ONLINE: Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazi

press release: Please join UW Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program for the LACIS Lunchtime Lecture, Tuesdays at noon. The events are free and open to the public.

About the presentation: Brazil has undergone tremendous socioeconomic and political changes during the past decade. The new book, Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair and Resistance in Brazil after the Pink Tide (Rutgers University Press, 2021), is an ethnographic examination into these changes. Featuring editors and authors who contributed to the volume, this presentation will describe some of the innovative insights about the complexity of life in contemporary Brazil that anthropologists based in the US, Brazil, and Europe have recently developed.

About the presenters: Presented by Dr. Falina Enriquez, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, and LACIS Faculty Affiliate, UW-Madison, with Sean Mitchel (Rutgers University), and Alvaro Jarrin (Holy Cross University).

From Dr. Enriquez: “My research focuses on the cultural politics of music in the Recife, Brazil. I examine how local musicians, bureaucrats, and other city residents participate in musical activities and how they imagine these in relationship to various forms of local and inter/national identity, economic circumstances, and political discourses. By contrasting how people produce, consume, and evaluate a constellation of contemporary and folklorized music genres, I argue that music is significant well beyond its entertainment value. Instead, I demonstrate music as a medium through which various actors negotiate and create notions of belonging, social stratification, and locality.”