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Vol. 29 (2)
2025



Articles

A puzzle Narcissus: ethnography faces delirium and “stays” at the Hotel da Loucura – Rio de Janeiro

Luciano von der Goltz Vianna

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

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Articles

Por trás das crianças, dos objetos e dos cuises: agência e pesquisa em um bairro periurbano de Córdoba (Argentina)

Rocío Fatyass

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

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Articles

The construction of knowledge about the Amazon ecosystem by a Brazilian scientific institution

Aline Moreira Magalhães

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),

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Interdisciplinarities

Living in a Siza house: the experience of auteur architecture in Malagueira, Évora

Juliana Pereira, Ana Catarina Costa, André Carmo, Eduardo Ascensão

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

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Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”

Introduction: Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses

Annabelle Dias Félix, Maria João Leote de Carvalho, Catarina Frois

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”

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Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”

Privatizing urban security: control, hospitality and suspicion in the Brazilian shopping

Susana Durão, Paola Argentin

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

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Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”

“Police abuse, we face it every day”: ethnographic notes on racist police violence

Pedro Varela

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

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Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”

Marginality, security, surveillance, crime, imprisonment: reflections on an intellectual and methodological trajectory

Catarina Frois

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

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Dossiê “Beyond penal populism: complexifying justice systems and security through qualitative lenses”

Navigating the labyrinth: qualitative research in the securitized border regions of North Africa

Lydia Letsch

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

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Memory

Uma vida, muitas vidas: entrevista com Victor Bandeira, etnógrafo e viajante

Rita Tomé, João Leal

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

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Lévi-Strauss Award

From the “note of condolence” to the “unjust aggression”: news about death written by the PMSC

Jo P. Klinkerfus

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

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Vol. 29 (1)
2025



Artigos

“Enough of this fake war”: ecologies of value, workers and environmentalists in Southern Italy

Antonio Maria Pusceddu

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,

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Artigos

“Preventing them from being adrift”: challenges for professional practice in the Argentinean mental health system for children and adolescents

Axel Levin

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

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Artigos

Making Children: an iconography of the ibejadas in the centers, religious article shops, and factories of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Morena Freitas

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

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Artigos

To migrate and to belong: intimacy, ecclesiastical absence, and playful competition in the Aymara Anata-Carnival of Chiapa (Chile)

Pablo Mardones

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

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Artigos

Hauntology and nostalgia in the touristed landscapes of Sarajevo

Marta Roriz

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

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Memory

David J. Webster in Mozambique: minimal epistolary (1971-1979)

Lorenzo Macagno

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.

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Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’

Género e cuidados na experiência transnacional cabo-verdiana: introdução

Luzia Oca González, Fernando Barbosa Rodrigues and Iria Vázquez Silva

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

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Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’

“Vizinhu ta trocadu pratu ku kada casa”… Caring to avoid hunger in Brianda, Santiago Island, Cape Verde

Fernando Barbosa Rodrigues

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

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Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’

“Eu já aguentei muita gente nessa vida”: about care, gender, and generation in Cape Verdian families

Andréa Lobo and André Omisilê Justino

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 –

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Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’

Global care chains in Cape Verdean migrations: women who stay so that others can migrate

Luzia Oca González and Iria Vázquez Silva

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

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Dossier ‘Gender and Care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’

The difficult balance between work and life: care arrangements in three generations of Cape Verdean migrants

Keina Espiñeira González, Belén Fernández-Suárez and Antía Pérez-Caramés

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

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Debate

Universal foreigners: the ‘ontological turn’ considered from a phenomenological perspective

Filipe Verde

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

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Debate

Universos estrangeiros: ainda a polêmica virada ontológica na antropologia

Rogério Brittes W. Pires

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

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Debate

Resposta a Rogério Pires

Filipe Verde

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

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Debate

Da ontologia da fenomenologia na antropologia: ensaio de resposta

Rogério Brittes W. Pires

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

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Note on the cover

Note on the cover

Pedro Calapez

© 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

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Magazine

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Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Edifício 4 - Iscte_Conhecimento e Inovação, Sala B1.130 
Av. Forças Armadas, 40 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

