RESEARCH AREAS

Periodically, the PPGAS carries out an evaluation of its lines of research, considering whether, in this new configuration, the set of its researches and productions are properly contemplated and evenly distributed. The Program also seeks ways to encourage and value the dialogue between the lines, through its representation in the curriculum of each undergraduate and graduate semester, activities in the various laboratories, centers and research groups that bring together all professors and undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-docs and external collaborators in general. In 2021, due to the reconfiguration of the faculty, the analysis of data collected for the Sucupira report for the 2017/2020 quadrennium, the evolution of professors' careers and their research agendas - which always involve students, alumni and other researchers of the study and investigation groups –, the lines of research at PPGAS/USP underwent a reassessment and adjustment. Each line encompasses projects for which faculty members are responsible or participating, to which all graduate students, a portion of undergraduate students and post-doctoral participants or external collaborators of the research groups are linked. All professors coordinate research projects with funding.

  1. AMERINDIAN STUDIES

The line of research encompasses studies of thought and action regimes specific to Amerindian collectives, from their most diverse manifestations, focusing on native conceptions of social life, person, kinship, politics, environment, agriculture, indigenous law, cosmology, history, interethnic relations, expressive forms, etc., exploring its irreducibility to Western-modern categories of thought and modes of action. In approaching historical processes, we seek to record and understand the ways in which the native peoples of the Americas have dealt with the consequences of their forced incorporation into Nation-States. It includes researchers from CEstA (Center for Amerindian Studies) and GRAVI (Group of Visual Anthropology).

PROJECTS:

  • Anthropology and the environment: other alterities, new pacts.
  • Basis for a Brazilian program of intercultural research and strengthening of local knowledge production.
  • Indian Rights.
  • Relationship modes of native peoples of the Americas.
  • Study and translation of Amerindian poetics.
  • Amerindian memories and expressions. Towards differentiated indigenous archives and schools.
  • Kinship models and practices. Comparative study of alliance systems in tropical South America.
  • Indigenous ways of knowing and collaborative experiments.
  • The indigenous counter-state and the cosmopolitical proposal: connections between ethnology and science studies.
  • Paje and piwara. Sociocosmic networks of the Mura in the Lower Madeira.
  • Indigenous peoples and traditional local communities in Brazil. Contributions to biodiversity, threats and public policies.
  • Practices of knowledge and production of worlds in comparison.
  • On marks of the past: archeology and indigenous knowledge in the Amazon.
  • Amerindian and traditional territories. Aesthetics of the construction of places.
  1. AFRICAN AND AFRO-DIASPORIC STUDIES

The line of research focuses on understanding the sociocultural and political processes experienced by black populations (in their interactions with different ethnic/racial groups such as Asians, whites, Arabs, among others) in African countries, in Brazil and in Afro contexts. -diasporic. It pays special attention to racial relations, Afro-Brazilian and African religions, intersectionalities and social markers of difference, studies of ethnic and racial identity, analyzes of the colonial process and its transformations and different expressive forms. It includes researchers from CERNE (Center for the Study of Contemporary Religiosities and Black Cultures), the research group in Ethno-History, NUMAS (Nucleus for Studies on Social Markers of Difference), PAM (Research in Musical Anthropology), GRAVI (Visual Anthropology Group), LAPOD (Laboratory of Post-Discipline Studies) and NAPEDRA (Performance and Drama Anthropology Center).

PROJECTS:

  • Bachelors, Employees and Clergy: A Study on the Dynamics of Social Interactions in a South African City.
  • Connected lives in two different temporalities: exclusion and fear, illness and loss in southern Africa.
  • Brazil, illuminate the terreiros? - Afro-Brazilian religions and national culture: between exaltation and repression.
  • Cannibal chronotopes: the co-production of stories, places, and identifications.
  • African creative diasporas in São Paulo: audiovisual trails for ethnomusicology.
  • A very black Minas - Minas Mundo Project.
  1. ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORY / HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

The line of research brings together both historical anthropology projects, which go back in time according to anthropological themes and perspectives, and those that turn to the history of anthropology and to a reexamination of anthropological production in a comparative perspective, seeking to locate transnational networks of professionals. and ideas, paying attention to the circulation of practices and objects, without forgetting the institutional and political injunctions that reverberate in circuits and productions. It brings together three types of studies connecting anthropology and history in different, overlapping and interrelated ways: historical anthropology projects, which mobilize themes, debates and typical anthropology perspectives to discuss different sociocultural contexts in the past; research in the history of anthropology, which examines the development of the discipline with a particular focus on the circulation of practices, people, ideas and objects; studies in the anthropology of history, which analyze the production of non-academic historical representations and narratives, relating them to practices of power and resistance. The three types are marked by a comparative and transnational view of history, in the broadest sense of the term. It includes researchers from ASA (Arts, Knowledge and Anthropology), CANIBAL (Group of Anthropology of the Global Caribbean), the Ethno-History Group, CEsTA (Center for Amerindian Studies) and NUMAS (Nucleus for the Study of Social Markers of Difference) .

