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Precarious Democracy

Precarious Democracy

Name: Precarious Democracy
Author: Benjamin Junge
ISBN: 9781978825659

Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil

Edited by Benjamin Junge, Sean T. Mitchell, Alvaro Jarrin and Lucia Cantero

Contributions by Lila Moritz Schwarcz, Benjamin Junge, Jessica Jerome, Isabela Kalil, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, Lucia Mury Scalco, Patricia de Santana Pinho, Sean T. Mitchell, Karina Biondi, John Collins, Lucia Cantero, David Rojas, Andrezza Alves Spexoto Olival, Alexandre de Azevedo Olival, Falina Enriquez, Moisés Kopper, Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer, LaShandra Sullivan, Carlos Eduardo Henning, Alvaro Jarrin, Melanie A. Medeiros, Patrick McCormick, Erika Schmitt and James Kale

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Imprint: Rutgers University Press

258 Pages, 178.00 × 254.00 × 23.00 mm, 14 b-w images, 5 tables

Paperback
9781978825659
Published: September 2021

£33.00

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Hardcover
9781978825666
Published: September 2021

£120.00

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Digital download
9781978825697
Published: September 2021

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise
Accessibility

List of Acronyms
Editors’ Introduction: Ethnographies of the Brazilian Unravelling by Benjamin Junge, Alvaro Jarrin, Lucia Cantero, and Sean T. Mitchell
A Plan for a Country Still Looking for Democracy: A Critical Overview by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz

Part I: The Intimacy of Power
Chapter 1: “Family is Everything”: Generational Tensions as a Working-Class Household from Recife, Brazil Contemplates the 2018 Presidential Elections by Benjamin Junge
Chapter 2: Among Mothers and Daughters: Economic Mobility and Political Identity in a Northeastern Periferia by Jessica Jerome
Chapter 3: Dreaming with Guns: Performing Masculinity and Imagining Consumption in Bolsonaro’s Brazil by Isabela Kalil, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, and Lucia Mury Scalco
Chapter 4: Whiteness Has Come Out of the Closet and Intensified Brazil’s Reactionary Wave by Patricia de Santana Pinho

Part II: Corruption and Crime
Chapter 5: Cruel Pessimism: The Affect of Anti-Corruption and the End of the New Brazilian Middle Class by Sean T. Mitchell
Chapter 6: The Effects of Some Religious Affects: Revolutions in Crime by Karina Biondi
Chapter 7: “Look at that”: Cures, Poisons, and Shifting Rationalities in the Backlands that have become a Sea (of Money) by John Collins
Chapter 8: The Oil is Ours: Petrobras, Corruption and Extractive Global Lawfare by Lucia Cantero

Part III: Infrastructures of Hope
Chapter 9: Despairing Hopes (and Hopeful Despair) in Amazonia by David Rojas, Andrezza Alves Spexoto Olival, and Alexandre de Azevedo Olival
Chapter 10: Tempered Hopes: (Re)producing the Middle Class in Recife’s Alternative Music Scene by Falina Enriquez
Chapter 11: Withering Dreams: Material Hope and Apathy among Brazil’s Once Rising Poor by MoisÉs Kopper
Chapter 12: Bolsonaro Wins Japan: Support for the Far Right among Japanese-Brazilian Overseas Labor Migrants by Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer

Part IV: Old Challenges, New Activism
Chapter 13: Holding the Wave: Black LGBTI+ Feminist Resilience Amidst the Reactionary Turn in Rio de Janeiro by LaShandra Sullivan
Chapter 14: LGBTTI Elders in Brazil: Subjectivation and Narratives about Resilience, Resistance and Vulnerability by Carlos Eduardo Henning
Chapter 15: Disgust and Defiance: The Visceral Politics of Trans and Travesti Activism Amidst a Heteronormative Backlash by Alvaro JarrÍn
Chapter 16: “Barbie e Ken, CidadÃos de Bem”: Memes and Political Participation among College Students in Brazil by Melanie A. Medeiros, Patrick McCormick, Erika Schmitt, and James Kale

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index

"Precarious Democracy presents a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Brazil through a rich collection of ethnographies and a range of thoughtful analyses and insights about ordinary people throughout the country as they respond in multiple ways to the rise and political consolidation of the far-right in recent years. It is essential reading for understanding what is going on in Brazil today."
- James N. Green (author of Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary)
"This collection offers rich, theoretically evocative ethnographies on a range of sites seldom brought together in a single volume, from family frictions that expose the polarization of the past decade to guns and the performance of masculinity to Black queer resilience amid Brazil’s rightward shift. The assembled cases foreground feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial epistemologies and shed unique light on Brazil’s 'unraveling,' bringing into view the precarity often underlying formal democratic arrangements, even, or perhaps especially, those governed by the Left."
- Sonia E. Alvarez (co-editor of Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America)
"Precarious Democracy presents a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Brazil through a rich collection of ethnographies and a range of thoughtful analyses and insights about ordinary people throughout the country as they respond in multiple ways to the rise and political consolidation of the far-right in recent years. It is essential reading for understanding what is going on in Brazil today."
- James N. Green (author of Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary)
"This collection offers rich, theoretically evocative ethnographies on a range of sites seldom brought together in a single volume, from family frictions that expose the polarization of the past decade to guns and the performance of masculinity to Black queer resilience amid Brazil’s rightward shift. The assembled cases foreground feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial epistemologies and shed unique light on Brazil’s 'unraveling,' bringing into view the precarity often underlying formal democratic arrangements, even, or perhaps especially, those governed by the Left."
- Sonia E. Alvarez (co-editor of Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America)