Intimate Events: The Correctness of Affective Transactions in Northeast Brazil

Author: Berghahn Journals Matan  

Publisher: Berghahn Books

E-ISSN: 2047-7716|33|2|90-105

ISSN: 0305-7674

Source: Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, The, Vol.33, Iss.2, 2015-10, pp. : 90-105

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, this article proposes the concept of the 'intimate event' as a heuristic device in the cross-cultural study of kinship and relatedness. This theoretical construct refers to the retrospective recognition of affective transactions as meaningfully intimate, that recognition being an event which in Maranhão compels ethical reflection. Intimacy can be imagined as an aesthetic of practice that indicates when something simply feels right, and which then frames the correctness of both moral conformity and transgression in affective terms.