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Precarious Democracy
Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil
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Edited by:
Benjamin Junge
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With contributions by:
Lila Moritz Schwarcz
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2021
About this book
Brazil changed drastically in the 21st century’s second decade. In 2010, the country’s outgoing president Lula left office with almost 90% approval. As the presidency passed to his Workers' Party successor, Dilma Rousseff, many across the world hailed Brazil as a model of progressive governance in the Global South. Yet, by 2019, those progressive gains were being dismantled as the far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of a bitterly divided country. Digging beneath this pendulum swing of policy and politics, and drawing on rich ethnographic portraits, Precarious Democracy shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. Bringing together powerful and intimate stories and portraits from Brazil's megacities to rural Amazonia, this volume demonstrates the necessity of ethnography for understanding social and political change, and provides crucial insights on one of the most epochal periods of change in Brazilian history.
Author / Editor information
BENJAMIN JUNGE is a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of Cynical Citizenship: Gender, Regionalism and Political Subjectivity in Porto Alegre, Brazil and co-editor of Lived Religion and Lived Citizenship.
SEAN T. MITCHELL is an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of the award-winning, Constellations of Inequality: Space, Race, and Utopia in Brazil and co-editor of Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency.
ALVARO JARRÍN is an associate professor of anthropology at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil and co-editor of Remaking the Human: Cosmetic Technologies of Body Repair, Reshaping, and Replacement.
LUCIA CANTERO is an assistant professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco, California. She is the author of The Waste of Accumulation: The ‘Shock of Order’ Campaign and the Right to Rio 2016.
SEAN T. MITCHELL is an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of the award-winning, Constellations of Inequality: Space, Race, and Utopia in Brazil and co-editor of Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency.
ALVARO JARRÍN is an associate professor of anthropology at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil and co-editor of Remaking the Human: Cosmetic Technologies of Body Repair, Reshaping, and Replacement.
LUCIA CANTERO is an assistant professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco, California. She is the author of The Waste of Accumulation: The ‘Shock of Order’ Campaign and the Right to Rio 2016.
Reviews
"Precarious Democracy presents a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Brazil through a rich collection of ethnographies and a range of thoughtful analyses and insights about ordinary people throughout the country as they respond in multiple ways to the rise and political consolidation of the far-right in recent years. It is essential reading for understanding what is going on in Brazil today."
— James N. Green, author of Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian RevolutionaryTopics
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Frontmatter
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CONTENTS
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ACRONYMS
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INTRODUCTION: Ethnographies of the Brazilian Unraveling
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CRITICAL OVERVIEW: A Plan for a Country Still Looking for Democracy
13 - Part I: THE INTIMACY OF POWER
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1. “FAMILY IS EVERYTHING”: Generational Tensions as a Working-Class Household from Recife, Brazil, Contemplates the 2018 Presidential Elections
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2. AMONG MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: Economic Mobility and Political Identity in a Northeastern Periferia
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3. DREAMING WITH GUNS: Performing Masculinity and Imagining Consumption in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
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4. WHITENESS HAS COME OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTENSIFIED BRAZIL’S REACTIONARY WAVE
62 - Part II. CORRUPTION AND CRIME
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5. CRUEL PESSIMISM: The Affect of Anticorruption and the End of the New Brazilian Middle Class
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6. THE EFFECTS OF SOME RELIGIOUS AFFECTS: Revolutions in Crime
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7. “LOOK AT THAT”: Cures, Poisons, and Shifting Rationalities in the Backlands That Have Become a Sea (of Money)
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8. “THE OIL IS OURS”: Petro-Affect and the Scandalization of Politics
116 - Part III. INFRASTRUCTURES OF HOPE
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9. DESPAIRING HOPES (AND HOPEFUL DESPAIR) IN AMAZONIA
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10. TEMPERED HOPES: (Re)producing the Middle Class in Recife’s Alternative Music Scene
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11. WITHERING DREAMS: Material Hope and Apathy among Brazil’s Once-Rising Poor
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12. BOLSONARO WINS JAPAN: Support for the Far Right among Japanese Brazilian Overseas Labor Migrants
169 - Part IV. OLD CHALLENGES, NEW ACTIVISM
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13. HOLDING THE WAVE: Black LGBTI+ Feminist Resilience amid the Reactionary Turn in Rio de Janeiro
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14. LGBTTI ELDERS IN BRAZIL: Subjectivation and Narratives about Resilience, Resistance, and Vulnerability
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15. DISGUST AND DEFIANCE: The Visceral Politics of Trans and Travesti Activism amid a Heteronormative Backlash
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16. “BARBIE E KEN CIDADÃOS DE BEM”: Memes and Political Participation among College Students in Brazil
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
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INDEX
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 8, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9781978825697
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781978825697
Keywords for this book
ethnographies; hope; despair; resistance; Brazil; South American; Latin American; political science; democracy; working-class issues; working-class; power; political leaders; presidential election; economic mobility; political identity; guns; weapons; corruption; crime; crime in Brazil; anti-corruption; middle class; Amazon Rainforest; Amazon river; migrants; Japanese-Brazilian; Rio de Janeiro; activism; political participation; Brazilian youth; travesti activism; trans activism; trans Latina activism; World History; Anthropology; Latin American Studies; 21st century; politics; social change; political change; Amazonia
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
