Race and the Brazilian Body
：Blackness, Whiteness, and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro
Publication subTitle ：Blackness, Whiteness, and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro
Author： Roth-Gordon> Jennifer
Publisher： University Of California Press
Publication year： 2017
E-ISBN: 9780520967151
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780520293793
Subject： C91 Sociology;C912.4 cultural anthropology, social anthropology
Keyword： 文化人类学、社会人类学,社会学
Language： ENG
Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.
Description
Based on spontaneous conversations of shantytown youth hanging out on the streets of their neighborhoods and interviews from the comfortable living rooms of the middle class, Jennifer Roth-Gordon shows how racial ideas permeate the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro’s residents across race and class lines. Race and the Brazilian Body weaves together the experiences of these two groups to explore what the author calls Brazil’s “comfortable racial contradiction,” where embedded structural racism that privileges whiteness exists alongside a deeply held pride in the country’s history of racial mixture and lack of overt racial conflict. This linguistic and ethnographic account describes how cariocas (people who live in Rio de Janeiro) “read” the body for racial signs. The amount of whiteness or blackness a body displays is determined not only through observations of phenotypical features—including skin color, hair texture, and facial features—but also through careful attention paid to cultural and linguistic practices, including the use of nonstandard speech commonly described as gíria (slang).
Vivid scenes from daily interactions illustrate how implicit social and racial imperatives encourage individuals to invest in and display whiteness (by demonstrating a “good appearance”), avoid blackness (a preference challenged by rappers and hip-hop fans), and &
Chapter