RCAAP Repository

Algumas reflexões

This paper locates its position from the Southern African context in order to rethink knowledge production in sexuality and gender relations. Grappling with the brutal violence and murder of Black lesbians in particular, the paper unpacks how what I call ‘the queer turn’ has simultaneously advanced and made invisible particular struggles. Finally, based on the experience of the #RhodesMustFall movement and in artistic cultural productions, the paper argues for reimagining the category queer not just as sexual or gender identity, but also as a form of destabilizing notions of belonging attached to the racist and heteronormative neo-colonial project.

This article recollects the course of increasing social visibility of anthropology in Brazil over the past five decades, as a result of the impact of the advance of the so-called "identity politics" on the anthropological practice. It analyzes the dilemmas and challenges for scientific practice in the current political scenario, in which conservative forces have risen up against the expansion of the rights to plurality: natives, quilombolas, gender and sexual diversity. This article presents the dossier "Who's afraid of the anthropologists? Dilemmas and challenges for the scientific production and practices in new political scenarios" whose purpose is to provide multiple contributions for the reflection upon, scaling and qualifying of the dilemmas and challenges brought by the new and recent political scenario.

O objetivo deste texto é refletir sobre o fazer antropológico no decorrer dos processos de construção moderna do Brasil como Estado-nação, isto é, os processos do chamado “nation-building”, nos quais empreendimentos capitalistas e o Estado moderno constituem os dois mais importantes poderes que organizam o espaço hoje. O projeto modernizador de construção do Estado-nação brasileiro não envolve apenas os governantes que tentam implementá-lo, mas também aqueles que lutam contra seus efeitos negativos em espaços políticos legais estabelecidos. Juntamente com o projeto modernizador são configuradas novas formas de fazer história, principalmente após a Constituinte de 1987-8, mediante o reconhecimento das terras tradicionalmente ocupadas por indígenas, quilombolas e outras categorias de povos tradicionais. É contra esses direitos diferenciados de cidadania que é instaurada a CPI da FUNAI e do INCRA, que busca, em última instância, atingir os direitos territoriais e culturais de povos tradicionais mediante estratégias de criminalização de pesquisadores. A criminalização atua de modo a desqualificar pesquisas acadêmicas, assim como estudos realizados para a elaboração de relatórios técnicos antropológicos e laudos periciais judiciais, que venham a resultar na garantia de direitos territoriais e no questionamento dos efeitos socioambientais dramáticos. Tais estudos apontam que a implementação de metas públicas definidas pelo projeto modernizador atinge a continuidade de modos tradicionais de fazer, criar e viver.

No final de 2016, um Requerimento emitido por membros de uma Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito (CPI), conhecida como CPI FUNAI-INCRA 2, solicitou a quebra de sigilo bancário e fiscal da Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA), bem como do seu presidente. Para fundamentar as acusações contra a ABA, o Requerimento citou, em uma de suas passagens, argumentos de Napoleon A. Chagnon, dentre os quais a afirmação de que os antropólogos brasileiros não fazem ciência, mas ativismo. Chagnon foi um dos poucos antropólogos a adotar os postulados da chamada sociobiologia. Com a evocação do nome de Chagnon, o Requerimento da CPI estava, involuntariamente, “ressuscitando” um debate moribundo: antropologia versus sociobiologia. A partir do cenário acusatório montado pela CPI FUNAI-INCRA 2, este artigo retoma aquela controvérsia fundamental que, desde a década de 1970, dividiu antropólogos e sociobiólogos.

This article presents some notes that aim to consider the challenges faced by anthropologists that do research in heritage. The brief narrative of two specific cases aims to point out obstacles in this anthropological line of work and to shed light on (1) the path to the reflection on the role of anthropologists and anthropology in the face of dilemmas and challenges, which are present in certain state agendas regarding heritage, and on (2) what kind of knowledge has been produced and how it has impacted issues of public interest.

Nas últimas décadas, gênero e sexualidade circunscreveram um inovador campo de crescente produção intelectual, tornando-se ao mesmo tempo foco significativo de incidência política para antropólogas e antropólogos no Brasil. Com vistas a iluminar disputas em jogo no contexto brasileiro atual, em que o conhecimento que produzimos vem sendo duramente atacado, revisitaremos alguns documentos de posicionamento público, divulgados pelo Comitê de Gênero e Sexualidade da Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA) ao longo dos últimos anos. Propomos uma reflexão sobre o tipo de conhecimento que temos produzido sobre gênero e sexualidade, como ele tem impactado o debate público acerca dessas questões e como tem afetado os modos como nossa própria prática científica vem sendo socialmente percebida e avaliada.

