Founded by Egon Shaden in 1953, Revista de Antropologia was the first Brazilian journal of anthropology. At present, it is the international and bilingual journal of the Department of Anthropology of the Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences Faculty at the University of São Paulo – FFLCH/USP. Revista de Antropologia will adopt, starting in 2023, the continuous publication modality with one volume per year. It will accept Articles, Reviews, Interviews, Dossiers and Photographic Essays at any time of the year, as submissions and publications are made in a continuous flow.
Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
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Presentation of the special issue: Amerindian political representation and presentation vol. 2
dossiê representação e presentação política ameríndia: vol. 2
Copyright (c) 2026 Revista de Antropologia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Planeta Bateson: passos para uma nova forma de pensar a vida
Sistêmica, relacional, dinâmica, flexível, holista, analógica, recursiva, não-linear... são exemplos dos adjetivos que foram em algum momento utilizados para descrever a epistemologia ecológica de Gregory Bateson. Na produção dessa nova forma de conhecer as coisas são gestados os fundamentos de um novo paradigma, uma nova ciência, uma nova linguagem que nos aconselha a aprender a ver o mundo e a nós mesmos de uma outra maneira, com outros olhos, outras lentes (menos digitais, mais analógicas). Mais do que perceber o mundo de outra maneira, trata-se do convite para habitar um outro mundo, um outro planeta: o planeta Bateson.
Abraçar o imprevisível: por uma epistemologia da incerteza
For an anthropology of the urban: interview with Manuel Delgado
Interview, in mid-May 2025, with the Catalan anthropologist Manuel Delgado (1956-), full professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, who has addressed, in his renowned academic trajectory, theoretical and methodological foundations of an anthropology of the urban.
Fragmentos de uma antropologia do absurdo
Resenha da obra ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana. UFOS, the absurd, and the limit of anthropological knowledge: imagining the impossible in Chile. New York: Routledge, 2025, 169pp.
Another Natural Histories: The Wildlife of 21st Century Naturalists
Resenha do livro: MANCERON, Vanessa. Wild and wonderful: An ethnography of English naturalists. Chicago, HAU Books, 2025. 260 pp.
Resenha do livro: SIMON, Scott; LAUGRAND, Frédéric. 2024. Feathered entanglements: Human-birds relations in the Anthropocene. Vancouver, UBC Press, 340p.
By describing the technical and documentary interventions that follow the judgments of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice, the book A paixão do acesso, by Sara Munhoz, makes two original contributions to anthropological reflection on law. The first is to transform the very notion of jurisprudence by demonstrating that without sophisticated procedures for filtering, extracting, connecting and making available for consultation “legal theses” established in the rulings, with the use of digital resources, jurisprudence can no longer exist – and have repercussions – inside and outside the court. The second contribution, inseparable from the previous one, is to profoundly transform the issue of access, which gives the book its title. Instead of examining the obstacles to opening the doors of the judiciary to citizens, the counterintuitive choice of situating the observation at the “exit doors” of the court responsible for standardizing the interpretation of federal legislation deepens the understanding of how these two thresholds articulate. The ethnography explains how the joint work of human analysts and digital applications enhances the primacy of “exit doors” in determining what (and who) can pass through the court’s main entrance, by materializing its efforts to make the understandings it produces accessible and, thus, influencing the functioning of other instances of the judiciary, modulating its own entry and exit doors.
Jurisprudence; digital technologies; access; Superior Court of Justice
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista de Antropologia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Emotions as connectors in the webs of worlds. Towards an expanded anthropology of emotions
The problem of defining the dimension of emotions lies in how different conceptual attempts have prioritized some of the constitutive dimensions of the "human," configuring culturalist, psychologist, or biologist perspectives. The aim of this article is to think of emotions as "connectors," which, from their relational characteristic, link the different instances that make up the "human" and weaves the webs of life's worlds. My argumentation begins by developing the path followed by emotions as an analytical category for anthropological knowledge; secondly, I address the debate that emerged in the anthropology of emotions in the north-American context, which led to the constitution of the field, and finally, I develop ethnographic situations in dialogue with authors who share this expanded perspective on emotions proposed in this article.
Introduction to the Special Issue: Revolution Talks; Ethnographies and Histories of a Political Endorser
Comentário ao debate |Brasil e seu papel pardo
Comentário ao debate raça e cor no brasil contemporâneo, oportunismo político e tendência histórica
Copyright (c) 2024 Revista de Antropologia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Comentário ao debate | A influência da luta pelas cotas na dinâmica das identidades raciais no Brasil
Comentário ao debate | Negritude como força centrípeta: o pardo em disputa
Comentário ao debate | Os múltiplos sentidos do “pardo”
Autenticidad y violencia: Tradiciones revolucionarias en México y Venezuela. Entrevista con Claudio Lomnitz y Rafael Sánchez
Entrevista con Claudio Lomnitz y Rafael Sánchez
The versatile wayapamsî: potencies of water and sky in a Wai Wai plaitwork
Based on ethnographic immersions, analyses of ethnographic collections and a bibliographical review, this ethnoarchaeological study, inspired by the Anthropology of Technology, deals with the versatility of the wayapamsî, a plaitwork made by the Wai Wai peoples, thinking on the difficulties of translating it. Information is presented on the origin and importance of this artefact for marriage, from the perspective of the peoples in question. In order to understand the wayapamsî in terms of meanings constructed and recognised from the material experiences of its production and manipulation, the paper explores the details of the production processes of this plaitwork, the technical and formal variability, the production skills and possibilities of individual expression of the artisans, and the artifact multifunctionality. Finally, reflections are made on the relationships that these wefts establish with different beings and activities throughout their existence, based on the potency of water and the sky that have been woven into their bodies.
