The Morphology of the Northeastern Man: Race, Nation, and Physical Education in early 20th century Brazil

• In Event: Thinking Brazil in Regions

Abstract

By the 1930s, physical education dominated the educational agenda in Brazil. State researchers collected data on students’ physical development and used these data to design physical education programs that addressed the students’ apparent shortcomings. Due to the work in Recife of the Directorate of Physical Education, the book Morfologia do Homem do Nordeste was published in 1939 as part of a collection organized by sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Leaders, intellectuals and scientists saw their state of Pernambuco as the place where the physical origins of the Brazilian race took place. Pernambuco had, according to them, the health and the physical capacity of the nation to be reestablished, restoring the image of the “degenerated/inferior” men of the Northeast. The idea of this presentation is to comprehend the reception and development of eugenic ideas in Recife, verifying how those theories were received and linked to physical education and sports.

Author

• Tiago Fernandes Albuquerque Maranhao, Vanderbilt University