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How do Brazilians think about their own culture in comparison with those of North America and Western Europe?provides a unique picture of everyday life in Brazil viewed from a comparative perspective. Brazilian scholars and Brazilianists explore a range of topics in everyday life in Brazil, including sports, music, voluntary associations, religion, political practices, race and gender, and poor neighborhoods. The authors show how Brazilian culture involves a complex negotiation in which the traditional values of hierarchy and personalism permeate even the most modern institutions. 0 is emblematic of the new era in Brazilian studies in which Brazilian scholars are leading the way. Many of the authors draw on the work of the Brazilian anthropologist Robert DaMatta, who has questioned the perspective of observers from developed Western countries. DaMatta argues that they often project their own categories onto Brazilian society, and instead he suggests that Latin Americans and other peoples develop their own theories rooted in their own unique experiences. In this waycontributes to the end of an era of Brazilianists and the decolonizing of area studies. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (11)

Perfect condition
Very interesting book on how Brazilian Travestis' construct their gender due to their sexuality. The book arrived promptly.

A insiders view...
Travesti is not a book for those looking for a cheap trill.Nor is it a book for the faint hearted.It is a study about a fringe element and that is rarely pretty.Violence, sex, robbery, death, drugs and unhappy relationships fill this book from front to back.The only reason I took away a point was the feeling that the author did get a tad too close to the subjects he was studying.I think he was trying too hard.Yet his results, the information and view points he was able to record, was amazing and really forced me to look at life and gender in a whole new fashion.

one of my favorite ethnographies
This is an extremely useful and popular text in anthropology of gender, sexuality and/or body classes. Although Kulick could have done even more to situate the travestis in broader Brazilian contexts (of race, class, gender, etc.), his detailed, rich accounts of the intimate lives and experiences of the travestis he grew to know are extremely engrossing and illuminating. The book offers a wealth of original, provocative data that students can use well to examine and challenge their own understandings of gender and sexuality categories. Gender, sexuality and transgender are simply very differently imagined and constructed in Brazil (at least among travestis) than in the US. Students report that this is one of their favorite ethnographies, and especially because of the wealth of original data, riveting informant narratives, and novel perspectives portrayed, it is one of my favorites, too.

excellent work
I was actually in the field in Salvador Bahia at the same time as Don Kulick was doing his fieldwork for this book, and I also read the manuscript before it was published.He and I have discussed at length various theoretical aspects of the book (I have a different interpretation of how gender works in Brazil).Knowing the accuracy of his ethnography as I do, I think this is one of the important books to have been published in anthropology and gender in recent years.It is also an engaging, insightful and fascinating read.

I write this review to counter some insinuating remarks I have just read here about Dr. Kulick and the nature of his fieldwork.Dr. Kuluck is a linguist; he studied Portuguese intensively when he arrived in Brazil and was very soon completely fluent.His understanding of Bahia slang--very much needed for any work on the streets--is superb.In order to get the in-depth ethnography that he did, he had to stay in the horrific tenement conditions in which many of the transvestites with whom he worked live in Salvador, he also stayed with them on the streets until late, recording conversations.As with most field situations, Dr. Kulick was quite fond of some of his informants, less so of others (as would be expected); as a gay man, he was neither a potential client nor boyfriend (since these are people who consider themselves 'straight'), a situation that, I believe, aided him in gaining the trust and acceptance of his informants.My impression was that, although he empathized with his informants in many ways, he certainly did not 'identify' with them.

The controversy this book has sparked speaks more to its breaking new ground than anything else.I highly recommend it.

Margaret Willson (author of "Dance Lest We All Fall Down: A Journey of Friendship, Poverty, Power and Peace")

very graphic
I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Travesti. All I knew was that I would be in for a treat just by looking at the cover.Kulick who is an anthropologist who studied the lives transvestites in Brazil as he became friends with them he got all of the inside scoop and included it in his book.He talks about the travestis that come from Italy to do business in Brazil where these things are more acceptable.Some of the people he interviews talk about how they started in the business, they talk about the ups and downs of their jobs. I found some of the stories to be very graphic.The lives of these men are sometimes beyond their choice of living. Some of them believe they were born into it.The stories are very realistic and in some cases tragic.I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone whose clsed minded.However if you find it initeresting to read about the harsh realities of the world then this is the book for you. ... Read more

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Since 1943, the lives of Brazilian working people and their employers have been governed by the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT). Seen as the end of an exclusively repressive approach, the CLT was long hailed as one of the world's most advanced bodies of social legislation. In Drowning in Laws, John D. French examines the juridical origins of the CLT and the role it played in the cultural and political formation of the Brazilian working class.

