Articles
The present article starts from a debate that aims to understand how the disciplinary regimes of Anthropology lead the researcher to follow a protocol of questions and interests in his research. The objective here is to discuss the existing
[+]Articles
Neste artigo retomo ideias emergentes de um projeto de pesquisa com crianças que acontece em um bairro periurbano da cidade de Villa Nueva (Córdoba, Argentina) e discuto a agência das crianças e sua participação na pesquisa em ciências
[+]Articles
Since expeditions by naturalists in the 18th century, the production of modern knowledge about the flora and fauna of the Amazon has included people who know the ecosystem from experience. At the National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA),
[+]Interdisciplinarities
This article draws on the genealogy of studies on the house in Portuguese Anthropology and Architecture as well as on recent perspectives coming from the Geographies of Architecture, to explore the way residents of auteur architecture experience
[+]Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”
In the global political landscape, as far-right parties gain prominence, populist rhetoric advocating for harsher justice and security policies is becoming increasingly prevalent. Proponents of this rhetoric base their discourse on “alarming”
[+]Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”
In this article we argue that hospitality security – a modality that confuses control and care – operates through the actions of security guards in the creation of what we call pre-cases. From a dense ethnography accompanying these workers in a
[+]Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”
Racist police violence is one of the most brutal facets of racism in our society, reflecting structures of power and oppression that marginalize sectors of our society. This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding this reality, highlighting
[+]Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”
This article engages with contemporary anthropological and ethnographic methodological debates by reflecting on the challenges of conducting research in contexts related with marginality, deviance, surveillance, and imprisonment. It examines the
[+]Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”
Qualitative researchers face unique challenges in the dynamic domain of border regions, particularly when venturing into highly securitized areas with a constant military presence, advanced surveillance, and restricted access zones. This article
[+]Memory
Falecido recentemente, Victor Bandeira (1931-2024) desempenhou um papel fundamental no desenvolvimento da museologia etnográfica em Portugal. Foi graças às suas expedições a África (1960-1961, 1966, 1967), ao Brasil (1964-1965) e à Indonésia
[+]Lévi-Strauss Award
This paper is a reduced and synthesized version of the ethnography on PMSC Notícia, the news platform of the Military Police of Santa Catarina (PMSC). Based on news about death, dying and the dead published on the website in 2021, social
[+]Artigos
This article mobilizes the ecologies of value as a conceptual framework to account for the conflicts, contradictions and dilemmas arousing from the experience of the contemporary socio-ecological crisis. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Brindisi,
[+]Artigos
This ethnographic article addresses the difficulties, practices, and strategies of the professionals of the only Argentine hospital fully specialized in the treatment of mental health problems of children and adolescents. More specifically, it
[+]Artigos
The ibejadas are childlike entities that, alongside the caboclos, pretos-velhos, exus, and pombagiras, inhabit the umbanda pantheon. In religious centers, these entities manifest through colorful images, joyful sung chants and an abundance of sweets
[+]Artigos
The article analyzes the Anata-Carnival festivity celebrated in the Andean town of Chiapa in the Tarapacá Region, Great North of Chile. I suggest that this celebration constitutes one of the main events that promote the reproduction of feelings of
[+]Artigos
Drawing on anthropological and ethnographic developments in the study of urban tourism, this essay offers a description of Sarajevo’s tourist landscapes from the perspective of an ethnographic tourist, detailing how time is inscribed in the
[+]Memory
The article comments on, contextualizes and transcribes the epistolary exchange between social anthropologist David J. Webster (1945-1989) and ethnologist and Portuguese colonial official António Rita-Ferreira (1922-2014) between 1971 and 1979.
[+]Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’
Neste dossiê sobre o género e os cuidados na comunidade transnacional cabo-verdiana, as leitoras e leitores encontrarão os resultados de diferentes etnografias feitas tanto em Cabo Verde como nos países de destino da sua diáspora no sul da
[+]Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’
Taking the ethnographic field as a starting point – the interior of the island of Santiago in the Republic of Cabo Verde – and basing on participant observation and the collection of testimonies from the local inhabitants of Brianda, this
[+]Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’
This article reflects on the care category when crossed by the dynamics of gender and generation in Cape Verde. The act of caring is of fundamental importance for family dynamics in this society, which is marked by mobilities of multiple orders –
[+]Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’
This article is based on fieldwork conducted with women of four generations, belonging to five families living in the locality of Burela (Galicia) and their domestic groups originating from the island of Santiago. We present three ethnographic
[+]Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’
The reconciliation of the personal, work and family spheres of migrants is an emerging issue in migration studies, with concepts such as the transnational family and global care chains. In this contribution we analyse the strategies deployed by
[+]Debate
This article questions the consistency, reasonableness, and fruitfulness of the methodological proposals and idea of anthropological knowledge of the “ontological turn” in anthropology. Taking as its starting point the book manifesto produced by
[+]Debate
O artigo “Estrangeiros universais”, de Filipe Verde, apresenta uma crítica ao que chama de “viragem ontológica” na antropologia, tomando o livro The Ontological Turn, de Holbraad e Pedersen (2017), como ponto de partida (2025a: 252).1 O
[+]Debate
Se há evidência que a antropologia sempre reconheceu é a de que o meio em que somos inculturados molda de forma decisiva a nossa compreensão do mundo e de nós mesmos. Isso é assim para a própria antropologia e, portanto, ser antropólogo é
[+]Debate
Um erro do construtivismo clássico é postular que verdades alheias seriam construídas socialmente, mas as do próprio enunciador não. Que minha visão de mundo, do fazer antropológico e da ciência sejam moldadas por meu ambiente – em
[+]Note on the cover
© Pedro Calapez. 2023. (Pormenor) Díptico B; Técnica e Suporte: Acrílico sobre tela colada em MDF e estrutura em madeira. Dimensões: 192 x 120 x 4 cm. Imagem gentilmente cedidas pelo autor. Créditos fotográficos: MPPC / Pedro
[+]Field notes consist of original texts that provide a look and reflection on research experiences with the presentation of fieldwork vignettes. Authors are invited to incorporate multimodal representations (text, sound and image in the most varied formats) that facilitate access to facts, materialities, involvements, interactions, relationships and interactions made possible during fieldwork. A section that opens the door to the ways in which anthropologists produce knowledge when they carry out their research, valuing raw data, materials to be analysed, impressions and inaccuracies, circumstantiality and the gerundial nature of doing anthropology and which invites creative solutions that make us enter or approach the experiences lived by anthropologists in the field.
