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The article discusses the anthropology of international development, emphasizing on culture in Brazil's relationship with Africa. Topics include Brazilian cooperation discourse and implementation gap, power-discourse debate on development literature and role of Brazilian anthropology and social theory.

This article presents a literary criticism for the book "Oiobomé" by Brazilian author Nei Lopes. The author comments on the representation of Afro-Brazilian ethnic and cultural identity, as well as collective memory in the novel. The influence of Africa on Brazilian music and culture is also explored.

The text of a public lecture delivered by Valdina Oliveira Pinto, a teacher and practitioner of the philosophical and healing traditions of the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé, at the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Denver in April 2011. Topics include Pinto's personal history with Candomblé, reflection on the environmental consciousness embedded in the religion and role of Candomblé in the preservation of African-based ritual resources in Brazil.

How does slavery's memory work its way out in Afro-Brazilian syncretic culture (and particularly carnival) today? How does this African interculturation react with white Brazilian culture? I shall begin an answer to these questions by paying methodological homage to Raymond Williams and by turning to the contemplation of some “key words” which I believe provide “a vocabulary of [Afro Brazilian syncretic] culture and society.” Batuque and calunga are at the heart of the ceremony performed by Recife's Afro-Brazilian afoxés during the Noite do Tambores Silenciosos (“Night of the Silent Drums”). They are key words which encapsulate music and ritual focussed upon a remarkably charged engagement with Brazil's African inheritance, and its positive cultural manifestations both within and beyond slavery. They are also conceptually multivalent terms that finally emphasize their resistance to, and untranslatability within, the modes of white Euro-American academic thought. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author compares Israeli and Brazilian development stories in Africa, discussing his views on the article "Anthropology and the South-South Encounter: On “Culture" in Brazil–Africa Relations" by Leticia Cesarino. Topics include ethnographic research and empirical field work in Africa by Brazilian and Israeli anthropologists, similarities in discourses of development and Brazilian cultural similarities with Africa.

Current analysis deals with the feasts of the water gods or orixás, namely Iemanjá and Oxum, and explains the process of their constructions. The relationships established between the religious community and the deities through the feasts are investigated, coupled to their relevance for the Afro-Brazilian identity. The feasts of Iemanjá on the 2nd February in Salvador BA Brazil and the feast of Oxum on the 8th December in Aracaju SE Brazil are described and analyzed. The rituals gather thousands of people and show unique specificities with expressions of devotion that reveal the process of cultural hybridism represented by the construction of Afro-Brazilian identity of their participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history and culture of the Maracatu nação Afro-Brazilian performance and dance troupes in the Brazilian cities of Recife, Olinda, Jaboatão, and Igarassu. Topics mentioned include background on the history of Black culture in Brazil, concepts of Afro-Brazilians and Brazilians of African descent, and identity in Brazilian culture and history.

The article focuses on the work of French-born photographer and ethnographer Pierre Verger on the Aguda community from the Bight of Benin, now modern day Togo, Republic of Benin, and Nigeria, who are descendants of Brazilians that settled in the region between the 17th and the 19th centuries during the Portuguese colonization. Particular focus is given to the relationship between Verger and his Aguda informants from Benin, who helped him to develop a research on the cultural links between the Aguda community and their Brazilian ancestors. Subjects include the African influences in the state of Bahia, Brazil, the Atlantic slave trade, and foreign relations between Brazil and African countries in the 20th century.

