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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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Vol. 28 (3)
2024



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

The history through sacrifice and predation: tikmũ,ũn existential territory at the colonial crossroads

Douglas Ferreira Gadelha Campelo

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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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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

Editorial Team

Authors

Articles Submission

Numbers

Agora

About

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Articles

Sections

Privacy Policy

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

Dossier Restitution and Reparation

The universalist discipline of representation

Laura Burocco

18.06.2025

soft power, institutions, art mega-events, Europe
This essay examines the manipulative representation promoted by two European leading art institutions, the Biennale di Venezia (2024) and Documenta15 (2022), in support of a distorted Western decolonial imaginary.
poder suave, instituições, megaeventos de arte, Europa
O ensaio observa a representação manipuladora promovida por duas das principais instituições de arte da Europa, a Bienal de Veneza (2024) e a Documenta15 (2022), em apoio a um imaginário descolonial ocidental distorcido.
poder suave, instituições, megaeventos de arte, Europa
Este ensayo examina la representación manipuladora promovida por dos importantes instituciones artísticas europeas, la Bienal de Venecia (2024) y Documenta15 (2022), en apoyo de un imaginario decolonial occidental distorsionado.
soft power, institutions, méga-événements artistiques, Europe
Cet essai examine la représentation manipulatrice promue par deux grandes institutions artistiques européennes, la Biennale di Venezia (2024) et la Documenta15 (2022), à l'appui d'un imaginaire décolonial occidental déformé.

Presentation of the Restitution and Reparation dossier 


Agora is publishing today, 18 June 2025, coinciding with the Annual Meeting of CRIA's research group Práticas e Políticas da Cultura (Culture Practices and Policies) ‘Anthropology, Reparations and the Future’, a visual essay that offers a kind of preview of the dossier coordinated by Laura Burocco, Restitution and Reparation, which will soon be published here. The topicality and relevance of the theme and scope of this dossier, which has received a lot of attention in Etnográfica and in Agora (see, for example, Antropologia Urgente), justifies not only the interest in it, but also this anticipation, coinciding with CRIA's Annual Meeting.




The publication of a dossier in Agora, a novelty that goes beyond the regular publication space in the journal, constitutes a new challenge for Etnográfica in terms of content communication. Given the multimodality that this dossier proposal offered from the outset, we decided to consider publishing it on this platform, favouring digital editorial technical possibilities that allow not only this flexibility in content presentation (and which allows us to preview this piece of the set, which is circumstantially pertinent and timely) but also multisensory access to the full proposal. 




Critically and analogously to the multicultural movement of the 1990’s, which was driven by the promotion of culture as an economic engine, it seems that, after a cycle of exhaustion of creative productions associated with the white perspective, the artistic field is now increasingly and voraciously focused on the expressions and narratives of the “non-white world”, presenting this shift as “decolonial”. However, as it has happened in the past, it is crucial to observe to what extent this inclusion results in structural transformations capable of challenging the established power dynamics. We adopt as places of observation two of the most prominent international contemporary art events in Europe: the Venice Biennale (2024) and Documenta, in Kassel (2022). Both stand out for their recognition as pillars of Western universalism, which grants them a disproportionate legitimizing power, difficult to challenge by the artistic and cultural agents involved.


Image 1 -  Pavilion Hãhãwpuá (formerly Brazil), Exhibition, Ka’a Pûera: we are birds that walk, ‘Okará Assojaba, the council of elders listening,’ Gliceria Tupinambá and the Tupinambá community of the Serra do Padeiro and Olivença village, Bahia, 60th International Art Biennale of Venice, 2024.


In an interview conducted with the curators (Arissana Pataxó, Denilson Baniwa, and Gustavo Caboco Wapichana), they stated:



“One of the things we had the most difficulty with was having [the exhibition texts] in Nheengatu […] We thought it should not be in Italian, but in Portuguese, English, and Nheengatu, a modern Tupi language. It took a while for them [the Biennale] to accept […] Not that everyone speaks Nheengatu. Still, we understood this as a political statement, within the historical debate we are facing.”




Figures 2 and 3 – Visitors examine the captions in the Okará Assojaba room of the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion at the 60th International Art Biennale of Venice, April 2024.


Two days after the opening of Documenta15, the work Popular Justice by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi was removed due to accusations of antisemitism, despite divided reactions. Germany’s Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth, stated that the removal was necessary and should have occurred earlier, and emphasised that “further actions must follow”. In fact, a Scientific Advisory Commission was established to analyse and guide the work of the curators appointed by the Artistic Direction Committee, represented by the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa.[1]


Figure 4 – The void left by the removal of the work Popular Justice by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi, Documenta15, Kassel, 2022.


Figure 5 –-  Tokyo Reels Film Festival, Subversive Film Collective, also censored by the disciplinary power of the Documenta15 direction, Kassel, 2022.


A few days before the closure of Documenta15, the Tokyo Reels Film Festival, a work by the Subversive Film Collective, featuring pro-Palestinian clips from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, was condemned to obscurity. The commission deemed the work “highly problematic, subversive, and filled with antisemitic and anti-Zionist scenes”, highlighting that “the films represent a greater danger than Popular Justice due to their potential inciting effect”.


Figure 6 – Visitors inspect the work of the Taring Padi collective, a retrospective of 22 years of work presented at Hallenbad Ost, Documenta15 in Kassel, 2022.


The curatorial group responded by publishing a letter titled  “We are angry, we are sad, we are tired, we are united”, signed by thousands of cultural workers around the world, stating:



“We do not give permission to be defined, inspected, re-colonised by yet another institution […] We refuse the Supervisory Board and shareholders’ aggressive, unvetted and intentionally humiliating form of criticism and judgment. We refuse Eurocentric – and in this case specifically Germancentric – superiority, as a form of disciplining, managing and taming. We come here as equals. We come here in power, and we come here to put ourselves in the public domain, with nothing to hide or be ashamed of”.



Laura Burocco (CRIA-Iscte)



Laura Burocco is dedicated to research and teaching. Her research interests are on cultural industry and the transformation of work in post-industrial and post-colonial societies, cultural diplomacy and soft power, knowledge production, cognitive capitalism, and southern epistemology into the theoretical framework of decolonial and cultural studies. She is currently a Researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) ISCTE of the University Institute of Lisbon. Her research interrogates the intersection of culture and power as the main focus of decolonization of knowledge, critically approaching academia and the arts as a tool for meaningful decolonization. She has been a postdoctoral fellow in Visual History and Theory at the Centre for Humanities Research of the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town in 2021, and in Visual Languages at Post Graduate Program of School of Art of the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro in 2019. From 2012 to 2018 she conducted the research and artistic project Gentrilogy between Milano, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg, which resulted in two exhibitions, Braamopoly (Johannesburg 2013) and Gentrilogy (Rio de Janeiro, 2019), and several presentations and publications.

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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

Editorial Team

Authors

Articles Submission

Numbers

Agora

About

Editorial Team

Articles

Sections

Privacy Policy

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