Brazilian Anthropology Day
Friday 22 February 2019
Venue: Wolfson Room, British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Provisional Programme
9.30-10.00am: tea and coffee
10.00am Welcome
Paper 1 10.15-10.45am: João Pacheco de Oliveira Ethnic territories formation in contemporary Brazil
Paper 2 10.45-11.15am: Andréa Zhouri Environmental deregulation, disasters and violence in Brazil: a political ecology approach
11.15-11.45am: tea and coffee
Paper 3 11.45-12.15pm: Luiz F. D. Duarte Family and Religion Studies in Brazilian society, as a challenging moral and political area in contemporary Urban Anthropology
Paper 4 12.15-12.45pm: Claudia Fonseca Conceiving parents: Emphasis and erasure in the governance of marginal fatherhoods in Brazil
12.45-1.30pm: LUNCH
Paper 5 1.30-2.00pm: Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha On Books and Signs: inscriptions of difference among the Cottica Ndyuka
Paper 6 2.00-2.30pm: Marcela Stockler Coelho de Souza The Impact of the Concept of Kinship on the Concept of Politics: Indigenous Lands in Brazil
Paper 7 2.30-3.00pm: Helena Pinto Lima Amazon Archaeology in the 21st Century: towards an engaged, humble and powerful praxis
3.00-3.30pm: tea and coffee
Paper 8 3.30-4.00pm: João Pina Cabral The Anthropology that democracy produced: Portugal and Brazil
Paper 9 4.00-4.30pm: Manuela Carneiro da Cunha The role of diversity
General discussion
Discussant Verena Stolcke (UNAM Barcelona)
5.45pm (latest) Drinks.
7.30pm drinks end
Abstracts
Paper 1
João Pacheco de Oliveira (Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
Ethnic territories formation in contemporary Brazil
Ethnic territories are an important key to understanding the contemporary Brazilian political scene. Starting from a brief history of the formation of indigenous territories in Brazil, I intend to reflect on the complex relations between indigenous peoples, ethnic communities and the national State. These processes of territorialization have no unique form and meaning, nor do they follow a logical unilinear sequence. They result from interconnections and conflicts between expanding economic frontiers, local and regional inter-ethnic relations, governmental policies, global interests and indigenous mobilizations. I will particularly highlight the multiple roles that anthropologists play in these legal and administrative processes.
Paper 2
Andréa Zhouri (Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Environmental deregulation, disasters and violence in Brazil: a political ecology approach
I intend to analyze the increase of different forms of violence associated with institutional and political practices that make neo-extractivism possible in Brazil. Therefore, I shall approach the revision of laws and dismantling of institutions responsible for protecting the environment, the rights of indigenous groups, quilombolas and traditional peoples, with emphasis on the former. I will consider the shift from politics to policing revealed by strategies of criminalization of social movements, leaderships, mediators and even researchers by extractive transnational groups and the State. The Samarco dam break, in 2015, and the Vale dam break, in 2019, are some of the ethnographic situations in which my presentation will be based, aiming at the broader political and institutional processes that have produced such disasters.
Paper 3
Luiz F. D. Duarte (Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
Family and Religion Studies in Brazilian society, as a challenging moral and political area in contemporary Urban Anthropology
My aim is to provide first to British colleagues a broad idea of the characteristics of the “anthropology of complex societies” in Brazil, with an emphasis in Urban Anthropology. The area of studies dedicated to the relations between Family and Religion in contemporary urban Brazilian society may be an example of the complexity and the crucial character of the changes in national life entailed by the diffusion of Pentecostal denominations and congregations throughout the country. These changes involve a drastic move away from the former moral schemes prevailing in mainstream Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian cults. Strict moral rules regarding gender and sexuality behavior defy former extended family patterns, and are now menacing the pluralist, “modern”, values prevailing in the republic, through the hands of politicians of Pentecostal extraction. The conservative turn that brought to power the present government is inseparable from these phenomena, albeit not exclusively.
Paper 4
Claudia Fonseca (Professor of Social Anthropology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul)
Conceiving parents: Emphasis and erasure in the governance of marginal fatherhoods in Brazil
In this paper, we join quantitative and qualitative data in the attempt to examine how, over the past three decades, the “practices and politics of life in the margins” have interacted with technologies of government dealing with family dynamics in Brazil. Focusing on public campaigns such as “responsible paternity” and “necessary adoptions”, we pursue the hypothesis that economic and social developments, together with the expansion of normalizing technologies of governance, have brought about — if not a generalized adherence to the normative nuclear family — at least a more accurate accounting of parenthood and biological filiation. Present-day ethnography in working-class neighborhoods, however, complicates any simplified conclusions, suggesting that official statistics are designed to portray the state’s desired self-image rather than actual behavior. Nonetheless, although erased from official statistics, “marginal fatherhoods” are tacitly acknowledged in jurisprudence and the reformulation of legal procedures for civil birth registration.
