Shrinking Wealth: Psychoanalyzing Elites in São Paulo

“Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas is an intrepid ethnographer, not because she ventures into faraway and inaccessible lands, but because she dares to travel into the inaccessible worlds of the elites, who might be nearby, but keep themselves faraway from scrutiny. Her analysis is incisive and her angle is original and compelling. The book stands to make a very significant contribution to our understanding of wealth and elite class reproduction.”
-- Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, author of The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School

“Grounded on solid ethnographic research and offering novel and sophisticated theorization, Shrinking Wealth provides an in-depth analysis of a range of psychoanalysts who cater to São Paulo elites and the role of psychoanalysis in preserving privilege, validating white elite ‘vulnerability,’ and justifying wealth inequality in one of the world’s most unequal countries. The book’s superior scholarship and excellent arguments and concepts about the role of therapeutic labor in São Paulo render themselves applicable to the study of elites in other parts of the world.”
-- Patricia de Santana Pinho, author of Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil