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
[+]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)
