A01=Jennifer Roth-Gordon
Author_Jennifer Roth-Gordon
beaches
blackness
brazil
cariocas
Category=CFA
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
citizenship
class
classism
communities
conversation
copacabana
daily life
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographic
ethnography
interview
ipanema
leblon
linguistic
linguistics
middle class
neighborhoods
oral history
poverty
race
race issues
racial conflict
racial etiquette
racial identity
racism
rio de janeiro
shantytown
structural racism
true story
whiteness
young people
youth
Product details
- ISBN 9780520293793
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Dec 2016
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 giria (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 "be cordial" (by not noticing racial differences). Roth-Gordon suggests that it is through this unspoken racial etiquette that Rio residents determine who belongs on the world famous beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon; who deserves to shop in privatized, carefully guarded, air conditioned shopping malls; and who merits the rights of citizenship.
Jennifer Roth-Gordon is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona.