Amerindian political representation and presentation: coexistence and hybridization of political regimes in tropical South America
Apresentação do dossiê Representação e presentação política ameríndia: coexistência e hibridização de regimes do político na América do Sul tropical, vol. 1.
Special Issue Amerindian political representation and "presentation" vol. 1
Indebtedness and Social Reproduction: an Ethnography of Families in Garrincha Favela
This article analyses the central role of credit in the social reproduction of families in the favela of Vitoria between 2016 and 2021. In a context of squeezes exacerbated by the recession, the ethnography emphasises the expansion of intergenerational dependencies that are intertwined with gender relations. Within families, financial practices revolve around retired grandparents, especially grandmothers. With their privileged access to credit and a stable income, they play a central role, giving money and lending their names to help their descendants. These financial movements are part of a wider movement of people, care and food between households. On a day-to-day basis, managing debts requires going up and down the hill to pay them off and moving various credit cards between relatives’ houses, doing activities and working overtime to make ends meet. These countless activities can be defined as “debt labour” (Guérin, 2023), i.e. activities that are as necessary for the family’s reproduction as they are for financial accumulation. This work is shaped by the division of obligations between generations and genders, and redefined over time according to labour trajectories, family arrangements and life cycles. Starting from this point, this article contributes both to the anthropology of the home, by placing the dynamics of indebtedness at the centre of “home configurations” (Marcelin, 1996), and to the anthropology of debt, by conceptualising the family as an indebted intergenerational collective.
The Weight of Hair: Relationships Between Corporeality, Hair Aesthetics, and Non-Binarity
This article portrays investments in hair made by non-binary people at a beard and hair studio located in São Paulo. Such investments will be understood as technologies for gender materialization in gendered corporealities and aesthetic stabilizations of relationships; intersecting with other materializations, such as class and race, in ways that create unequivocalities of gender or porvoke transitions, flowsx and displacements. The text is also a methological investment that discusses the potentials and limitations of the autoethnographic method, wile proposing another transepistemological approach: dirty ethnography. Hair interventions conducted within the framework of non-binariness simultaneously constitute possibilities for gender transition, challenging understandings of transsexuality and transgender identity within medical and psychosocial sciences, and represent terrible beauties capable os inhabiting the trope of monstrosity associated with trans people formulated by the cisheteronorm. The article ultimately shifts the idea of the body as understood within the sexual difference paradigm.
From affiliation to factionalism - political dynamics in the production of associations by Brazilian football supporters
Once defined as a modern totemism that establishes communality, football clubs are an important form of social relations in Brazil, as they produce collective feelings of affinity and rivalry via football. Beyond its fundamental logics of adherence, they also produce their own centrifugal tendencies, recognisable through its various processes of segmentation. These dynamics could be described as a schismogenesis that starts collective associations derived from clubs. To delve into the dynamics of the production of these collectivises, we analysed three modalities of the supporters' groups in Brazilian clubs (the Torcidas Uniformizadas, the Torcidas Organizadas and the Barras). Our approach emphasises the segmentary dynamics, often factional, of the pulverisation of supporters' associations. By pointing out the aesthetic issues involved in each mode of regimentation, we argue that the different supporters' groups can be thought of as having created their own forms of political participation beyond–and within–their football clubs.
The threat of Justice:the role of mediation and judicialization in managing the right to health
The Health Dispute Resolution Chamber (CRLS) was created to offer “administrative solutions” to judicial claims in the health sector and to control an alleged problem of “excessive judicialization”. Based on an ethnography carried out over thirteen months at this agency, I discuss the relationship between mediation and judicialization established by the practices of managing demands for the right to health in the daily life of the institution. My central argument is that the threat of justice – that is, the possibility of a case being referred to the Public Defender's Office for judicialization – functions as a kind of instrument of pressure and a mechanism of coercion. By addressing these issues, I intend to demonstrate how the management of potential health litigation is a space in which not only rights are disputed, but also the attribution of duties and responsibilities between the different agents and state agencies with which the CRLS dialogues.
Comentário de Gabriel Feltran ao dossiê Terror e Intimidade: Perspectivas etnográficas e desafios conceituais.
