Articles

Contingency conveniences: anticipation as a temporal practice of SEF inspectors at the Portuguese airport border

Mafalda Carapeto

This article follows from ethnographic work conducted at an airport in Portugal, where, from June 2021 to April 2022, I observed the daily routines of the inspectors of the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service (SEF) across various groups,

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Articles

Cotidiano e trajetórias vitais situadas de mulheres idosas (AMBA, província de Buenos Aires, Argentina): a incidência da pandemia de Covid-19

Ana Silvia Valero, María Gabriela Morgante y Julián Cueto

Este trabalho pretende dar conta das interseções entre diferentes aspetos da vida quotidiana e das trajetórias de vida das pessoas idosas num espaço de bairro e a incidência da pandemia de Covid-19. Baseia-se no desenvolvimento sustentado,

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Articles

The reconfigurations of culture jamming in the digital environment: the case of anti-consumerism memes in the #antiblackfriday campaign (Brazil)

Liliane Moreira Ramos

In this article, I discuss the reconfigurations of the phenomenon known as culture jamming, characteristic of the communicative dimension of political consumption, based on the appropriation of Internet memes as a tool to criticize consumption.

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Articles

Informal economies in Bairro Alto (Lisbon): the nocturnal tourist city explained through a street dealer’s life story

Jordi Nofre

The historical neighbourhood of Bairro Alto is the city’s most iconic nightlife destination, especially for tourists visiting Lisbon (Portugal). The expansion of commercial nightlife in this area has been accompanied by the increasing presence of

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Articles

A pame theory of force: the case of the xi'iui of the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro, Mexico

Imelda Aguirre Mendoza

This text analyzes the term of force (mana’ap) as a native concept formulated by the pames (xi’iui) of the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro. This is related to aspects such as blood, food, cold, hot, air and their effects on the body. It is observed

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Articles

Convergences and bifurcations in the biographies and autobiographies of indigenous intellectuals from Mexico and Brazil

Mariana da Costa Aguiar Petroni e Gabriel K. Kruell

In this article we present an exercise of reflection on the challenges involved in writing and studying the biographies and autobiographies of indigenous intellectuals in different geographical, historical and political scenarios: Mexico and Brazil,

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Articles

To grow up: affectionate imitation in the relations of Capuxu children with their animals

Emilene Leite de Sousa e Antonella Maria Imperatriz Tassinari

This paper analyzes the experiences of Capuxu children with the animals they interact with daily, looking for un understanding about how children’s relationships with these companion species cross the Capuxu sociality, including the onomastic

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Articles

Biological science laboratories as practices: an ethnographic reading of plant anatomy at a University in the Caatinga (Bahia, Brazil)

Elizeu Pinheiro da Cruz e Iara Maria de Almeida Souza

Anchored in notes elaborated in a multispecies ethnography, this text formulates a reading of biological science laboratories as situating practices of human and non-human actors. For this, the authors bring up plants from/in the caatinga,

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Interdisciplinarities

Sensitive maps in abandoned territories of railway stations on the Brazil-Uruguay border

Vanessa Forneck e Eduardo Rocha

The research maps and investigates the territories created by the abandonment of railway stations, a process that has been accentuated since the 1980s, in the twin cities of Jaguarão-Rio Branco and Santana do Livramento-Rivera, on the

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Multimodal Alt

A graphic ethnography as a form of affection and memory: afflictions, spirits, and healing processes in Zion churches in Maputo

Giulia Cavallo

In 2016, three years after completing my Ph.D., I embarked on my first attempt to translate my ethnographic research conducted in Maputo, among the Zion communities, into a graphic language. Through a series of single illustrations, I aimed to

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Recursivities

Desanthropic ethnography: between apocryphal stories of water, deep dichotomies and liquid dwellings

Alejandro Vázquez Estrada e Eva Fernández

In this text we address the possibility of deconstructing the relationships – that have water as a resource available to humans – that have ordered some dichotomies such as anthropos-nature, establishing that there are methodologies, theories

