Vibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology

v10n1 | 2013 Cultural Heritage and Museums

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/vibrant/230 ISSN: 1809-4341

Publisher Associação Brasileira de Antropologia

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Articles

What's in a copy? Gustavo Lins Ribeiro

Networks of desire The specter of AIDS and the use of digitak media in the quest for secret same-secret relations in São Paulo Richard Miskolci

Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

Foreword Antonio A. Arantes and Antonio Motta

Part 1: The 1980s agenda in Brazil

Reflections on culture, heritage and preservation Eunice Ribeiro Durham

On the crossroads of preservation Revitalizing São Miguel chapel in a working class district of São Paulo Antonio A. Arantes

Building senses of "community" Social memory, popular movements and political participation Ruth Cardoso

Anthropology and cultural heritage Gilberto Velho

Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká Casa Branca Temple

Part 2: Heritage, memory and the city

Counter-uses of the city and gentrification Consuming heritage Rogerio Proença Leite

The dark side of the moon Heritage, memory and place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves

Black heritage and the revitalization of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone Urban interventions, memories and conflicts Roberta Sampaio Guimarães

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Anthropology between heritage and museums José Guilherme Cantor Magnani

The city museum of São Paulo: a new design for city museums in the era of the megacity Maria Ignez Mantovani Franco

Part 3: Otherness

Magic and power in ethnographic collections Sorcery objects under institutional tutelage Ulisses N. Rafael and Yvonne Maggie

Heritage.org /digital museum of african and Afro-Brazilian memory Challenges to digital patrimonialization Livio Sansone

The indians of the Lower Oiapoque and their museum Kuahí The Indians of the Lower Oiapoque and their museum Lux Vidal

The peoples of oiapoque and the Kuahí Museum Regina Abreu

Anthropology in the museum reflections on the curatorship of the Xikrin Collection Fabíola A. Silva and Cesar Gordon

Visible art, invisible artists? The incorporation of aboriginal objects and knowledge in Australian museums Ilana Seltzer Goldstein

Part 4: Safeguarding the intangible

Heritage, knowledge and (a)symmetries on the Uaupés river Origin narratives, transformation routes Geraldo Andrello

Film directed by Vincent Carelli2006, 48 min Iauaretê, Cachoeira das Onças [Jaguar Waterfalls] Vincent Carelli

The recognition of Brazilian samba de roda and reunion maloya as intangible cultural heritage of humanity Guillaume Samson and Carlos Sandroni

The Reference Center for Brazilian Football Within the dialog between anthropology and museums Clara de Assunção Azevedo and Daniela do Amaral Alfonsi

CRBF - Centro de Referência do Futebol Brasileiro [Brazilian Football Reference Center] Aira Bonfm and Danilo Delfno

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Book Reviews

Edmundo Pereira. Um povo sábio, um povo aconselhado - Ritual e política entre os Huitoto-Murui Pedro Musalem Nazar

Gilberto Velho. Um Antropólogo na Cidade: Ensaios de Antropologia Urbana Howard S. Becker

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Articles

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What's in a copy?

Gustavo Lins Ribeiro

EDITOR'S NOTE

Received March 9, 2013, approved 16 April, 2013 Keynote speech of the congress of German speaking anthropologists, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, September 14, 2011. I thank my colleagues in Austria, especially Andre Gingrich, for such an honor. Copying makes us what we are. Our bodies take shape from the transcription of protein templates, our languages from the mimicry of privileged sounds, our crafts from the repetition of prototypes.Cultures cohere in the faithful transmission of rituals and rules of conduct. To copy cell for cell, word for word, image for image, is to make the known world our own (Hillel Schwartz, 1998: 211). 1 In academic life, it is rather common to start with an issue that one supposes to be familiar with only to find out - after successive approximations - an enormous and intriguing complexity that needs to be further explored. This is, once more, the case. I first thought of writing about copies as an opportunity to present my latest findings concerning the extensive economic reality that is hidden behind "piracy."

2 I entered this fascinating world in the late 1990's by making a simple question while looking at the Made in China goods sold by hawkers in downtown Brasilia and in a crowded street market called the Paraguayan Fair: how did these things got there? I then started research that has lasted for more than ten years. I ended up coining the notions of "economic globalization from below" and of "non-hegemonic world system." While I will present my ideas about them here, I will also explore new issues that arise from another question - what's in a copy?

