XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork in Brazil: ethnographic engagement through public scholarship, community organizing and cultural immersion

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

This panel focuses on the multiple dimensions of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the context of Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro through interdisciplinary methods. Considering questions of identity, subjectivity, commitment and social interactions in the field, we take an intersectional approach that emphasizes long-term community building, interpersonal relationships, accountability and scholar-activism. As ethnographers, we recognize that we bring our whole selves into the field. Based on our different backgrounds, life experiences, and political commitments, each panelist presents a long view of their ethnographic engagement with their research site and community in Brazil that spans, in some cases, over a decade. Reflecting on personal and professional relationships both within and outside of academic contexts, the papers detail our work with Capoeira collectives, Candomblé terreiros, civil society organizations, and social movement campaigns and how they have informed what we want our scholarship to do, both with these groups and in the world. This panel contends that fieldwork is not a means to an end: publications, titles, degrees, funding, and awards cannot be the measures of our work. These papers present ways of understanding fieldwork itself as scholarship that seeks to be produced collaboratively and with accountability, including material returns to the communities we work with.

Hybrid session. Link: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/85686415163

Sub Unit

• XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Repatriation efforts through public scholarship: Ruth Landes’ photographic archive (1938-1939) and the Terreiro Gantois (Ilê Axé Iyá Omin Iyamassi) - Jamie Andreson, Pennsylvania State University

• Navigating Cultural Patrimony from the Global South: A Reflection on Collaborative Efforts with the National Association of Baianas de Acarajé in Brazil - Vanessa Castaneda, Davidson College

• “Mulheres que Gingam”: Reflections on cultural resistance through the Nzinga Institute of Capoeira Angola Studies in Salvador Bahia, Brazil and beyond - Azmera Hammouri-Davis, Harvard University

• Who is this film for? Multimedia Methodological Reflections on Diasporic Solidarity in Access to Higher Education - Stephanie Reist, Stanford University

Chair

• Jamie Andreson, Pennsylvania State University

Moderator

• John Collins, CUNY - Queens College

Session Organizer

• Jamie Andreson, Pennsylvania State University