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Argument

Anthropology of art, Anthropology – history, dilemmas, possibilities

Filipe Verde

In this essay, I first aim to pinpoint the factors that have historically marginalized art within anthropological thought. I propose that this marginalization stems from two main influences: the aesthetic conception of art and the metaphysical

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Reviews

Um jovem caçador de lixo na Mafalala, nas décadas de 1960 e 1970

Diogo Ramada Curto

Celso Mussane (1957-) é um pastor evangélico moçambicano. Licenciou-se na Suécia (1994) e tirou o curso superior de Teologia Bíblica na Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, em Londrina no Brasil (2018). Entre 2019 e 2020, publicou

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Reviews

Alberto Corsín Jiménez y Adolfo Estalella, Free Culture and the City: Hackers, Commoners, and Neighbors in Madrid, 1997-2017

Francisco Martínez

Este libro tiene tres dimensiones analíticas: primero, es una etnografía del movimiento de cultura libre en Madrid. Segundo, es un estudio histórico sobre la traducción de lo digital a lo urbano, favoreciendo una nueva manera de posicionarse en

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Articles

“The Chinese are universal, they're invading everywhere”: rumours and tensions surrounding the Chinese presence in Cape Verdean trade

Vinícius Venancio

Rumours, hearsay and gossip are a constitutive part of societies and play a fundamental role in coercing, controlling and disciplining individuals in the search for social cohesion. They tend to emerge at times of social tension and civilisational

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Articles

Reflexivity and politics in the ethnographic text: representations and effects of writing

Jaime Santos Júnior, Marilda Aparecida de Menezes

In 2020, one year after a research that had as its main objective to analyze, comparatively, the cycles of sugarcane workers’ strikes in Pernambuco, and metalworkers of São Paulo and ABC Paulista, that occurred in the late 1970’s, we returned

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Articles

The legal persecution of homosexuality in the Iberian Peninsula: 19th and 20th centuries

Raquel Afonso

The legal framework that underpins the persecution of homosexuality in Portugal and in the Spanish State appears before the beginning of the Iberian dictatorships. In Portugal, for example, the I Republic creates legislation against “those who

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Articles

Needs, rights and languages: an ethnographic study about inhabiting and making of citizenship in Buenos Aires

Ana Gretel Thomasz, Luciana Boroccioni

This article links the issues of the inhabit and housing rights with that of the making of citizenship, which are explored from an anthropological perspective. It is based on the ethographic work developed between 2015-2020 with the inhabitants of a

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Articles

“An evil hand”: on abolitionist feminists, sex workers and epistemic violence in Argentina

Deborah Daich

In June 2020, the Argentine Ministry of Development launched the National Registry of Popular Economy (ReNaTEP) which, among other categories, included sex workers and strippers. Sex workers’ organizations celebrated the possibility of registering

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Recursivities

Integrating refugees and migrants into higher education in Portugal? An action research experience in a Portuguese university

Cristina Santinho, Dora Rebelo

This article results from research comprised of fieldwork ethnography, participant observation, collection of life stories, interviews and testimonials of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, living in Portugal. We focus on a particular experience

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The book and its critics

Liberdade para desejar

Victor Hugo de Souza Barreto

Parte do nosso compromisso no trabalho etnográfico é o de reconhecer nossos interlocutores como sujeitos de desejo. Mesmo que esses desejos, escolhas e vontades não sejam aqueles entendidos por nós, pesquisadores, como “bons”, “melhores”

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The book and its critics

Uma década e muitos acontecimentos depois: o que (re)ler dos possíveis liberalismos minoritários?

Paulo Victor Leite Lopes

A partir de um investimento etnográfico denso, o livro Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in the Brazilian Favela, de Moisés Lino e Silva, traz interessantes reflexões a respeito dos limites ao (suposto) caráter universal e inequívoco em

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Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"

Neoliberalism, universities, and anthropology around the world: introduction

Virginia R. Dominguez, Mariano D. Perelman

The idea for this dossier began with a conversation over one of those long breakfasts given at conferences. It was 2014 and the blows of the 2008 economic crisis were still being felt strongly. There was growing concern in the academic field over

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Reviews

“Useless degrees”, quality assurance, and employable graduates: neoliberal effects on University Education in Kenya

Mwenda Ntarangwi

At a time when it is critical to understand humanity and its various forms of socioeconomic and political life, anthropology and other social sciences are being threatened by a neoliberal emphasis on “relevant” courses in universities in Kenya.

