Events

The film “A Câmara”, by directors Cristiane Bernardes and Tiago de Aragão, will be shown on April 5th, at 3pm, in the auditorium of the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA). After the session, a debate will take place with both directors present.

Synopsis:
“From the depths of the Brazilian parliament, we follow female deputies doing politics. Topics such as reproductive rights, education, secular state, racism and political polarization come to the fore, as we follow these women closely in their political struggles and performances.
The Chamber is an observational documentary that follows the routine of federal deputies in the 56th legislature. Filmed between May and July 2022, the film presents experiences and spaces in the Chamber of Deputies based on the presence and performances of women from different states and political spectrums exercising their mandates.”

I will present an ongoing research project, which aims to comparatively ethnograph radical and innovative initiatives to consolidate protected areas (in this case, indigenous lands and common use territories of riverside communities) and to achieve territorial rights, in the light of conservation conviviality and some subfields of anthropology, notably studies on science and technology. Convivial conservation presents itself as an approach to conserving biological and cultural diversity that takes seriously not only cascading species extinctions, but also the structural pressures of our economic system and the violent socio-ecological and increasingly authoritarian political realities in which we live. It is a set of management principles and a post-capitalist approach to conservation that attempts to promote radical equity, structural transformation and environmental justice, based on Ivan Illich's notion of a user-friendly tool. The two situations to be addressed are: (i) the recovery area (today village) Mãe Terra of the Terena people of the Cachoeirinha Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Miranda, in Mato Grosso do Sul, as an autonomous movement that aims to gain official recognition of the their right to land and which is at the origin of the Caianas indigenous organization; and (ii) the initiative, which emerged in 2012, as a result of the mobilization of a network of actors from civil society, the social movement and the public sphere, to regularize the land tenure situation of riverside communities in the state of Amazonas through concession terms real right of collective use for community associations located outside protected areas, under the category of common use territories. The research has been conducted collaboratively, respectively, with the indigenous organization Terena Caianas (Indigenous Environmentalist Collective of Action for Nature, Agroecology and Sustainability) and with the team of the Territorial Planning Program of the NGO Instituto Internacional de Educação do Brasil, protagonist collectives in both initiatives.

Henyo T. Barretto has a PhD in Social Anthropology from FFLCH/USP (2001) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UnB. He researches indigenous lands and protected areas in the Northeast, the Amazon and the Cerrado (the topic of his presentation), and has recently returned from a post-doctoral stay at Wageningen University.

The Urban Anthropology Center/NAU (today LabNAU, laboratory), celebrates three decades of activities – it began in 1988 – inspired by the initiative of two professors, Ruth Cardoso and Eunice Durham. In a department based mainly on classic authors, fundamental to the study and research in the area of indigenous ethnology (as was tradition at the time) and long before the current discussion about gender and female presence in the academic area, Ruth and Eunice led a turnaround: from the choice of study topics as postgraduate students – not without disagreements with the advisors – to the lines of research of their own students, already as professors in the Department of Anthropology at USP.

One of its initiatives, the “Monday Seminars”, which gives the title to this proposal, opened an opportunity for students to get in touch with unconventional authors in the bibliography of the department's programs at the time: Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Saskia Sassen, Jean Lojkine, Michel Foucault, Nicos Poulantzas, Howard Becker and others, from different orientations and areas of knowledge and outside the scope of classical Anthropology.

This initiative coincides with a certain situation, the “discovery of the periphery” in the city which, already in the 1970s, had social, political and economic consequences and affected the way of life of its residents. In this way, a range of research objects was opened up for his advisees and advisees – and not just in São Paulo. In the book From the Periphery to the Center: Research Trajectories in Urban Anthropology (2012) I describe this entire process in detail; here is just a quick mention, to justify this proposal and the title, which also incorporates the collection of books that LabNAU coordinates with several publishers. The idea is to resume the legacy of this seminar, opening space for the reading and discussion of contemporary authors, not necessarily linked to the area of Urban Anthropology, to expand the panorama that is sometimes restricted to the scope of ongoing research projects. To this end, a meeting is proposed every fifteen days (on Monday, of course), led by an exhibitor, having previously indicated a cutting-edge, highly controversial text (book chapter, article, conference)...< /p>

There will be eight meetings in the first semester of 2024, alternating between presentations by professors from the Department who have already been invited and postgraduate students, so as not to overload and allow time to read the indicated texts. The seminars will be open not only to the faculty and students of our Department, but to members of other university centers who already participate in LabNAU research groups and to anyone else who is interested. I will then send the calendar with the title of the presentations and the texts recommended for prior reading. For this semester, four teachers were willing to participate and the idea is that the seminar will continue, so that each colleague can subsequently present the current state of reflections and research in their respective areas.

In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnography to provide a rich account of how favela residents appropriate different technologies to navigate digital and non-digital sources of oppression - and even, at times, thrive . Based on the work of educator Paulo Freire, Nemer develops a decolonial and intersectional theoretical framework called Mundane Technology to analyze how technologies can simultaneously be spaces of oppression and tools in the struggle for freedom. Nemer also addresses the relationship between disinformation and radicalization and the rise of the new extreme right. Contrary to the techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology, these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Still, the community spirit, love, resilience and resistance of favela residents enable their quest for freedom.