Paper 5
Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha (Museu Nacional, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
On Books and Signs: inscriptions of difference among the Cottica Ndyuka
Seeking to reflect on recent uses of afaka signs among young contemporary Cottica Ndyuka Maroon artists in Moengo (Suriname), the article highlights the arbitrariness of translation and explanatory practices. Through a description of specialized readings of the discovery of a ‘Ndyuka script’ in the twentieth century, the article sets out to analyze contexualizing procedures and assumptions of cultural continuity that limit our understanding of the use of these signs in the works of Maroon artists – in particular, those of Marcel Pinas, as well as young people in Moengo (Suriname). While, for the specialists, the invention of a script was taken to result from the contact of literate Ndyuka people with Christianity, new uses of the afaka have left behind the notebooks and such attempts at translation. In the Cottica setting and in contemporary forms of artistic expression, diverse uses of afaka signs have acquired new appearances and spatial dimensions, associated with the modes of existence of Cottica Ndyuka in the period after the civil war (1986-1992).
Paper 6
Marcela Stockler Coelho de Souza (PPGAS-Departamento de Antropologia/UnB, Laboratório de Antropologias da Tterra – TTERRA (Coordenadora))
The Impact of the Concept of Kinship on the Concept of Politics: Indigenous Lands in Brazil
I intend here to explore the figuring of politics implied, but not always made explicit, in the studies of Amazonian kinship made in the Museu Nacional at the tum of the century, and in part of their conceptual heritage today. I will take a detour (which is also a return) through Land, the double twin of both Kinship and Politics. My proposition and my justification concern the relative invisibility of Land, obfuscated by Property: an invisibility that blinds us to the politics of kinship and, of course, affinity, as practiced for instance by many Indigenous peoples. For instance, the Kisêdjê of Central Brazil, whose fight against genocide will be my inspiration. I will also try to articulate something about the politics of writing anthropology when (our, other’s) homes are on fire.
Paper 7
Helena Pinto Lima (Curadora da Coleção Arqueológica Reserva Técnica Mario Ferreira Simões, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi)
Amazon Archaeology in the 21st Century: towards an engaged, humble and powerful praxis
The Amazon has long been an important site for developing models and testing theories in archaeology and anthropology. This talk presents an overview of archaeological research in Amazonia over the past two decades. I will explore the idea that the Natural History of Amazonia is entangled with its Cultural History: contrary to 20th century assumptions of the Amazon as a pristine and sparsely occupied environment, archaeological research in the 21st century has revealed large human occupations and varied forms of anthropogenic alterations on the environment. Archaeological evidence reveals sophisticated technologies, material cultures, and enhanced landscapes. Amazon archaeology teaches us how both past and present human occupations shape the current heritage of traditional communities in Amazonian forests. From my fieldwork experience in the lower Xingu River, I also share thoughts on the ways a politically engaged archaeology can be a powerful political instrument in territorial disputes and policy making in the Amazon.
Paper 8
João Pina Cabral (Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent)
The Anthropology that democracy produced: Portugal and Brazil
In the 1990s, both in Brazil, after the new constitution was promulgated, and in Portugal, after the entry into the EU, academic life entered into a period of expansion and reconstitution. At that time, the two communities of Portuguese speaking anthropologists from the two sides of the Atlantic found that they could mutually engage each other and a period of thirty years of intense interaction started that marked profoundly not only the work of those who carried out research across the ocean, but also in our analytical debates. At present, the very serious challenges that are confronting our Brazilian colleagues are felt in Portugal with great intensity, since there is a deep sense of common civic engagement: a deeply felt sense of sharing a world, of ecumene.
Paper 9
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (University of São Paulo and University of Chicago)
The role of diversity
1988 Brazilian Constitution established the precedence of historical rights to land of Indigenous Peoples and eliminated any assimilation program. Anthropologists helped these changes to happen. As Indigenous Peoples land rights are presently under attack by the new government, the Supreme Court and Congress, violence and land grabbing have escalated. The political situation fuels expectations that mining restrictions on indigenous land could be lifted by Congress. Assimilation under worn-out ideas of progress and development are invoked once again while anthropologists, NGOs and even Public Defenders are increasingly under suspicion. Defending the fundamental role and importance of diversity in all its biological and cultural forms, a central value of our discipline, is incumbent on us anthropologists.
On Thursday 21 February we will hold an event on the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro disaster.
These events are free, but tickets must be booked. Each day is ticketed separately.
For Thursday 21 February please go to https://brazilian-anthropology-day.eventbrite.co.uk
For Friday 22 February please go to https://brazilian-anthropology-day-friday.eventbrite.co.uk
Supported by the British Academy, British Council and the Embassy of Brazil.