Pathways to the internationalization of anthropology: from Brazil

In this second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, a topic to be covered in the next issue of Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, it became important for us to rethink the role of the periodical in the internationalization of the anthropology produced from Brazil - an essential and founding objective of Vibrant - as well as the necessary intensification of intellectual exchanges via different media. In a world in which interconnectivity continues to expand inexorably, homogenizing and (re)inventing differences of class, race, ethnicity, gender and civilizational traditions distributed in time and space in a mosaic of inequalities, stimulated by the spread - and also collapse - of authoritarian governments around the globe, Brazil’s role as a centre of training in the discipline, at least in the Americas, and as a participant in a global dialogical scenario, implies recognizing that we do so not just from Brazil but between worlds.

In conjunction with our editorial committee, therefore, we decided to create a new section in Vibrant. Through the dossier “Anthropology on Latin America and the Caribbean Today: New Theoretical and Methodological Challenges,” we inaugurate a new section, Global Anthropological Dialogues, in which we aim to provide space for international dialogues between the anthropology made in and on Brazil and other world anthropologies, recognizing not only the need to overcome linguistic and hegemonic barriers, but also pointing to the contemporary reality of the product of our intense labour with and through relations with colleagues from all around the world, working to overcome asymmetries. This new section could not have a better launch. In it we explore the theoretical and methodological challenges faced in the context of Latin America and the Caribbean. Organised by Laura R. Valladares and Rebecca Lemos Igreja, the dossier contains 13 excellent articles that, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, approach central topics like nationalisms, race, indigenous issues, feminism, gender, and political dynamics. The primordial guiding thread, emphasized in the article opening the dossier, are the theoretical, methodological and epistemological challenges of doing anthropology today.

Volume 18 also contains articles from diverse areas of social anthropology in a composite of separate articles and another two dossiers that express the debates in the field and the diversity of the dialogues between Brazilian anthropology and distinct international contexts.

The Articles section, with stand-alone texts submitted to the journal, is composed by a set of articles that explore the thematic dimensions and perspectives of diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. Carolina Barreto Lemos and Marcus Cardoso reflect on processes of discursive exclusion as a central dimension of the puxar pena, both configuring a form of disregard and constituting a necessary condition for maintaining a structural framework of violence and human rights violations in prisons in the Federal District, exposing the current situation of the country’s prisons. Antonio Cerdeira Pilão takes us to the thematic field of ‘sexual policies’ in contemporary Brazil in his analysis of how monogamy, polyamory and other forms of non-monogamy are presented, interpreted and debated in LGBT groups. This section also presents us with Amurabi Oliveira’s study of the creation and operation of the Institute of Anthropology of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in the 1960s. Through his analysis, the author problematizes the idea that the anthropology produced far from the major centres is ‘provincial,’ demonstrating the dynamic assumed in this context in terms of the academic training and research production at the institute.

The theme of Maria Paula Prates’ article is childbirth among the Guarani-Mbyá, exploring the connections between silences, bodies and human and non-human socialities, interweaving them with native modes of care and a problematization of medicalization of childbirth coming from the relation with the ‘white system.’ Also reflecting on indigenous societies, Alexandre Magno de Aquino presents an ethnography of Kaingang ritual life, emphasizing the rules of etiquette and the ritual prestations that inform relations between exogamic moieties. The author explores the dimension of laughter as an alternative to avoidance relations, sustaining the argument that humour in these societies performs diverse mediations, notably those relating to the incorporation of outside and foreign powers into the collective.

The issue also contains another two dossiers. The first is a continuation of the dossier published in Volume 17, “Flows, Circulations and their Opposites: Ethnographic Perspectives and Theoretical-Methodological Challenges.” With an emphasis on places and possible circulations, the articles of Ana Paula Luna Sales and Renata de Sá Gonçalves refer us to, respectively, Iracema Beach in Fortaleza and Little Africa in Rio de Janeiro. Each in her own way, the authors reflect on the processes of producing places, reinterpreting their broader connections to people and locality, as well as their disputed borders.

Finally, but no less importantly, we begin the publication of the dossier “Indigenous Peoples, tribunals, prisons, and legal and public processes in Brazil and Canada,” coordinated by Stephen Grant Baines and Bruce Granville Miller. As highlighted in the article that opens this section, the articles bring together studies that explore, in different forms, the processes through which State institutions and legal/public processes frequently serve interests that are adverse, when not contrary, to those of indigenous peoples in both Brazil and Canada. The dossier will be continued in Issue 19 of Vibrant and contains important reflections on indigenous contexts and their relations with nation states, addressed from a comparative perspective.

We wish good reading and a happy festive season to all.

Andréa de Souza Lobo
EditorsAntonio Carlos de Souza Lima
Editors

Bibliography

• AQUINO, Alexandre Magno de. 2021. “‘Living with joy’: history, sociability, and alterity in Kaingang ritual life.” Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a504
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a504
• GONÇALVES, Renata de Sá. 2021. “Walking through Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Little Africa’: places and contested borders”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18d601
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18d601
• LEMOS, Carolina Barreto; CARDOSO, Marcus. 2021. “Discursive exclusion and disrespect in prisons in Brazil”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a500
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a500
• OLIVEIRA, Amurabi. 2021. “The rise of a southern anthropology: the creation of the Institute of Anthropology in Santa Catarina”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a502
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a502
• PILÃO, Antonio Cerdeira. 2021. “Conjugalities and sexualities in conflict: monogamy and polyamory among LGBT groups”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a503
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a503
• PRATES, Maria Paula. 2021. “Birthing, corporality and care among the Guarani-Mbyá of southern Brazil”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a501
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a501
• SALES, Ana Paula Luna. 2021. “The eternal return of the Praia de Iracema”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology , 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18d600
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18d600
• VALLADARES, Laura; IGREJA, Rebecca Lemos. 2021. “Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology today: new questions, new theoretical and methodological challenges”. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a800
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a800

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Dec 2021
• Date of issue
  2021