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Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"

Anthropology from different angles: a tale of the neoliberal arts

Bonnie Urciuoli

A discipline’s value depends on the institutional position of its valuers. In U.S. liberal arts undergraduate education, trustees, marketers, and parents routinely link disciplinary value to “return on investment”. This market logic is evident

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Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"

Knowledge politics and labor precariousness in Spanish universities: implications for social anthropology

Alicia Reigada

Neoliberal reforms arising from Spain’s entrance into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have had major consequences for academic practice and unleashed heated debate in the university community and society. This article explores the main

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Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"

The deterioration of anthropological work in Mexico during the 21st century

Luis Reygadas

This article analyzes how the working conditions for Mexican anthropologists have deteriorated throughout the last few decades. Until half a century ago, only a few dozen professional anthropologists practiced in Mexico, and most of them had access

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Dossiê "Neoliberalism, universities, and Anthropology around the world"

Hong Kong anthropologists within global neoliberalism and national and local politics

Gordon Mathews

There are global neoliberal pressures on the academy that are more or less faced by anthropologists around the world. To what extent are anthropologists required to publish in English in SSCI-ranked journals to keep their jobs and get promoted? But

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Reviews

Ramon Sarró, Inventing an Alphabet: Writing, Art, and Kongo Culture in the DRC

João Pina-Cabral

This is a truly innovative ethnography about writing; a worthy anthropological response to Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion. It centers on the encounter between two marginal creators: a brilliant geometrician from Africa, and a seasoned

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Articles

Fazer antropologia na boca do urso

Diogo Henrique Novo Rocha

Fazer antropologia na boca do urso, sem descrições densas ou contextos teóricos, apenas numa dialética simples entre tensões do mundo ocidental “capitalista” e as cosmologias animistas do Norte. Uma pretensão que leva a antropóloga

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Interview with Rosa Maria Perez

Rosa Maria Perez, Inês Lourenço

15.10.2024

Interview with Rosa Maria Perez, anthropologist, integrated researcher at CRIA-Iscte, retired Professor in the Anthropology department at Iscte and Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India.Starting with the
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The provincialization of orthodox economic projects: porosities, relations and moralities

Patrícia Alves de Matos

24.09.2024

The severe human and social effects of the 2008 financial crisis, subsequently intensified by austerity policies on both sides of the Atlantic, have led to a renewed interest, in anthropology as in other social sciences, in the logics of capitalist
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Land and wasteland

Diego Amoedo

22.08.2024

50 years on, what has happened to the land? In addition to the profound political and social changes that the 25th of April brought to Portugal, there were also important changes in the social
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Building Afro-indigenous affective networks: women, education, and activism in Latin America

Katherine Chalá [1], Daniela Balanzátegui [2], Valentina Romero [3], Catarina Nimbopyruá Delfina dos Santos [4], María Celeste Sánchez Sugía [5], Watatakalu Yawalapiti [6], Maria John [7], Marianne Sallum [8]

17.07.2024

Social movements and grassroots organizations led by indigenous and afro-descendant women in Latin America play a central role in defending human and civil rights, highlighting territorial and environmental rights,
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The yellow brick road I walk as an ethnographer

Noelia García Rodríguez

11.07.2024

In this text I compare my anthropological fieldwork experience to a journey of transformation and growth, like Dorothy Gale's journey down the yellow brick road in the land of Oz. I find ethnography a fascinating
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25 April, always!