This text characterizes the conservative offensive against the agenda of gender equality and sexual diversity. It then proposes a reflection on its connection with current processes defined as the closing of democracy. Finally, it briefly discusses the fact that the production of knowledge in the Social Sciences and the educational processes approaching gender inequalities and sexual diversity have become targets of this offensive.

This article proposes to provide a brief analysis of the main challenges posed to the Brazilian social sciences due to the conservative political context. The text identifies two crucial and related processes. The first involves the economic restraint associated with the growth of conservatism in Congress and in the Executive power, and the other includes the results of the changes produced by the reduction of social and racial inequalities that altered the scenario and the actors involved in the spaces of production of knowledge.

By a Philosophy / Anthropology of the Body: Phenomenological Materialism or Materialist Phenomenology. Interview with Jenny Slatman

In the region of Ariquemes, during the 1970s, two directed settlement projects (called PADs) were implemented as part of the military government colonization initiative. During the fieldwork, I realized that much of what I was interested in researching in Rondônia came together under a specific characterization that identified many of those who were responsible for the land occupation in that state: the "pioneer". This article aims to discuss the use of positional categories associated with the transformation of "forest" in "land" – that is, from land with no commercial value to "open” and, therefore, farmable land – highlighting different time periods. At the time of the occupation of the land, they saw themselves as "adventurers", unfolding into another category – the "founder" – in a later historical moment. In the ethnographic description brought to the text, my goal is to point out the difference in the use of those categories by using conversations held with six pioneers.

Among the vehement topics in contemporary ethnomusicological debates, the relations between music and memory, especially musical recreations, have provided a fertile ground for reflections. Inserted in these discussions, the present article discusses a process of musical recreation produced in a joint effort between researcher and ethnographic subjects. Namelly the “Baile para matar saudades”, a dance party held in Campinas, in 2014, with the purpose of reproducing the black dances of the 1950s in the innerside of São Paulo. The images of this event, its preparation and other musical practices of my interlocutors in the present days, were used In my homonymous feature film as a way of disseminating the research. In ethnomusicology, as well as in anthropology, the question of the forms of representation and native expression presents challenges, given their ethnographical nature. The development of these subjects by visual anthropology also serves ethnographies interested in human interactions mediated by music, for reasons ranging from the extratextual possibilities of expression of dance and music to ethnographic dialogue and the representativeness of subjects in the field. The final scope of this article, therefore, is to discuss the roles of filmmaking in a research interested in the emergence of memories through musical re-creation.

Em As estruturas elementares do parentesco (1949), Lévi-Strauss se refere à proibição do incesto como uma regra encontrada em todos os povos e em todos os tempos, ou seja, uma regra universal que marca a passagem da natureza para a cultura. Já Freud, em Totem e tabu (1913), descreve essa regra como uma consequência de um ato parricida, que daria origem à cultura. A proposta deste texto é refletir sobre algumas aproximações que podem ser feitas entre a antropologia estrutural de Lévi-Strauss e a psicanálise freudiana no que diz respeito à proibição do incesto.

Este artigo é fruto de uma experiência de um ano de pesquisa de campo em uma Igreja Mórmon localizada no Rio de Janeiro. Seu principal objetivo é descrever a maneira como os mórmons apresentam sua experiência com a divindade, a saber: como uma forma de conhecimento. Com isso, pretende-se discutir a oposição entre crença e saber na antropologia, além de uma reflexão sobre o papel da(o) etnógrafa(o) em uma pesquisa de campo.

This article aims to point out the singularity of the "calungueira" Dadi and highlight the transgressions carried out by this dollmaker in a field marked by the historically masculine genealogy of the Doll Theater tradition in Rio Grande do Norte. At age 76, Maria Ieda da Silva Medeiros – known as Dadi –, builds, dresses, gives life and movement to the dolls. The subversion of this logic in the creation of and playing with dolls and dollmakers translates her uniqueness into provoking laughter in the people presented during the course of the research. For the theoretical framework we used the theoretical and methodological contributions of Social Sciences and Anthropology, references from cultural studies with approaches on Memory and Tradition, of authors such as Halbwachs (1990) and Paul Zumthor (1993, 1997, 2005), among others, providing this work with relevance when dialoguing with several elements and meanings in the production of meanings of the singularity of Master Dadi.

