Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast

by Jan Hoffman French

Overview

Anthropologists widely agree that identities--even ethnic and racial ones--are socially constructed. Less understood are the processes by which social identities are conceived and developed. Legalizing Identities shows how law can successfully serve as the impetus for the transformation of cultural practices and collective identity. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal analysis of successful claims to land by two neighboring black communities in the backlands of northeastern Brazil, Jan Hoffman French demonstrates how these two communities have come to distinguish themselves from each other while revising and retelling their histories and present-day stories.

French argues that the invocation of laws by these related communities led to the emergence of two different identities: one indigenous (Xoco Indian) and the other quilombo (descendants of a fugitive African slave community). With the help of the Catholic Church, government officials, lawyers, anthropologists, and activists, each community won government recognition and land rights, and displaced elite landowners. This was accomplished even though anthropologists called upon to assess the validity of their claims recognized that their identities were "constructed." The positive outcome of their claims demonstrates that authenticity is not a prerequisite for identity. French draws from this insight a more sweeping conclusion that, far from being evidence of inauthenticity, processes of construction form the basis of all identities and may have important consequences for social justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807889886
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jan Hoffman French is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Richmond. Before becoming an anthropologist, she practiced law.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xvii

Abbreviations xxiii

Introduction: Globalizing Rights and Legalizing Identities 1

1 Situating Identities in the Religious Landscape of the Sertão 17

2 We Are Indians Even If Our Faces Aren't Painted 43

3 Constructing Boundaries and Creating Legal Facts: A Landowner Dies and a Quilombo Is Born 77

4 Family Feuds and Ethnoracial Politics: What's Land Got to Do with It? 105

5 Cultural Moves: Authenticity and Legalizing Difference 133

6 Buried Alive: A Family Story Becomes Quilombo History 154

Conclusion 174

Notes 187

Bibliography 217

Index 237

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Legalizing Identities details the complex and contingent histories through which residents of two towns who were not in fact very different from each other came to be legally recognized as indigenous (the Xoco) and black (the quilombo). This powerful and historically rich ethnography speaks to issues of race, ethnicity, identity, inequality, and law, and does so in a way that is both analytically compelling and engaging to read.—Susan Bibler Coutin, University of California, Irvine



Legalizing Identities is an extremely well-written, empirically rich, and sophisticated analysis of 'ethnogenesis' in Northeastern Brazil. It will be an appealing book for courses taught on race/ethnicity, Indianness, Blackness, law and society, and Latin American studies.—Jonathan W. Warren, University of Washington

Editorial Reviews

"Analyzes a fascinating case of identity transformation in Brazil's Northeast. . . . Provides a nuanced account of how new conditions of possibility for collective action can transform identity formations.—Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology



Incisively engages definitional and legal questions concerning identity and indigeneity, which lie actually at the forefront of cultural anthropology today. . . . French's findings are perceptive, organized, and cast in fine-tuned prose.—Choice



Jan French's excellent study pushes forward the challenge to traditional distinctions between blackness and indigeneity in new and challenging ways. . . . A great and intriguing book, which is required reading for people interested in racial and ethnic identities in Latin America.—Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute



For years, scholars have argued that racial and ethnic identities are constructed, but few have explored that process as well as Jan Hoffman French. . . . [An] important book. . . . The study's many strengths derive from Hoffman French's use of the methods and sources of cultural anthropology and social history.—The Americas



A painstakingly detailed account of the making of new ethnicities and of what in Brazil has been called "neocommunities" in rural Brazil, where both indio-ness and negritude are contested icons undergoing a process of re-signification—from onus to bonus, from liability to asset.—American Ethnologist



The content is rich in detail and the narrative extremely well written, keeping the reader constantly engaged in the intricate nature of the events that culminated in the 'ethnogenesis' of the Xoco Indians and the quilombolas of Mocambo. . . . Required reading not just for people interested in the formation and transformation of racial and ethnic identities in Latin America, but also for anyone interested in the impact of state multiculturalism.—Social Identities

From the Publisher