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Brazil's name comes from the tree called brazilwood, used during 350 years to embellish with red color the clothing of powerful people in Europe, and for that reason it turned to be one of Brazil's export riches, collected to a large extent. Over those years, it even became the subject of a number of policies issued by Portuguese, French and Dutch governments; and produced funds to pay for the external debt created in order to enable the country's independence. That is why it was strongly endangered. This book tells this story and presents the present situation of the red wood, including its use for good music, onde the best violin bows in the world are made of brazilwood.
The book presents a radiography of the revitalization of Brazilian artisanal objects. It approaches the high quality of products that result from the encounter of artisans and designers; and the initiatives marked by entrepreneurism and social innovation developed in communities throughout the country, bringing a new push to sustainable local development.
"In time for Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup, this book uses the stories of star players and other key figures (based on over 40 interviews) to create a contemporary history of Brazilian soccer from the 1950s to the present. It also explores race and class tensions in Brazil and shows how soccer is central to the country's dramatic trajectory toward modernity and economic power"--
Made in Brazil: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth-century Brazilian popular music. The volume consists of essays by scholars of Brazilian music, and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Brazil. Each essay provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Brazilian popular music. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Brazil, followed by essays that are organized into thematic sections: Samba and Choro; History, Memory, and Representations; Scenes and Artists; and Music, Market and New Media.
The Brill Handbook of Contemporary Religions in Brazil provides an unprecedented overview of Brazil’s religious landscape. It offers a full, balanced and contextualized portrait of contemporary religions in Brazil, bringing together leading scholars from both Brazil and abroad, drawing on both fieldwork and detailed reviews of the literatures. For the first time a single volume offers overviews by leading scholars of the full range of Brazilian religions, alongside more theoretically oriented discussions of relevant religious and culture themes. This Handbook’s three sections present specific religions and groups of traditions, Brazilian religions in the diaspora, and issues in Brazilian religions (e.g., women, possession, politics, race and material culture).
This volume ethnographically explores the relation between secularities and religious subjectivities.As a consequence of the demise of secularization theory, we live in an interesting intellectual moment where the so-called ‘post-secular’ coexists with the secular, which in turn has become pluralized and historicized. This cohabitation of the secular and post-secular is revealed mainly through political dialectical processes that overshadow the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions of secularity, making it difficult to pinpoint concrete sites, agents, and objects of expression. Drawing on cases from South America, Africa, and Europe, contributors apply key insights from religious studies debates on the genealogies and formations of both religion and secularism. They explore the spaces, persons, and places in which these categories emerge and mutually constitute one another.
Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History and Nation-Making in the Americas explores how a collection of contemporary novels calls attention to the impact of ethnicity on national identities in the Americas. These historical narratives portray the cultural encounters—the conflicts and alliances, peaceful borrowings and violent seizures—that have characterized the history of the American continents since the colonial period. In the second half of the twentieth century, North and South American readers have witnessed a steady output of novels that revisit moments of cultural confluence as a means of revising national histories. Confluence Narratives proposes that these historical novels, p...
"This book examines the political economy of violence in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Rocinha. Based on over two years of research and residence in the community, it offers an ethnographic account of how entangled forms of violence become essential forces shaping everyday social relations in the favela. The first part of the book shows how armed actors--drug traffickers and police--use spectacle to perform power. Yet despite the prevalence of physical violence, the favela has itself become a valuable global brand, consumed in disembodied fashion through media and in embodied fashion through tourism. Exploring media and favela tourism, the second part of the book demonstrates how the social relationships that arise from ongoing favela violence have a direct relationship to the market economy"--Provided by publisher.
How did overseas Europeans participate in the two world wars’ effort? Which were the tensions around mobilization? How did the war affect their identity and their descendants? What were their mobilization’s effects on the relationship with the adopted homelands? These closely intertwined issues connect to the central argument of the book: war exerted a crucial influence on the configuration – and reconfiguration – of those European communities’ national or ethnic identities and made evident their transnational nature. Through different case studies, this volume approached the multi-faceted, complex, and fluid nature of immigrant collective identities under the pressures and challenges of total wars. Contributors are: Juan Pablo Artinian, Juan Luis Carrellán Ruiz, Hernán M. Díaz, Norman Fraser Brown, Marcelo Huernos, Milagros Martínez-Flener, Norman Fraser Brown, Germán C. Friedmann, María Inés Tato, and Stefan Rinke. Transatlantic Battles: European Immigrant Communities in South America and the World Wars is now available in paperback for individual customers.
The Lowland South American World showcases cutting-edge research on the anthropology of Lowland South America, providing both an in-depth knowledge of Lowland South American life ways and engaging readers in urgent social, environmental, and political issues in the contemporary world. Covering the vast expanse of a region that includes all of South America except for the Andes, its 40 chapters engage with questions of what “Lowland South America” means as a geographical designation, both in studies of Indigenous Amazonian peoples and other lowland areas of the continent. They emphasize the multiple ways that local practices and cosmologies challenge conventional Western ideas about natur...