The article focuses on the early years of the cultural biography of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, located in Pampulha, Belo Horizonte – MG. The “Igrejinha da Pampulha” is part of a plan of urban modernization conceived in the early 1940s by the then-mayor of the state capital, Juscelino Kubitschek, giving rise to the Pampulha Architectural Complex. Designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, and decorated mainly by the artist Candido Portinari, the building is not accepted by the local religious authorities, establishing a public controversy between supporters and critics of their consecration. The interest that anchors this analysis lies in the way the building grounds, condenses and stimulates consortia between religious, artistic and political dimensions, while its creators, critics and defenders oscillate between, on the one hand, support of such associations and, on the other, the defense of the distinctions between the same dimensions, both to support as to criticize them. This is therefore a case where what is at stake is the constant tension of the modern paradigm of separation and autonomy of religious, artistic and political bodies.

Este artigo aborda as contribuições das redes agroecológicas para os debates sobre o acesso aos conhecimentos tradicionais. O material empírico que trazemos é o de pesquisa no agreste pernambucano, sobre as redes de produção de conhecimento de que fazem parte agricultores que desenvolvem práticas agroecológicas. Neste campo, agricultores e organizações de assessoria estão envolvidos em uma série de experiências que se baseiam na incorporação de conhecimentos dos agricultores, de técnicos e em testes e experimentos, não necessariamente em bases científicas, de novas práticas agrícolas. O pano de fundo destas experiências é o fortalecimento de propostas ecopolíticas conhecidas como “convivência com o Semiárido” que se afastam de pacotes tecnológicos e se aproximam de modos criativos e colaborativos de praticar conhecimentos.

A partir del análisis comparativo con otras regiones de las tierras bajas de Bolivia, con estudios sobre misiones jesuíticas, y con la historia social boliviana y la etnohistoria andina se señalan los fundamentos historiográficos, políticos y académicos de la escasez de las investigaciones dedicadas a Chiquitos y de la imagen asociada con su patrimonio y su pasado jesuítico. Luego, a partir de evidencia del período colonial tardío (1768-1809), se propone una lectura alternativa sobre los elementos que estructuraban la vida social de los habitantes de Chiquitos. Se toman en cuenta la vigencia de las parcialidades como unidades sociales significativas entre los indígenas de la región, el carácter marginal y fronterizo de la provincia y sus efectos sociopolíticos, culturales y demográficos, y las formas amerindias de asimilación de la alteridad.

In this work I seek to understand the relation between conversations about dreams and traveling events which took place during a trip to /Paç Pög/, the “Big Mountain”. The relation between dreams and cosmic displacements have been well exploited in studies on amerindian and mealnesian peoples. It is important to highlight how these oniric itineraries allow experiences in several cosmic levels as well as in big cities where meetings, dialogues and interactions with sodiers, missionaries, merchants reveal images of tension or montages (Taussig, 1987). Based on Bakhtin’s dialogical theory of enunciation (1981) and Urban’s discourse centered approach (2000), I intend to show how verbal interactions with dreams reveal an intersubjective process of meaning institution by means of a particular mode of indexicalization. In what major, the oniric and dialogical emergence of the Jaguar City as an ontological juxtaposition delineates a critical perception of the fast processes of changes, expropriation and violence caused by the increasingly displacements to the city center of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM)?

Based on some ethnographic considerations about the ethos of valorization and incorporation of otherness in Upper Rio Negro, this article reflects on the assessment made by the Indians themselves of the "indigenous administration" of the Town Hall of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas State, Brazil). The argument is that since the Town Hall is an element that imposes relations exterior to the indigenous world, the attempt to indigenize it would require at least two procedures: the incorporation of relations and "elements of otherness"; and the incorporation of Indians in the Town Hall. According to some of those involved in this experience, the administration “wasn’t indigenous" due to the excess of "people from the outside" and a certain "contamination" of the mayor by the “politics of the whites”. However, an inescapable question is: to what degree could the state itself support dynamics that bring the simultaneity of differences intrinsic to the relations between Indians in the region? The analysis suggests that instead of a supposed incapacity of the Indians for state administration, there is the inability of the state to deal with and/or incorporate differences and alterities.