Comentário ao dossiê Terror e Intimidade
The Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret (1959) adds a new book to her intellectual production, focusing on the relationships between the living and the dead. She previously explored this theme in To the Health of the Dead: Stories of Those Who Remain (2021), published by Cactus, and now presents Dead to the Work (2024) through the same publisher. The title itself suggests the core of the book. By altering the colloquial phrase "hands to work," Despret condenses and anticipates the material she offers the reader: artistic productions demanded after a death, whether recent or distant. Dead to the Work is a book composed of five stories, all linked by the productivity of the dead. Despret describes and historicizes the "insistence" of the "common dead" and the works attributed to them. The events narrated here feature victims of femicide, traffic accidents, war, the judicial system, and terrorism. Even though these dead are no longer among the living—a statement that is only partially true—their insistence gives birth to gardens, visual artworks, architectural projects, and musical pieces.
Trata-se de um resenha crítica da obra recente de Charles Stépanoff, L'animal et la mort: chasses, modernité et crise du sauvage, que investiga os fundamentos das relações modernas dispensadas aos animais e à natureza em geral. Essas relações são sintetizadas pelo autor em duas atitudes polares com o mundo selvagem: a proteção e a exploração. Entretanto, uma atividade se coloca de maneira embaraçosa entre esse polos: a caça. L'animal et la mort se dedica a uma mergulho analítico sobre a caça praticada no interior da França por populações rurais e caçadores regulares que visitam a região, e descreve aspectos da ecologia e da ética, dos fundamentos cosmológicos e políticos da atividade. O antropólogo adiciona à essa etnografia uma história de longa duração sobre as percepções e atitudes em relação à caça, abordando a filosofia, sociologia e política da caça na França e na Europa ao longo da era moderna. Ao fim, emerge uma distinção elucidativa entre tratamentos dispensados aos animal e seus fundamentos cosmopolíticos, assim como um caracterização dos alicerces da nossa atual crise ecológica.
Multispecies ethnography in the mayan máasewaalo'ob solar sites: care practices and more-than-human worlds
This article explores care practices between mayan máasewáalo’ob women and the animals that inhabit the solares in Chancah Derrepente, Quintana Roo, Mexico, based on ethnographic work carried out since 2016. It analyzes how care configures spatial relations, commensality, and shared labor. It highlights the central role of women in the maintenance and transformation of solares, where cultural norms and female bodily characteristics condition the activities assigned to each gender. The research addresses five types of links between people and animals: protection and hunting, appreciation and entertainment, respect and reverence, feeding and distancing. The article makes visible the agency of animals in each of these relationships, questioning the limits of care and notions of human possession, as well as the categories of domestic and wild. It also explores the relationship between gender, health, mobility, and multispecies care, challenging anthropocentric perspectives and opening new lines of analysis.
No Single Reason to Move: Mobility Decision-Making among Syrians and Palestinian Familiesin Brazil
Since 2011, over six million people have left Syria. While numerous studies address this displacement, few specifically investigate family migration decision-making. This article contributes to this knowledge gap by focusing on the journeys of two families. Through analysing migration decision-making, I argue that there is no single reason to move; rather, mobility must be understood within the broader economic, political, and cultural dynamics. The study is based on an ethnography conducted between 2016 and 2020 in São Paulo, Brazil. The data reveals the fears, struggles, aspirations, and hopes involved in reaching a new destination and how social markers and structural contexts shape families’ journeys.
Special Issue Producing Regimes of Asylum in Brazil and Italy
The "work of emotion" in navigating im-mobility experienced by migrants and asylum seekers
Still little explored, the condition of existential im-mobility experienced by refugees and asylum seekers within and outside the so-called reception system is the main argument of this article. Looking at the “work of emotions” (Hochschild, 1979, Hollan, 1992), the article investigates how the im-mobility experienced by migrants can be ‘navigated’ through different emotions. The theoretical analysis of the im-mobility of refugees and migrants is deepened and reinterpreted in light of ethnographic data and results collected among refugees and migrants living in northern and southern Italy, both within and outside the reception system.
Gazes and agencies: an anthropological approach to experimental films
Review of the book Expanded visions – a new anthropology of the moving image, by Arnd Schneider (Routledge, 2021).
Effluvia of gamonalism: the resilience of the symbolic worldof the hacienda in the Andes of Ecuador
This text is exploratory based on the experience of three decades of research in the Andes of Ecuador. It explores the presence of a series of symbolic elements of the world known as "gamonalismo" decades after the agrarian reform and the disappearance of the latifundism that sustained it. The argument of the text is that this ancient and long-lived regime of exploitation, insofar as it constituted a hegemonic system of power, generated habits and cognitive structures that were resignified in the post-reformist world that was constituted later. All this is reflected in the ways of understanding hierarchies of power, in the ways in which conflicts between communities are conveyed, and even in the redefinition of ancient lineages of power within the Kichwa world. The article defines the structuring features of what I denominate as the "hacienda cultural matrix".