Focusing on the relatively open political era known as the Populist Republic of 1945 to 1964, French illustrates the glaring contrast between the generosity of the CLT's legal promises and the meager justice meted out in workplaces, government ministries, and labor courts. He argues that the law, from the outset, was more an ideal than a set of enforceable regulations there was no intention on the part of leaders and bureaucrats to actually practice what was promised, yet workers seized on the CLT's utopian premises while attacking its systemic flaws. In the end, French says, the labor laws became "real" in the workplace only to the extent that workers struggled to turn the imaginary ideal into reality. ... Read more

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From the documentary to the cinema novo and cannibalism, from Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Vidas Secas to music in the films of Glauber Rocha, this third, revised edition is a century-spanning introduction to the story of a medium that flourished in one of the most developed of 'underdeveloped' nations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great information
Besides crucial information and data, the analyses are great, comments very well put. Great resource!

A Fine Study of Brazilian Cinema
Johnson and Stam have compiled what is perhaps the definitive commentary on Brazilian cinema, offering thorough explications of the most important films from several different periods and styles.The book also discusses in detail tropicalism, anthropophagy, and other background elements thatare integral to achieve an understanding of Brazilian cinema.Though someof the concepts may seem daunting, they are explained clearly and in ahistorical context, making it an excellent reference for students (eitherof Brazil or film in general).While some of the same articles appear inCinema Novo X 5, Brazilian Cinema covers a wider range of subjects.If youare interested in Brazilian films, it is a must-read. ... Read more

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"Misplaced Ideas" spans the 19th and 20th centuries, and examines the life and work of Brazil's most influential novelist, Machado de Assis, as well as Brazilian film, poetry, theatre and music. Among the themes that run through the text are the dangers of nationalism, the West's attraction for exotic backwardness and the notion of "Third World" literature. ... Read more

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This collection of articles focuses on the Afro-Brazilian culture of the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil and its linkage to politics during the 19th century up until modern times. Central issues facing Afro-Brazilians are examined, including their relationship with the State. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

GREAT BOOK!
I really thought this book was great. Sur eI'm only twenty years old but it was just awesome to involve myself in such a important piece of Brazilian HIstory since I am not from the area. Please pick this one up! ... Read more

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From Fanatics to Folk rejects conventional understandings of Brazilian millenarianism as exceptional and self-defeating. Considering millenarianism over the long sweep of Brazilian history, Patricia R. Pessar shows it to have been both dominant discourse and popular culture—at different times the inspiration for colonial conquest, for backlanders’ resistance to a modernizing church and state, and for the nostalgic appropriation by today’s elites in pursuit of "traditional" folklore and "authentic" expressions of faith. Pessar focuses on Santa Brígida, a Northeast Brazilian millenarian movement begun in the 1930s. She examines the movement from its founding by Pedro Batista—initially disparaged as a charlatan by the backland elite and later celebrated as a modernizer, patriot, and benefactor—through the contemporary struggles of its followers to maintain their transgressive religious beliefs in the face of increased attention from politicians, clergy, journalists, filmmakers, researchers, and museum curators.

