Brazilian Cultures In Perspective PDF Download

The aim of this book is to take a fresh look at public policies on historical and cultural heritage, which are currently the topic of much discussion both in academic circles and among a wider public. Brazil was one of the pioneering countries in Latin America in the development of policies on the preservation of historical and cultural heritage and serves as a model for other countries that are now starting to take an interest in preserving their cultural heritage. Anthropological knowledge is constructed on the basis of empirical data obtained during one stage of the research. The research data is analysed using theories from this field of knowledge, while knowledge of a specific type is produced from the encounter between theory and practice. Based on particular aspects, anthropological knowledge can serve to illuminate questions that are more general and can be applied to thinking on problems from different social contexts. Although the knowledge produced here stems from a local reality, it does not only refer to those who live in that area. The processes and practices learned in the field may serve to develop models of interpretation that tend to be more general. Comprehension of the universal illuminates knowledge of a particular reality, or as Bourdieu put it, “the deepest logic of the social world can be grasped only if one plunges into the particularity of an empirical reality, historically located and dated.” This book is an updated version of a research project conducted in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil between 2002 and 2004. It was initially presented as a Master’s thesis in social anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, where it was awarded the highest possible grade in 2004. It also received an honourable mention in the 2005 Silvio Romero Competition on Theses on Popular Culture, which is sponsored by the National Centre of Popular Culture and the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. Parts of the project were presented and debated in the following years at international anthropology congresses in Brazil, India and South Africa. In order to achieve my objectives, I decided to divide the questions to be explored into two parts. The first part (chapters 1 to 6) consists of a more general summary of the question of historical and cultural heritage in Brazil. I will present a general review of public heritage policies and try to identify the context of the emergence of this concept as we currently know it. I will then discuss the historical context in which the search to identify national historical heritage began to make sense, that is, at the time when the construction of national identity became associated with the modernisation of Brazil. I do not approach modernity as an historical period, but rather as a set of values and practices that influenced the way of perceiving the world and representing oneself in it. Baudelaire’s vision of this point provides a fitting poetic illustration of the proposed viewpoint. However, in tackling the question of modernity and modernism, a debate arises in which the modern and post-modern, or the modernists and post-modernists, clash. I thought it pertinent to describe part of this debate, which forms part of the context of anthropological theory as a concern that remains topical and present in relevant reflections on academic literature on the way we live today. Apart from contextualising the emergence of policies on preserving heritage in Brazil, the more general social context in which such concerns feature on the agenda is important. The context of late modernity, which introduces the debate on modernity or post-modernity, is articulated in the new perceptions of the globalised world, leading to a dialogue between the global and local levels. This dynamic between the global and the local is constantly present, both as a working method in the relationship between the universal and the particular, and in the actual policies on preserving heritage, whose