(+351) 210 464 057
etnografica@cria.org.pt

Financiado pela FCT, I. P. (UIDB/04038/2020 e UIDP/04038/2020)

© 2025 Revista Etnográfica

Magazine

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Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Edifício 4 - Iscte_Conhecimento e Inovação, Sala B1.130 
Av. Forças Armadas, 40 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

(+351) 210 464 057
etnografica@cria.org.pt

Financiado pela FCT, I. P. (UIDB/04038/2020 e UIDP/04038/2020)

© 2025 Revista Etnográfica

Quick Notes

“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; Soja) that indicate positions and possible transgressions.

https://doi.org/10.25660/agora0011.6aez-kv88

Partindo de uma breve experiência quase-etnográfica casual, Thaddeus Blanchette mostra-nos a cidade como espaço de “legibilidade relativa”, emaranhado em múltiplas percepções, concepções e vivências (cf. Lefebvre; Soja) que indiciam posições e possíveis transgressões.  

https://doi.org/10.25660/agora0011.6aez-kv88

A partir de una breve y casual experiencia cuasi etnográfica, Thaddeus Blanchette nos muestra la ciudad como un espacio de "legibilidad relativa", enmarañado en múltiples percepciones, concepciones y experiencias (cf. Lefebvre; Soja) que indican posiciones y posibles transgresiones.

https://doi.org/10.25660/agora0011.6aez-kv88
À partir d'une brève expérience quasi-ethnographique, Thaddeus Blanchette nous montre la ville comme un espace de " lisibilité relative ", enchevêtré dans de multiples perceptions, conceptions et expériences (cf. Lefebvre ; Soja) qui indiquent des positions et des transgressions possibles.

https://doi.org/10.25660/agora0011.6aez-kv88
This section has a profile similar to that of a blog, which can include independent and original posts, but also short reflections by authors of texts published in the journal, providing a more "popular" version, in blog format, of the respective article.

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; Soja) that indicate positions and possible transgressions.

Every time I come back to Brazil, I enter a period of culture shock which highlights “the imponderables of daily life” (to use Malinowski’s term). What I relate below wouldn’t have been so shocking to me if I had not just slungshot my way over Birmingham, back across London, through Rio de Janeiro, up to Los Angeles and thence to Santa Barbara, back to L.A., down to Rio via Houston, and finally across to Campinas. In this three-week long pinball game across half the planet, the only difficulties I encountered in finding my way were from Viracopos Airport to UNICAMP.

It should be noted that this was not strange territory for me.

I first visited UNICAMP in 1985. Since then, I’ve been to Campinas many times — mostly to the university. I generally travel with other people, however, which makes it preferable to take a taxi from the airport. This time, I was alone and decided to do something I haven’t done in decades: take public transport.

I knew that I’d have to catch a bus (the 193) to downtown and transfer to another (the 330) to the campus. Google Maps confirmed this. So far, so good.

The first barrier was buying a ticket. A private firm does the airport run and you have to get a ticket from their booth. After waiting in line for ten minutes, I got to the salesperson and pulled out my credit card.

“Oh, no sir!” the woman behind the counter told me. “We only take cash.”

Luckily, there was an ATM close by. Duly supplied with dead tree pieces, I stood in line again to pay for a printed ticket with a scanable QRD code. The bus driver didn’t even glance at it as he waved me aboard.

A half hour later, I was at Campinas’ main bus exchange terminal. I quickly learned there were no posted lists of bus lines. One had to wander about, looking at the small plaques detailing bus numbers.