PROJECTS:

  • Herodotus of the Eastern Caribbean: Representations of Slavery in the Antilles.
  • Histoires de l'anthropologie au Brésil (Bérose. Encyclopédie internationale des histoires d'anthropologie).
  • Black Encyclopedia: biographies of Afro-Brazilians from colonization to redemocratization.
  1. CITIES, SPACES AND MOBILITIES

The line of research deals with urban studies, especially in the anthropology of and in the city, in its different scales and dimensions. Develops investigations on forms of sociability, sociality and cultural practices, as well as approaches to forms of leisure and consumption in the urban context, including themes of memory and heritage. It also conducts research on peripheries, marginalities and the world of crime, uses and occupations of space for the right to the city and different modalities of activism, including religious ones and those recognized as being associated with human rights militancy. It also produces reflections on territorialities, spatial practices, circuits and places, including issues of mobility, migrations and refuges. It also seeks to make counterpoints between urbanities and ruralities, metropolis and forest, in order to build new ethnographic perspectives. It includes researchers from LabNAU (Laboratory of the Urban Anthropology Nucleus), GEAC (Group of Studies in City Anthropology), ASA– (Arts, Knowledge and Anthropology), NAPEDRA (Anthropology, Performance and Drama Nucleus), PAM (Research in Musical Anthropology), GRAVI (Group of Visual Anthropology), the group Religions, Secularism and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Brazil, NADIR (Nucleus for Anthropology of Law) and NUMAS -(Center for Studies on Social Markers of Difference ).

PROJECTS:

  • Dialogues between body and city: ethnographic experiences.
  • Media, circulation of meanings, feminisms and the public dispute for rights.
  • The Jury Court in Brazil in four mirrors: partner and cross perspectives.
  • Being/becoming African in Brazil. Making musical and African cultural heritage in São Paulo.
  • Urban activism from an ethnographic perspective.
  • Cemetery is also a city: an anthropological analysis of urban cemetery spaces (in times of pandemic).
  • Ethnographic research fronts in the field of city anthropology.
  • The social dimension of the centralities in the metropolises of Latin America: the case of Lima.
  • Activist practices in difficult times: a multi-sited ethnography.
  1. EXPRESSIVE FORMS AND KNOWLEDGE REGIMES

The line of research deals with the relationships involved in different regimes of knowledge production and aesthetic expression. It produces studies and reflections on the relationships between ethnography, anthropological theory, art, aesthetics, literature, practices and knowledge, science and techniques in the most diverse social and cultural contexts. It is dedicated to understanding the various social, conceptual and ontological arrangements involved in plastic, visual, poetic, bodily or musical productions and achievements. It also deals with the study of different knowledge regimes (whether material or immaterial, related or not to expressive forms) and the possibilities of ethnographic research related to the tensions between tradition, transformation, science and patrimonialization. It maintains a constant interface with the anthropology of art, the study of the performing arts, linguistic anthropology, the anthropology of science and the studies of rituals. Develops research and training in the areas of image (photography, film, painting), sound, music, dance, verbal arts and literature, translation, theater, rituals of justice systems. It includes the LISA (Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology); the GRAVI (Visual Anthropology Group); the PAM (Research in Musical Anthropology); the NAPEDRA (Anthropology, Performance and Drama), the ASA (Arts, Knowledge and Anthropology) and the CESTA (Amerindian Studies Center).

PROJETOS:

  • Anthropology of the Anthropocene.
  • Arts and semantics of creation and memory.
  • Photographs and trajectories: Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat.
  • Visual stories.
  • Amerindian film narratives in transformation.
  • Amerindian film narratives in transformation.
  • Performance and body repertoires in Aparecida and Jardim das Flores.
  • Relations between anthropology and art.
  1. POWER AND DIFFERENCE

The line of research addresses various forms of power, inequalities and differences. It examines processes of social ordering and symbolic production of differences, asymmetries and inequalities linked to both formal institutions and informal arrangements, through studies and research in varied social contexts. Among the topics covered, the following stand out: gender, sexuality, racial relations, social classes, age and generations, family forms, conjugality, parenting and kinship, human rights, violence, justice, criminality, health, political conflicts, social movements, politicians, cosmopolitics, religion, secularism, public sphere, globalization, diasporas, capitalism, post-socialism, colonialism and post-colonialism. It maintains interfaces with intersectional approaches, studies of social markers of difference and the anthropologies of politics, economics, law and history. It includes researchers from NUMAS (Nucleus of Social Markers of Difference), CERNE (Center for the Study of Contemporary Religiosities and Black Cultures), from the research group on Ethno-History, from NADIR (Nucleus of Anthropology of Law), from the group Religions, Secularism and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Brazil and HYBRIS (Study and Research Group on Power Relations, Conflicts and Socialities).

PROJECTS:

  • The Covid-19 pandemic from an intersectional perspective in peripheral territories: dialogues between Brazil and South Africa.
  • COVID-19, youth and sexual and gender diversity: risks, differences and inequalities in the affective-sexual experiences of high school students under the impact of the pandemic.
  • From the city to the body: transvestite experiences on the urban frontiers.
  • The Jamaican Garden: Insularity, History and Roots in Caribbean Thought.
  • What makes kinship - and what is it made of.
  • The silence and the voice in the Brazilian and French Jury Courts: an anthropological listening.
  • Policies, rights and subjects: forms of management and activism related to LGBT and HIV-AIDS.
  • Comprehensive prevention and response to the Covid-19 pandemic with adolescents and young people in situations of social vulnerability.
  • Religion, law and secularism: the reconfiguration of the civic repertoire in contemporary Brazil.
  • Transatlantic Data Base. Brazil LAb. Princeton.
  • Gender, media, inequalities.