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

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...