Mini Bio:
David Nemer is a professor in the Media Studies and Anthropology departments and director of the Latin American Studies program at the University of Virginia. He is also an associate professor at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Nemer is the author of the books Tecnologia do Oprimido (Milfontes, 2021 & MIT Press, 2022), winner of the Marcel Roche Prize, and Favela Digital: The other side of technology (Editora GSA, 2013). He holds master's degrees in Anthropology from the University of Virginia and in Computer Science from the University of Saarland (Germany), and a Ph.D. in Computing, Culture and Society from Indiana University. Nemer writes for The Guardian, El País, The Huffington Post (HuffPost), Salon, The Intercept_, UOL and CartaCapital.

Welcome! The Permanent Affirmative Action Commission (COPAF), the student representation and the PPGAS coordination organized some activities for you to find out about the different processes that accompany the university life of postgraduates in Anthropology at USP. We had to bring forward some activities earlier than initially planned. Your presence is very important!

Political-educational formation and indigenous movements: reflections from the Kaiowa and Guarani peoples

With
Eliel Benites (Ministry of Indigenous Peoples)
Kerexu Mirim (EEI Krukutu)
Levi Marques Pereira (UFGD)
Mediation
Augusto Ventura dos Santos (Doctor PPGAS/USP)

02/27/2024, at 10am
CEstA Headquarters - Rua do Anfiteatro 181, Colmeia - favo 8

It has been almost half a century since the first experiences of bilingual and differentiated school education began to be developed in indigenous communities in Brazil. These were experiments conducted by incipient organizations supporting indigenous peoples that were opposed to the assimilationist and tutelary model developed by the old official indigenous bodies.
Gradually, such experiences were legally standardized and their administrative responsibility was assumed by state education bodies (Municipal Secretariats, State Secretariats, Ministry of Education, etc.). This process resulted in a significant multiplication and consolidation of experiences of indigenous school education throughout the country. It also resulted in strengthening educational projects of indigenous movements, through the training of new and active leaders, such as indigenous students, teachers and researchers. On the other hand, dialogues with official bodies still present a series of tensions and challenges for communities today: how to deal with the permanent demands for standardization and centralization of state systems? To what extent have political and pedagogical autonomy and indigenous knowledge actually been respected?

Production: Center for Amerindian Studies (CEstA/USP) and Indigenous Knowledge Action at School (Núcleo Guarani/USP)

Closing lecture on CEstA 2023 activities with Maria Luísa Lucas (MAE/USP) and Leandro Varison (Museé du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac)

Shared collections: the Franco-Brazilian collections of Claude and Dina Lévi-Strauss

15/12/2023 - 2:30 pm
CEstA Headquarters - Rua do Anfiteatro, 181 - favo 8

Friday of the Month: Black Intellectualities

08/12
5pm
Room 24 of the USP Social Sciences Building
Broadcast via Youtube.

Guests:
Fernanda Martins (PhD student in Social Sciences/UNICAMP, Researcher at PAGU/UNICAMP and NUMAS/USP
Layne Gabriele (IEAL/UNICAMP Undergraduate, Popular Educator, Researcher and Communicator
Victor Mateus Duarte (Master in Philosophy UFABC and Specialist in Contemporary Philosophy IBF

Mediation:
Alessandra Tavares (PPGAS/USP PhD student)

Highlighting black intellectualities allows us to rethink the fractures of our society, taking into account its entire socio-historical context, as well as promoting a turnaround in the official historical records of humanity and its institutions. This perspective engenders a construction of counter-hegemonic knowledge production, based on the fight against racism and socio-racial inequalities in different segments and areas of knowledge. Black intellectualities, as we propose here, rightly emphasize the plurality of voices, bodies and thoughts of people whose centrality lies in their experience as plural subjects. Trajectories that are made collectively, in the sagacity of movements that go beyond the academic universe. Even though most institutions perpetuate racist practices, black intellectuals and their references and inspirations modulate significant transformations in subjectivities and place the art and politics of resistance at the heart of the “Modern Constitution”. In this way, the Friday of the Month of December proposes a table to reflect on the intellectual production of black people based on their own trajectories and research processes and/or professional activities, bringing to the table issues of gender, experiences of peripheral black people, the agency of religiosities and the foundation of a black psychopathology, in an intersectional and interdisciplinary conversation. With the strength of the older ones, we emphasize the speech of the great intellectual Lélia Gonzales who states the provocation “The trash will talk, and in a good way!”

Hêmba is a photobook composed of more than 80 images produced by indigenous photographer and anthropologist Edgar Kanaykô Xakriabá throughout his career. Edgar Xakriabá is a photographer and anthropologist and belongs to the village of São João das Missões, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais. The title Hêmba, in the Akwẽ language, refers to “soul and spirit” and its translation alludes to the concept of “photography and image”.

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