Assuming that embodiment is a cultural marker in identity politics and that dance is an especially highly charged identity marker for Brazilian culture, this article explores the racial and gender politics of Casa Samba, an African American-directed samba school in New Orleans that aims to perform "authentic" Brazilian culture. The analysis of this cultural performance space is both ethnographic and autobiographical, since the researcher herself has been a dancer with the troupe for more than five years. An ethnographic and embodied analysis of Casa Samba reveals that the group's definition of Brazilian authenticity is contingent on global understandings of Brazilian culture and the local cultural performance space of New Orleans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project “Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in the state of Paraná, Brazil" is investigated. It aims at discussing and preparing didactic material on Afro-Brazilian history and culture in the state of Paraná within a joint-venture between professors of the Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM) and the Universidade Estadual do Paraná (Unespar) and teachers of History in Fundamental Education of government schools within the Education Regional Nucleus of Ivaiporã PR Brazil. The municipalities of the above-mentioned nucleus were chosen owing to their low Human Development Index. Activities were developed through seminars and workshops that discussed the project´s main themes. Results show that didactic material on Afro-Brazilian History and Culture should be produced within the conditions of the state of Paraná. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current analysis deals with memoirs of Carnivals celebrated by Negroes in the city of São Paulo during the 1920s and 1930s. The narrative tries to investigate the trajectory of the Afro-Brazilian group and the spaces used to express its performances during the festivities dedicated to Momo throughout the city of São Paulo, which was still characterized by wealthy people that controlled its several sections. Several discussions are endeavored to perceive the spaces fabricated by the group and its strategy to get together and celebrate Carnival (officially or non-officially). The form and meanings of playful art represented by such festivities are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this text is to present part of Brazil's culture, architecture, religion and way of life through the history of the African slaves who were brought to the country and their descendants. This article suggests a connection between architecture and rite, analysing the quilombos as a place of refuge for the slaves, the candomblé as a celebration rite and the religious festivals such as Nuestro Senhor do Bonfim. The text focuses specifically on Salvador de Bahía and its Barrio del Pelourinho, a place that both sums up and represents the whole culture, the physical and immaterial heritage of African (now Afro-Brazilian) culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the interest of Brazilian politicians in African influenced Brazilian art as a venue for partnerships with newly independent African countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Topics discussed include the development of political and financial relationships between Brazil and African countries during this time, the history of African influences in the art and culture of Brazil, and contradictions between the treatment of Afro-Brazilian art and artists in Brazil and externally.

This article argues that scholarship on Umbanda (a distinctively Brazilian hybrid of Candomblé, Kardecist Spiritism, and popular Catholicism, with romanticized indigenous elements) manifests certain limitations that lead to insufficient emphasis on the religious tradition's internal doctrinal, ritual, and organizational variation. It compares the complex and ambivalent place of African traditions in Umbanda and Candomblé, highlighting the extent to which Umbanda has been seen as derivative, more distant from Africa. The article also notes other distorting factors such as cen/ros in the southeast of Brazil being considered normative, and scholars focusing inordinately on the question of the tradition's "birth." The case of Umbanda underlines the Brazilian context of Afro-Brazilian traditions, in contrast to an emphasis on transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views regarding the African-Brazilian cults, their fundamental principles, origins, ritualistic commonalities and differences due to their diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds. It is mentioned that the Africans who were taken to Brazil as slaves belonged to two people, the Sudanese from the Congo Basin, presently Angola, and the Bantus from the Guinea Gulf . Particular focus is given to the adaptations made to their religious practices in order to conform to a different social context and how these cults and their various streams are still an important aspect of the Africa-Brazilian cultural heritage.

The article provides an analysis on the origin and history of the journal "Cadernos Negros", which publishes articles, literary essays, poetry and literature made by authors of African ancestry, Brazilians or not. The author highlights the importance of this periodical as a means of stimulating affirmative actions as well as cultural awareness and insertion regarding the African descendants in a society still dominated by "white" cultural values.

Over the last few years the Brazilian government has moved towards introducing policies directed to the “Afro-Brazilian population”. In addition, more than eighty public universities have introduced quotas that favour Afro-Brazilians and/or poor candidates. In a country which has avoided incorporating 'race' into the letter of the law and which has developed a now widely held self image as a country without clear racial boundaries such measures have provoked a heated national debate. Anthropologists are prominent amongst the proponents and critics of racial quotas. This article seeks to present the arguments on both sides of the debate and to speculate on why anthropologists have become so seriously divided on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I intend to study the Brazilian capoeira from an historic point of view, showing its African heritage and analyzing its meaning from a visual and semantic perspective. It is a sequence of gesture that initially look like a physical exercise, a kind of martial art, but it is really a fight or a dance, depending on the context. Semiotics and kinetics will be used as a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers his views on the article "Anthropology and the South-South Encounter: On “Culture" in Brazil–Africa Relations" by Leticia Cesarino. Topics include developmental anthropology, ethnographic and political aspects in concept of culture and notion of postcolonial Orientalism in Brazil's relation with Africa.

The author offers his views on the article "Anthropology and the South-South Encounter: On “Culture" in Brazil–Africa Relations" by Leticia Cesarino. Topics include Brazil's foreign policy, influences of African culture in Brazil, and notion of postcolonial Orientalism in Brazil's relation with Africa.

Focuses on the Grupo Cultural Olodum, a musical band, carnival club and a grassroots community organization in Salvador, Brazil. Creation of the group in 1979 to represent residents of Pelourinho-Maciel in an annual parade in Salvador; Actions taken by Afro-Brazilians to assert themselves culturally and advocate for their sociopolitical improvement; Adoption of Afrocentric gestures and fashions in hairstyles, clothing and greetings by Afro-Brazilians; Role of Olodum in the government project to renovate Pelourinho.