03.07.2024

Etnográfica celebrates the 50th anniversary of 25 April 1974. We wanted to associate an artistic (musical) proposal with this outstanding edition,  an Agora's exclusive content:
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Interview with José Sobral

José Sobral, Patrícia Alves de Matos

02.07.2024

Interview with José Manuel Sobral, anthropologist and retired researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade
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Observing land transformation in Portugal

Fabienne Wateau

25.06.2024

50 years on, what has happened to the land? In addition to the profound political and social changes that the 25th of April brought to Portugal, there were also important changes in the social and
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In the City of Shadows: moving in the face of violence in Veracruz

Juan Antonio Flores Martos

20.06.2024

Ethnographing the impact of violence on the lives of the people of Veracruz (Mexico) stimulates a transformation of the ways of working and being in the countryside. The ethnographer experiences the need to adapt to
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Indigenous archaeologies, territories, and human rights: dialogues among representatives of the Tupi Guarani, Tuxá, and Eastern Pequot

Yacunã Tuxá [1], Natasha Gambrell [2], Luã Apyká [3], Blaire Morseau [4], Stephen W. Silliman [5], Daniela Balanzátegui [6], Marianne Sallum [7]

21.05.2024

In recent decades, a global solidarity movement among various Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and traditional communities has grown, united to defend and preserve their territories and linguistic diversity.
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It's because I miss you that I'm skinny: male (re)encounters in the Bolivian Chaco

Pere Morell i Torra

18.04.2024

This text focuses on my last encounter with one of my main interlocutors in the field, when a change in the subject of my research also changed our relationship [1]. Through fragments of conversations, field diary
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The War Against Gaza: Genocide, Geopolitics and Anthropology

Paulo Gabriel Hilu da Rocha Pinto

27.03.2024

The number of dead and wounded, as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Israel's military offensive against Gaza, reached staggering proportions in just a few weeks. The scale of the conflict and
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Missing girls: the sexual exploitation of children in the form of self-managed internal trafficking

M. Belén Ortega-Senet

13.03.2024

The sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is one of the most invisible forms of sexual violence, loaded with myths, stereotypes, prejudices and greatly simplified in its understanding as a phenomenon. Of all its
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Anthropology in Arabic: beyond the discursive monopoly

Abdellah Hammoudi

Tradução de Ilham Houass e Diane Abd-El-Karim

Revisto por Francisco Freire e Abdallah Hammoudi

12.03.2024

The text by Moroccan anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi, which we find here today in Portuguese, was originally published in Arabic in 2018 as an introduction to the book
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The corner of the "calabaceira": encounters, affections and ethnography in the "Vale"

Simone Frangella

Max Ruben Ramos

05.03.2024

In this text, Simone Frangella and Max Ruben Ramos talk about their fieldwork experience in Vale da Amoreira, in the municipality of Moita, in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. The story invites us to think about how a
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Wandering through the past with an eviscerated present: looking at Gaza through the archives

Raquel Gil Carvalheira

04.03.2024

In this February of a live broadcast genocide, the proposal is "Wandering through the past with an eviscerated present: looking at Gaza through the archives". This in the month in which Etnográfica inaugurates its Found in Translation section with
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Interview with Caroline Brettell

Caroline Brettell

Marta Rosales

Sónia Ferreira

27.02.2024

Interview with Caroline Brettell, held at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, on 30 June 2023. The interview focused on the author's field experience with Portuguese emigration in France and rural populations in Portugal in
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Ex-votos around the monument to Dr Sousa Martins

(Re)encontrar Sousa Martins

Vincenzo Scamardella

06.02.2024

This tale is an ethnofiction about a contemporary and individual research for supernatural help that has its roots in the childhood memories of the protagonist. In this story, the fictional character of Miguel who is inspired by encounters that I
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A decade and many events later: what can we (re)read about possible minority liberalisms?