Pessar combines cultural history spanning the colonial period to the present; comparative case studies of the Canudos, Contestado, Juazeiro, and Santa Brígida movements; and three decades of ethnographic research in the Brazilian Northeast. Highlighting the involvement of a broad range of individuals and institutions, the cross-fertilization between movements, contestation and accommodation vis-à-vis the church and state, and matters of spirituality and faith, From Fanatics to Folk reveals Brazilian millenarianism as long-enduring and constantly in flux. ... Read more

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Where was Brazil in the so-called "Latin American" literary Boom?Third World Literary Fortunes posits a response contrasting the figures of Jorge Amado, "vulgar" but uniquely successful in turning Brazilian popular energies into literature, and Joo Guimares Rosa, "Brazil's Joyce." The Brazilian establishment expected Rosa would win the Nobel Prize.Abroad Rosa remains utterly obscure. Piers Armstrong probes the gulf between the Brazilian intelligentsia's perception of the world and the world's perceptions of Brazil - in which the Brazilian elite is essentially invisible.The result is a cultural mapping of the relative power of four great rhetorical currents: literary Brazil; popular artistic expressions of identity dominated by Rio and Bahia; the representation by white social anthropologists of Brazilian popular culture as being unique by virtue of its (their) blackness; finally, the dissonance between Brazilian literature and the supposedly continental dimensions of the Spanish American writers apotheosized in the Boom as the poetic priests of Latin American alterity.

Third World Literary Fortunesintroduces the reader to the life and work of five of Brazil's greatest writers,including (apart from Rosa and Amado):the country's other "greatest" writer, the extraordinarily subtle and psychologically acute Machado de Assis, a mulatto who, though a witness to slavery completely effaced his own racial identity from his work; its best poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, one of the great twentieth century portraitists of urban bourgeois mediocrity; and the seminal Renaissance man of Brazilian modernism, Mrio de Andrade.The book examines their respective domestic and international receptions, discerning a clear pattern of international irrelevance with the exception of the black sheep, Jorge Amado - the only major Brazilian writer who celebrated negritude.

The enormous differences between the other writers lead Armstrong to the conclusion that the common point determining international failure is the absence of the one marketologically apt rhetoric of identity, the "Carmen Miranda syndrome" - the cultural aura of coastal and urban Afro-Brazilian and the sexual mystique of the mulatta, present in Amado's work but also in the brilliant speculative socioanthropology of Gilberto Freyre,Rio's carnaval and in the current explosion of cultural tourism to Bahia. ... Read more

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This selection of excerpts and essays delineates Brazilian culture as exemplified by its people. Two pieces that provide a general overview of Brazilian peoples are followed by four chronological sections, each of which is preceded by a historical sketch of the period under examination. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Brazilianists' Brazil
Latin American Research Review, No. 35/1, 2000, contains a review article entitled "The Brazilianists' Brazil: Interdisciplinary Portraits of Brazilian Society and Culture," by Piers Armstrong. It contains about a page and a half on "Brazilian Mosaic." I suggest you may want to include that excerpt as a review of my book.

G. Harvey Summ ... Read more

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Capoeira, a Brazilian battle dance and national sport, has become popular all over the world. First brought to Brazil by African slaves and first documented in the late eighteenth century, capoeira has undergone many transformations as it has diffused throughout Brazilian society and beyond, taking on a multiplicity of meanings for those who participate in it and for the societies in which it is practiced. In this book, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer combines cultural history with anthropological research to offer an in-depth study of the development and meaning of capoeira, starting with the African cultures in which it originated and continuing up to the present day. Using a wealth of primary sources, Talmon-Chvaicer analyzes the outlooks on life, symbols, and rituals of the three major cultures that inspired capoeira--the Congolese (the historic area known today as Congo-Angola), the Yoruban, and the Catholic Portuguese cultures. As she traces the evolution of capoeira through successive historical eras, Talmon-Chvaicer maintains a dual perspective, depicting capoeira as it was experienced, observed, and understood by both Europeans and Africans, as well as by their descendants. This dual perspective uncovers many covert aspects of capoeira that have been repressed by the dominant Brazilian culture. This rich study reclaims the African origins and meanings of capoeira, while also acknowledging the many ways in which Catholic-Christian culture has contributed to it. The book will be fascinating reading not only for scholars but also for capoeira participants who may not know the deeper spiritual meanings of the customs, amulets, and rituals of this jogo da vida, "game of life." ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Countries and Their Cultures, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 7239 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Covers the broad range of popular religious culture of the United States at the close of the twentieth century. Beliefs, practices, symbols, traditions, movements, organizations, and leaders from the many traditions in the pluralistic American community are represented. Also includes cults and phenomena that drew followers, such as Heaven's Gale and UFOs. ... Read more

