EDITOR’S NOTE

For more than a decade, Peter Henry Fry was the general editor of Virtual Brazilian Anthropology - Vibrant, and Carmen Silvia de Moraes Rial the co-editor. Peter Fry supervised the most recent issue, with the dossier “Ritual and Performance” carefully edited by Maria Laura Cavalcanti and Renata de Sá Gonçalves, which presents a photo taken by Mário de Andrade and in the Déjà Lu section an English translation of a text he wrote. They are each historic testimonies whose presence are the fruits of Peter’s effort, zeal and capacity for intellectual dialog.

During this decade, beginning as a brilliant idea and plan, Vibrant distinguished itself as a highly regarded journal among anthropology publications in Brazil. Under the direction of Peter and Carmen, an editorial staff was composed that to a large degree has remained continuous until today. Punctual bi-annual publication has been maintained ever since and Vibrant is indexed in ten data bases, in particular SciELO, which is essential for obtaining financing from Brazil’s Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). An editorial board was organized with researchers who have a significant presence and production in Brazilian anthropology. Above all, Vibrant has promoted Brazilian anthropology internationally, and has had a significant number of consultations and downloads of the texts published in the various issues, in particular after it began publishing the dossiers.

From 2004 until 2015 there was a significant expansion in the resources provided to public federal universities in Brazil, for both undergraduate and graduate studies. Countless federal universities were created and expanded in the interior of the country. Investments were also increased to the network of Federal Technology Institutes, with a significant increase of resources for research. The data expressed in the indicators used by CNPq and Capes are eloquent.¹ This expansion has been accompanied by a growing demand for performance based on criteria that were increasingly homogenized in a quite deleterious manner, as we all know, and which have guided the evaluation of graduate and research programs. Various ways have become established of measuring the so-called internationalization,² which is equivocal terminology that designates many different things. In the Brazilian case, internationalization has been measured in different ways over the past 15 years but has increasingly come to refer to the publication of articles and books in foreign languages in qualified and influential international journals.

Vibrant was a pioneer in this project, not only in the field of anthropology and the social sciences, but in the humanities in general. Today, various social science journals publish in foreign languages, and most anthropology journals have a multi-language profile. Nevertheless, neither a decade ago or today have there been lines of financing for the translation of articles, and some CNPq research funds cannot be used to pay individual translators - only those that are incorporated.

Thus, although Vibrant did began to receive support from Capes and CNPq, the limited resources were never enough to translate Portuguese articles into a foreign language, particularly English, which is the focus of the journal’s project. The Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA) was pioneer in taking on this project, although it never in fact received funding to do so in a professional manner. The authors who publish in Vibrant have had to pay for the translations themselves, and the quality of the translations has always been quite inconsistent, given that a good translation is expensive, and as mentioned, the resources are not always available. This leads us once again to admire the quality Vibrant has attained over these years. We are, therefore, absolutely indebted not only to the rigor and elevated academic standards always maintained by Peter Fry, but also by his immense and meticulous work in conducting a highly qualified editing, from both a linguistic and anthropological perspective of the translations into English, the language in which most of the articles are published. His careful and loving supervision was firmly present in the entire publication. For this reason, he will continue to be present as Honorary Editor of Vibrant, which is a sincere homage to all that he has done, and a recognition of his permanent readiness to dialog with passion and intelligence about the journal, in search for inspiration for alternative futures. Meanwhile, we will continue to count on Carmen Rial on our Editorial Board.

***

We face countless challenges, from questions of financing, as that raised by the change to a triannual regime - which is a requirement now imposed by SciELO that demands a minimum of three issues per year. Indexation by SciELO - an entity that deserves a careful ethnographic analysis - is a requirement of the financing agencies, whose prognostics for funding in coming years is not encouraging. We also began a system of continuous publication, which allows us to publish on the Vibrant page on SciELO with greater agility, while maintaining the character that distinguished the journal on its own page just as always.

Carmen Rial left Vibrant in mid 2016, due to other commitments, but fostered a proposal for what will be issue 14.3, planned for December 2017, which will include the dossier Urban Peripheries, edited by Jussara Freire, Neiva Vieira da Cunha and Helio Silva.

Mining, Violence and Resistance, the dossier that is at the core of issue 14.2, edited under the careful direction of Andrea Zhouri, presents a group of articles that are the result of presentations at scientific meetings such as the 30th Brazilian Anthropology Encounter (RBA - Reunião Brasileira de Antropologia), held in João Pessoa, Paraíba, from 3 to 6 August 2016, and the annual meeting of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in the Social Sciences (ANPOCS). Some of the articles look at the disaster caused by the Samarco mining company that devastated the Rio Doce river basin in Minas Gerais. This is a reflection of the unchecked development that is extremely harmful to traditional populations, small farmers and the poor segments of urban regions and to the environment. It is linked to the export of commodities, upon which Brazil has based its economy in recent decades. This theme and the articles are an invitation for Brazilian anthropology to consider in greater detail issues related to the various forms of mineral extraction found in the country, and throughout the world, and a demonstration of what has taken place in this context. The translation of the articles was made possible with resources from the project Ethnic Diversity, Differentiated Territorial Rights in Contemporary Brazil: Production, Systematization of Knowledge, Dissemination of Information and Interventions in Public Debates Promoted by the Brazilian Anthropology Association, financed with resources from grant nº 0130-1186-0 issued by the Ford Foundation in 2013 to ABA, and concluded in December 2016.

• 1
  For the extremely significant and illuminating data from Capes, see https://geocapes.capes.gov.br/geocapes/. For the data from CNPq, see http://fomentonacional.cnpq.br/dmfomento/home/fmthome.jsp (Consulted on 2/08/2016).

• 2
  There is a copious international literature that debates and criticizes this notion, which can be traced back to plans for higher education emanating from the World Bank. See THE WORLD BANK. 1994. Higher education: the lessons of experience. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-1099079956815/HigherEd_lessons_En.pdf (Consulted on 2/08/2016) for the model; LOPEZ VARELA, Sandra L. 2015. “Internationalization for economic growth: aspiring to a world-class Mexican research and education environment”. American Anthropologist, 117(4): 766-776, Dec., for criticisms from a Mexican perspective.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  2017