Overview

Analyzes favela, quilombola, and indigenous communities’ responses to settler colonialism in urban Brazil. Based on ethnographic research and her experiences growing up in Brazil, the author tells the stories of communities in Rio de Janeiro, SÃo Paulo, and Belo Horizonte Unsettling Brazil offers a powerful account of five urban Indigenous and Black communities and movements in Brazil that illuminates their struggle for land, dignity, and their ways of life amid historic and ongoing settler colonialism, marked by militarization and dependent capitalist development. The in-depth case studies are the Indigenous movement Aldeia Maracanà and the quilombola community Sacopà in Rio, the Quilombo dos LuÍzes in Belo Horizonte, the Indigenous movement behind the Pindorama scholarship program in SÃo Paulo, and the Complexo da MarÉ favela in Rio. For each, Poets vividly documents the intersectional and transnational structures of power that perpetuate the erasure, dispossession, and exploitation of nonwhite populations and the creative ways that Black and Indigenous communities have mobilized to unsettle these structures. Drawing on the knowledge produced by Black and Indigenous organizers and thinkers, Poets argues for an interdisciplinary framework that prioritizes the voices and experiences of these communities. Addressing increasingly salient calls for decolonization, Poets ponders the paradoxical role of rights, citizenship, and the state in the fight for freedom and justice. Unsettling Brazil urges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about the nation's history and stands in solidarity with those fighting to reclaim their heritage, identity, and land.

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9780817321840

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Reviews

[Unsettling Brazil] This really is a fabulous piece of work and I do not say so lightly. It is written with exceptional poise and precision, and the arguments advanced offer much needed insight into the nature of contemporary urban Indigenous and Black forms of place- and community-making as resistance to the settler capitalist state. I particularly appreciated the commitment to centering and 'speaking nearby' the stories of five different Black and Indigenous urban forms of resistance – aldeias, quilombos, favelas and student groups – and to the level of engagement displayed throughout with the communities involved. The book should be ready by anyone working within or across the disciplines and fields of anthropology and sociology, Brazilian and Latin American studies, and Indigenous and decolonial studies.""—Thea Pitman is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds. She is author of the book Decolonising the Museum: The Curation of Indigenous Contemporary Art in Brazil(2021). She is currently Chair of the Standing Conference of Latin American Studies in the UK and Co-chair of Arts and Humanities Alliance. ""Unsettling Brazil is convincing: an innovative lens for interpreting contemporary political contestations in Brazil."" —Lorenzo Veracini is Professor of history and politics at Swinburne University of Technology. He is the author, among other works, of The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea, and Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. ""Unsettling Brazil makes an original and significant contribution to the field of Brazilian indigenous and quilombo studies. Little, if anything, has been published in English on urban indigenous and quilombo communitites, their histories and struggles in Brazil.""—Jan French is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast. She has also authored a number of peer-reviewed articles on African, mixed race, and indigenous Brazil.

"""[Unsettling Brazil] This really is a fabulous piece of work and I do not say so lightly. It is written with exceptional poise and precision, and the arguments advanced offer much needed insight into the nature of contemporary urban Indigenous and Black forms of place- and community-making as resistance to the settler capitalist state. I particularly appreciated the commitment to centering and 'speaking nearby' the stories of five different Black and Indigenous urban forms of resistance - aldeias, quilombos, favelas and student groups - and to the level of engagement displayed throughout with the communities involved. The book should be ready by anyone working within or across the disciplines and fields of anthropology and sociology, Brazilian and Latin American studies, and Indigenous and decolonial studies."" --Thea Pitman is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds. She is author of the book Decolonising the Museum: The Curation of Indigenous Contemporary Art in Brazil (2021). She is currently Chair of the Standing Conference of Latin American Studies in the UK and Co-chair of Arts and Humanities Alliance. ""Unsettling Brazil is convincing: an innovative lens for interpreting contemporary political contestations in Brazil."" --Lorenzo Veracini is Professor of history and politics at Swinburne University of Technology. He is the author, among other works, of The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea, and Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. ""Unsettling Brazil makes an original and significant contribution to the field of Brazilian indigenous and quilombo studies. Little, if anything, has been published in English on urban indigenous and quilombo communitites, their histories and struggles in Brazil."" --Jan French is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast. She has also authored a number of peer-reviewed articles on African, mixed race, and indigenous Brazil."

Author Information

DesirÉe Poets is assistant professor of postcolonial theory and a core faculty of the ASPECT PhD program at Virginia Tech. She has published articles and book chapters on settler colonialism, community change, and (de)militarization in Brazil.

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