Paulo Victor Leite Lopes

06.02.2024

In this first edition of “A book and his critics”, we discuss Moisés Lino e Silva’s (Federal University of Bahia) recent book "Minoritarian Liberalism. A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela (2022)", which, based on ethnographic fieldwork in
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“Over there”: on the relative legibility of the cityscape

Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette

23.01.2024

Starting from a brief, casual quasi-ethnographic experience, Thaddeus Blanchette shows us the city as a space of "relative legibility", entangled in multiple perceptions, conceptions and experiences (cf. Lefebvre;
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The value of confession and the exercise of justice

Catarina Frois

06.12.2023

In this note, I discuss the intricacies of the different truths that arise from the empirical material constituted by crime authors' narratives in situations of deprivation of liberty and their analyses of the
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Seeing like a routier: routiers’ borderscapes between Southern Europe and West Africa

Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão

22.11.2023

Routier is the self-designation employed by Senegalese men driving decades-old vehicles overloaded with mostly second-hand items from Southern Europe to be sold in West Africa. By seeing like a
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Relational ethics and care for the world

Jarrett Zigon

16.11.2023

In the inaugural contribution to this section, Jarrett Zigon challenges the anthropology limits of relativizing and localizing. Based on the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition, he proposes an anthropology of
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We are all curmanos

Ramón Sarró

10.10.2023

Starting from an analysis of the novel "El bosque de Ancines" by Galician writer Carlos Martínez-Barbeito, and his fascination with woods and wolves and other archetypes, the author examines the concept of the "curmano". What is a curmano? Are we
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Nombres de lugar: el espíritu

Ramón Sarró

10.10.2023

The name transforms the space into a singular place and, in particular, the religious name defines and constructs the identity of the place in a profound way. In this essay, the author combines landscape, language and religion to reflect on the
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Interview with João Leal

João Leal

Luís Cunha

Humberto Martins

03.10.2023

This interview features João Leal, the first director of Etnográfica. It was conducted by Luís Cunha and Humberto Martins in the Library of the National Museum of Ethnology in
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Etnographing the underground: notes and inspirations from the text by Francisco Martínez

Mariana Tello Weiss

28.09.2023

The text is highly inspiring from both a theoretical and methodological point of view. It proposes an ethnography of the basements in Sillamäe, a small village in eastern Estonia. A village that, because of its
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What Else Can We Do with/in Holes?

Tamta Khalvashi

28.09.2023

“Where is a bunker?” This question started to haunt many of us in Georgian cities, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Quest for bunkers, basements and shelters, for spaces of both opacity and
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From basement to de-basement? A probing response to opacity

Hermione Spriggs

21.09.2023

“The opaque is not the obscure” (Glissant 1997:191). So begins Fran Martinez’ text on basements, which he approaches as spaces of opacity that can nonetheless be entered ethnographically. The
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Identity(ies) and negotiation: the dance of dressing and undressing, undressing and dressing (or not).

Raquel Mendes Pereira

19.09.2023

In an attempt to distance myself from the tourists' naked bodies, I decided to order some dresses from Arna, the village seamstress. Even so, throughout the research, my body and the way it was covered or uncovered
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Where the Story Begins Anew

Patrick Laviolette

29.08.2023

Francisco Martínez starts his essay with a quotation by Édouard Glissant. He might just as easily have chosen something from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1958) or Dick
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Gender, sexuality and ourselves

Miguel Vale de Almeida

25.08.2023

In Portugal, the social sciences and humanities have been very resistant to the development of gender and sexuality studies. While the country's peripheral status and the advent of democracy only in 1974 may explain this phenomenon, the same delay,
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Freedom to desire

Victor Hugo de Souza Barreto

28.06.2023

In this first edition of “A book and his critics”, we discuss Moisés Lino e Silva’s (Federal University of Bahia) recent book "Minoritarian Liberalism. A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela (2022)", which, based on ethnographic fieldwork in
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Lights Out. Practicing Opacity in Estonian Basements

Francisco Martínez

21.06.2023

This essay engages with alternative regimes of visibility by investigating the things that are kept, and the practices that take place in basements of eastern Estonia. The use of hiding infrastructures is here
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Confusing maps: notes on new energy territorialities in Portugal and Europe

Ruy Llera Blanes

Luís Silva

Francisco Freire

Antonio Maria Pusceddu

Antónia Lima

Paulo Mendes

21.06.2023

In the current context of post-pandemics, climate crisis and armed conflict in Ukraine, the issue of energy, its production, access and consumption have gained prominence in the global geopolitical landscape. In
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