After five minutes of searching, I asked a driver who told me that the 330 left from the other side of the terminal. Having much experience with Brazilians giving directions, his demeanor cued me that he probably didn’t know what he was talking about. A person who knows a direction will point it out, physically indicating where one should go. A person who doesn’t know, but who wants to help you, will give a long explanation as to where your destination MIGHT be, often roping in a third party consultant. But someone who doesn’t know and doesn’t want to be rude (by stating they don’t know), will tell confidently say “it is over there”. That’s what the driver was doing to me.

I headed “over there”, found a ticket booth, and asked its occupants.

“The 330 doesn’t stop here anymore,” they said. “It’s out on Senador”. They pointed me to the terminal’s exit.

I walked to the exit and into a passage running under a major avenue. Still no indication of where other transfer points might be. The tunnel spit me out into a commerce area fronting on back streets with no obvious way to get to “Senador”. I turned left, as the sidewalk there rose towards the overpass. When I got to the end of the pavement, I was confronted with a snarl of sidewalkless streets. I turned back into the commerce area to ask three men who were shooting the shit in front of a cellphone cover stand.

“You need to go back into the terminal and ask there,” they told me. “They said to go to Senador.” “Oh! Senador! You need to go down there, then,” one man said, gesturing vaguely in the opposite direction from which I had turned. “Walk that way and keep going straight, no matter what [segue reta toda vida]”. He pointed to a sidewalk that curved 90 degrees to the left, emphasising “straight”.

That was the only way I COULD go, however. A few minutes later, I emerged on a main boulevard with one tiny street sign: “S. Saraiva”. “Senador Saraiva”, I presumed.

This confronted me with a new dilemma. The boulevard was bisected by a narrow walkway where small commercial stands had been erected. Both lanes of “S. Saraiva” ran in the same direction and buses were running down both sides. I had no idea where I should pick up the 330.

A brief consultation with a senior citizen confirmed that I was indeed on Senador, but they didn’t know where the bus stops were. Figuring the midlane walk was the likeliest spot to look, I headed there. Sure enough, there were busstops interspersed among the commercial stands. No sign of which served what lines, however.

A popcorn vendor told me that the 330 was “down there”, waving his hand vaguely to the right, “on the left”.

“The left?” I asked, wanting to be sure.

“To the left,” he acknowledged, pointing to his right and wagling the tips of his fingers to the left.

I strolled down the walkway to the right looking over the signs on the left hand side of the strip until I found the stop serving Line 330. Fifteen minutes later, the bus arrived.

“The buses in Campinas don’t take cash,” the driver said, as I tried to hand him ten reais. “You need to buy a bus pass in the central terminal.”

I turned to the crowded bus and waved my ten real bill. “Who’ll take ten reais to pass me through on their card?” I asked, offering double the price for the journey.

30 minutes later I was at UNICAMP’S visitng scholars housing, the maravelously named FUNCAMP.

This small voyage highlights the relative legibility of human geography. High-end transport for the wealthy is well-marked and quickly navigated. Popular transport is almost opaque. Utilitarian, it is designed to move people from home to work and back again. It does not encourage exploration, emphasizing an urban architecture where the poor are presumed to know their place. In such a universe, moving crosstown via public transit becomes a matter of consulting folk knowledge and is almost a subversive act.

Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette (Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)


Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette é um antropólogo social, especializando-se em estudos urbanos, que trabalha no Programa de Pós-Graduação de Antropologia Social do Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.




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Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Edifício 4 - Iscte_Conhecimento e Inovação, Sala B1.130 
Av. Forças Armadas, 40 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

(+351) 210 464 057
etnografica@cria.org.pt

Financiado pela FCT, I. P. (UIDB/04038/2020 e UIDP/04038/2020)

© 2025 Revista Etnográfica

Magazine

About

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About

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Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Edifício 4 - Iscte_Conhecimento e Inovação, Sala B1.130 
Av. Forças Armadas, 40 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

(+351) 210 464 057
etnografica@cria.org.pt

Financiado pela FCT, I. P. (UIDB/04038/2020 e UIDP/04038/2020)

© 2025 Revista Etnográfica