling CSFs”.

This study highlights the feasibility of implementing the identified CSFs for 3D printing technology in construction projects, which not only serves as a reference for other researchers but also increases construction practitioners’ awareness of the practical benefits of implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects. Specifically, it would optimize the construction lifecycle processes, enhance digital transformation and promote sustainable construction projects.