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Brazilian Spiritism (espiritismo, kardecismo) is an important middle-class religious movement whose followers believe in communication with the dead via spirit mediums and in healing illnesses by means of spiritual therapies. Unlike Anglo-Saxon Spiritualists, Brazilian Spiritualists count among their number a well-developed and institutionalized intellectual elite that has reinterpreted northern hemisphere parapsychology and developed its own alternative medicine and sociology of religion. As a result, the mediation between popular religion (especially Afro-Brazilian religious practices) and the orthodoxies of the universities, the state, and the medical profession.Situating Spiritist intellectual thought in what he calls a broader ideological arena, Hess examines Spiritism in the context of religion, science, political ideology, medicine, and even the social sciences. Hess challenges the legacy of French sociologist Roger Bastide, who saw in Spiritism an elitist, middle-class ideology. In the process, Spirits and Scientists provides a new approach to middle-class religious movements in Latin America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

excellent book on brazilian spiritism
i highly recommend this book on the subject of brazilian culture, brazilian religion, brazilian spiritism, and the spread of spiritism in latin america and the united states

ideal and essential on "New World" spiritism
This book provides a history and insight on the roots of Latin American spiritism. Its research on roots of Allen Kardec and the reason why French spiritism was brought to the "New World".It earns its place inthe subjects of Latin American religion and ideology.Its culturalbackground of Brazil gives much insight to the ideological background ofthe Brazilian population.Even as a person of Caribbean background, I holdthis book in regards to a part of my background ideologically.This bookis an eye opener to the researcher interested in South American andCaribbean studies. ... Read more

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Chapters: Portuguese Name, Samba School, Brazilian Carnival, Mate, Jogo Do Bicho, Suyá Music, Culture of Brazil, It's All True, Djctq, Public Holidays in Brazil, List of Awards and Nominations for Brazilian Films, Brazilianist, Somatherapy, Victor Civita Latin American Library, Ufo Sightings in Brazil, Museu Do Índio, Traditional Brazilian Medicine, Maculelê, Mário de Andrade Library, Charges.com.br, Encantado, List of Academy Awards Nominations for Brazilian Films, National Library of Brazil, Iara, Olodum, Flags of Brazilian States, Leandro Lopes, Adugo, Língua Do Pê, Muiraquitã, Institute of Permaculture and Ecovillage of the Cerrado, Gérson's Law, Instituto Sacatar, Roda, Anhangüera, Carnatal, Disseram Que Voltei Americanizada, Blocos, Quarup, Bumba Meu Boi, Brazilian National Archives. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 188. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: A typical Portuguese name is composed of one or two given names, and two family names. The last surname is the father's family surname; the first surname is the mother's family surname. Note that this order is the reverse of Spanish surnames. Usually, only the last surname is used in formal greetings or in scientific papers indexing, but in a list of persons, the first given name, not the surname, is used for alphasorting. A married woman may add her husband's last surname to the end of her own name or even replace her surname with her husband's last surname, but this is not mandatory. The same may happen with men, though this is extremely rare. It is not uncommon for people to have up to four surnames (two from each parent). The Portuguese naming system is quite flexible. The law only establishes the need for a child to have one given name and one last name from one of the parents, although having only one last name is now v...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=4060452 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by University of Saskatchewan on March 22, 2009. The length of the article is 747 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fetishes & Monuments: Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20th Century.(Book review)
Author: Claudio DeNipoti
Publication: Canadian Journal of History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2009
Publisher: University of Saskatchewan
Volume: 44Issue: 1Page: 157(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Church History, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1106 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture.(Book review)
Author: Alida C. Metcalf
Publication: Church History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 76Issue: 4Page: 879(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by University of Saskatchewan on August 1, 1999. The length of the article is 741 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Afro-Brazilian Culture and Politics: Bahia, 1790s to 1990s.(Review) (book reviews)
Author: Claudio DeNipoti
Publication: Canadian Journal of History (Refereed)
Date: August 1, 1999
Publisher: University of Saskatchewan
Volume: 34Issue: 2Page: 319

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more