One day, without warning, the telephone rings. A brief conversation suggests the existence of a private collection, acquired in the Makonde region in northern Mozambique, whose future is uncertain. As I take notes on paper, I nod affirmatively, and my enthusiasm grows in proportion to the kilometers I calculate I will have to travel. Travelled objects also compel us to travel towards them. This is the researcher’s task: to step outside the comfort zone, to move towards the multiple “truths” that emerge along the contradictory bends of the road. Upon arrival, one must bring them together and, with gloves, care, and awareness, attempt to reconstruct a puzzle that will always remain incomplete.
I think of the many books I have read on travel, on the histories of objects, and on the obligation to return them to the places from which they were taken. A week earlier, a book by Jos Van Beurden had once again drawn my attention to the importance of studying private colonial collections, which increasingly demand critical examination in the light of heritage restitution.
In recent years, I have become accustomed to travelling. My suitcases grow smaller while the journeys grow longer. What they offer me above all is the surprise, the unexpected. It is there, in that space of the unknown, that truly important things begin to take shape. It is a risk that entails a certain degree of irresponsibility, accompanied by uncertainty and a rush of adrenaline. A place where I do not know whether my footing is secure, which only heightens my desire to keep walking.
Without seeking to excuse all those travelers who, over decades, journeyed to distant lands and returned with objects that today stand as ambassadors of the guilt they feel, I confess, in their defense, that sometimes I do the same. Objects materialize memory, allowing one to travel again even while remaining still. I believe this is why so many objects have travelled in the hands of their travelers. The collector-traveler is one type within a broad spectrum: the food traveler, the mass-culture traveler, the labor traveler, and the politicized traveler.
The collector-traveler is materialistic. They allow themselves to be captivated by the other’s beauty and seek to incorporate it into their own world. It is through objects that they encounter themselves again and confront their lived experience. They create their own microcosm and sustain themselves within it; objects become extensions of their existence, accumulating narratives that they recount while “curating” their own lives.
This story is real. Because it is real, it is anonymous. “Maria” is a common and beautiful name, and for that reason I choose to use it.
Maria is dying; she has only a few months left to live, and that is why my phone rang. A mutual friend asked me for help. I write down the place where she lives: a small village in the center of the country. It lies precisely halfway along the journey I plan to undertake the following week. A journey always opens new possibilities, and stops are often the beginning of new paths.
The van has been loaded for several days. The driver enjoys travelling as much as I do – an essential condition for the trip to go well. We stop in various places, and I buy objects, as befits the collector-traveler that I am.
On the final day, I met Maria. She is thin, with fair skin and light eyes, and short hair. She wears comfortable clothes. She is marked by an apparent fragility that contrasts with the assertiveness of her speech. She meets me at the village café, and we walk up to her house at the top of a hill surrounded by trees. She tells me she lived for more than ten years in Mozambique, where she fell in love and believed in life, almost dying of love when, already alone, she returned to Portugal.
Maria was trained as a primary school teacher but devoted her life to promoting handicrafts. In Mozambique, she founded a center that supported young people through art, and together with her husband – of Makonde origin and a professional sculptor – she began collecting objects. “There were many objects,” she tells me. “He had all the contacts and filled our balcony.”
Maria argues she purchased them for pleasure. In her house – old and inherited from her now-deceased mother – objects accumulate in an aesthetic disorder. On the walls and across the tables, the objects map her journeys: Latin America, Africa, Asia – Maria travelled widely.
She is now ill and does not know what to do. Her family does not recognize itself in the collection. Returning it to the countries from which it came would, for Maria, mean casting it into misfortune; leaving it in the ageing village would mean consigning it to oblivion. I accompany her through the house. She shows me objects of traditional kitchenware, textiles, stools, basketry, jewelry, and a few masks. Most of these objects have little value compared with those displayed in museums worldwide. They are everyday objects imbued with feeling, I conclude.
At the end of our conversation, I ask Maria to close her eyes. I believe that closed eyes allow us to access desire more quickly. I ask her which destination she would choose for the collection if she were free to choose. “I would sell it. I do not have much time, and I want to go back one last time to Botswana. It is the journey we carry with us,” she replies, opening her eyes with a smile.
Some weeks later, I learned that someone had expressed interest in buying Maria’s objects, but I never discovered whether the exchange was completed or whether that gesture allowed her to release the memories of past journeys and depart once more.
Ana Temudo is a researcher and curator with academic training in Fine Arts, Artistic Studies, Museology, and Heritage Studies. She holds a PhD in Heritage Studies from the Portuguese Catholic University, a master’s degree in Museology from the University of Porto, and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, with postgraduate studies in Artistic Studies, from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. Her research and professional practice focus on interdisciplinary approaches connecting museology, art, and the social sciences. She is a collaborating researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST — Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, and at the Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2463-3975
