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This paper explores ethnography of municipal elections, promise-making and miracles to show how Christians problematise both friendship and politics on a settler frontier in Brazilian Amazonia. Bringing these themes together generates new anthropological perspectives on each, while complimenting Derrida's critique of Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction – his definition of the political. Yet the main ethnographic point complicates the argument that both Schmitt and Brazilianist anthropologists critiquing clientelism have made: that Christianity reflects and legitimises the political order. In contrast, I show how the problem of friendship, produced through Christian concerns with presence, legitimises and deligitimises politics at once. The overarching message is that politics, friendship (sociality) and Christianity – usually kept analytically separate – are uniquely clarified where they intersect, as they pass through persons, who foreground and background these domains themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central aim of this paper is to outline an 'ethnographic theory of democracy,' and so contribute to a deeper understanding of the concrete mechanisms through which so-called representative democracy effectively functions. After some general observations, the article therefore focuses on exploring a series of events surrounding the participation of a segment of the black movement of Ilhéus (Bahia, northeast Brazil) in the municipal elections of 1992 and 1996. From this ethnographic base, the paper then seeks to develop an overview of the participation of electors in the self-named democratic processes of modern nation-states, exploring phenomena such as electoral promises and vote buying, as well as concepts such as reciprocity and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex hormones in Brazil are mobilised as modes of regulatory control and to discipline subjectivites. Their packaging effectively differentiates between two forms of citizenship. The first, available to those with private health, is founded on notions of personal autonomy, individual choice and self-enhancement, while the second frames decisions in terms of the individual's moral responsibility to the wider collectivity. Here, technical and biomedical interventions on middle-class bodies have personalising tendencies, while those effected on the bodies of the urban poor can be read as modes of inclusion through standardisation. Personalisation, in the Brazilian sense, concerns the attribution of privileges which place a person above the undifferentiated mass of individuals. The paper critically engages with approaches to bio-citizenships developed in contexts where biological inclusion is predicated on patient activism and shows how, in Brazil, complying with medical regimes is an integral part of constituting oneself as a citizen [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements often seek transformation in wider society, but they are also themselves subject to the fluidity and ephemerality of the environments in which they operate. Academic literature has long held the view that social movements inevitably come to be beset by institutionalisation and a loss of relevance, and in Brazil, where socio-economic change has been so dynamic, the future of the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra(MST)) has been called into question. This article argues that the MST is responding to changes in its membership, and transformation more widely in Brazil, in a measured way, by drawing upon a familiar repertoire of cooperativisation to boost production. The article suggests that decline is not necessarily certain, but as a case study for movements more generally, current MST leadership decisions may be significant in understanding how social movements can best react to unpredictable transformations in wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Maputo (Southern Mozambique) and Bahia (Brazil), the most commonly used word to refer to namesakes is xara - a word of Amerindian origin. Although the institutions in question diverge considerably in each of these contexts, the two usages come together in that the sharing of a personal name establishes an alliance not only between the two persons involved but also among their relations. In this way, it is argued that the namesake institution is both supervening upon filiation and is a way of closing the local universe of relatedness upon itself. By superimposing a set of crossing ties, the namesake institution consolidates the entities at play and their relations. Nevertheless, much like filiation, upon which it is dependent, the namesake relation is one of co-responsibility and fusion between the partners, not of reciprocal responsibility. The latter is the product of the triangulation that such relations of alliance produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the moral dimensions of child labour as cultural practice in Northeast Brazil. It reveals a link between children's participation in labour and local constructions of childhood as a period of ontological uncertainty and impending transition. Through detailed ethnographic exegesis, the article reveals the symbolic dimensions surrounding children's engagement in productive endeavours, and shows how the local opposition between 'work' and 'play' arises out of an encompassing moral process. The article critiques the tendency within protectionist influenced anthropological literature to acknowledge the important contribution that children make towards material survival, while denying that contribution any deeper cultural significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines state-citizen interactions in the Pelourinho Historical Center of Salvador, Brazil. It argues that attention to sound in the Pelourinho provides a number of ways of updating longstanding anthropological concerns with structure and agency. On the basis of attention to sound it addresses social action around play, the ability to position oneself in flows of signs, and the adroit manipulation of different classes of sign. This article is thus a phenomenologicallyinfluenced criticism of an anthropology of meaning based on the arbitrary sign and accompanying form/content and subject/object distinctions. Yet it emphasizes also that a naïve celebration of ontology and the materiality of sign vehicles ignores the extent to which both communication and agency may turn on people's ability to move pragmatically between non-referential language and more fully symbolic communicative events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the taskscape of fisherpeople who live on the Amazon floodplain. It builds on discussions of skills which are limited by their focus on a small number of activities, weak contextualisation in relations of power and history and homogenisation of practice. I argue that skills should be differentiated and historicised and understood as composite and improvised abilities made up of various capacities. The wayin which skills are reinvented by each generation depends on the particular circumstances they confront. This improvisational ability has its genesis in the way Amerindians and poor colonists adapted to the colonial economy. The present of these floodplain dwellers can be compared to a wave that carries forward the history of past actions and embodies their potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]