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3 A few initial considerations are in order. The English word copy comes from the Latin word "copia" the meaning of which, "abundance, plenty, multitude" (Boon, 2010: 41), already insinuates a vast semantic universe. The world has always been full of copies. The Industrial Revolution accelerated the multiplication of objects and images while the Digital Era made copying easier, more perfect and ubiquitous. Copies always imply several tensions: between essence and appearance; the particular and the universal; the unique and the many; the original and the replica; the authentic and the fake/spurious; between sameness and difference; production and reproduction; homogeneity and heterogeneity; creativity and commerce. 4 What's in a copy? At this point, I could well answer this question with a simple "everything." Indeed, according to Canadian philosopher Marcus Boon, in his thought provoking book "In Praise of Copying," copying "rather than being an aberration or a mistake or a crime, is a fundamental condition or requirement for anything, human or not" (2010: 3). Succumbing to the temptation of answering "everything" would certainly grant me the world record of the shortest article ever, but the answer's astonishing generalization would amount simply to avoid facing the subject's complexity. Therefore, I will answer this question by considering three related dimensions: the importance of copies in academia; in cultural life; and in the economic world. Of course, it goes without saying that these dimensions are not mutually exclusive.

Copying and academia

5 It is impossible to think of a university without copies since it is a place for the production, re-production, storage, exhibition and reverence of knowledge. We find copies everywhere: in the libraries or in the copy shops, in the up-loaded PDF files of scanned texts or in the term papers downloaded from virtual firms that may even write customized monographs for their clients. Copying is also at the center of the classrooms, at the heart of pedagogy and learning, not only because professors repeat other authors' works while teaching but also because students are supposed to show they understood them by copying and reproducing their thoughts. Furthermore, isn't the academic ethos itself heavily based on admiration and on the mimicry of certain role models sometimes displayed and incorporated in theories sometimes in behavioral and political styles?

6 At the university, the contradictions between copying and originality abound. At the same time that copyrights are praised by many as a modern right, they are constantly disrespected in the name of education. At the same time that students need to know and copy other people's work, they are supposed to add something new. At the same time that they admire and often emulate their mentors, they are supposed to make original contributions to knowledge. Originality here means aggregated difference. Perhaps, in the pragmatics of the academic world, we are, most often unconsciously, accepting the fact that there isn't such a thing as 100 per cent originality and that there is never a perfect copy, that copying always means adding something different, a fact that is especially clear in art history (Boon 2010). In the end, creation and innovation signify an addition to previously known things or processes resulting from copying exercises and from the imperfections of memory and reproduction. But, since in academia we need to be authors, the tendency, as in other spheres, is to abhor copies

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and praise originality, something made clear by expressions such as "my own theory is" and "in my view". 7 In academic life, nowhere is the scorn for copying greater than when the issue is plagiarism, a problem that has consistently grown since "paste and cut" became popular jargon. Paste and cut make the pedagogical role of copying problematic. One thing is a handwritten copy of a published text, another is its digital copy. A handwritten copy demands a time for reflection, for becoming acquainted with an author's ideas, for thinking of how to appropriate and criticize interpretations. The digital copy is an almost instantaneous action in which the contents of what is being copied may be completely unknown. I am not so much interested in the ethical problems triggered by plagiarism and forgery which most of the time are related to moral and professional deceptions and/or frustrated economic interests. What interests me is the idea that the current spreading of plagiarism is embedded in major changes in the technologies of teaching, publishing, reproducing and using information that are having an impact on traditional working routines in the academic milieu in ways that are still difficult to understand but that will certainly generate radically different scenarios and practices. According to Hillel Schwartz Lexicographers responsible for defining plagiarism have been accused of plagiarizing definitions. A University of Oregon booklet plagiarized its section on plagiarism. Given this compulsion to repeat that which bears on repeating, plagiarism in our culture of the copy appears inevitable. (...) our culture of the copy tends to make plagiarism a necessity, and the more we look for replays to be superior to originals, the more we will embrace plagiarism as elemental" (1998: 313). 8 The scorn for plagiarism is intimately related to the Western idea of authorship, a central notion for the understanding of modern academic and scientific life. Marilyn Strathern (1986: 21 and 22) considers "the eighteenth century idea that persons are the natural owners of both themselves and their labour" a "notion of singular ownership/ authorship [that] also sets up the conceptual possibility of one author supplanting or displacing the other". In a productivist era in which competition is taken to its limits, Strathern's statement is self-explanatory.

9 At the same time that authorship reinforces authenticity and originality as major academic values, it deprecates copying. Yet obloquy for copying is far from universal. The importance of copying as a way of learning has long been acknowledged in Budhism and in China where "the multiplication of nearly identical images is understood not as the degradation of an original but the invocation of an impermanent, provisional form with the goal of training the mind to recognize its own true nature" (Boon, 2010: 63). Interestingly enough, authorship developed in the eighteenth century alongside with the regulation of copyrights in Europe, an offshoot of an established and growing book industry. 10 But in the digital era, with the world wide web, the notion of authorship may well undergo dramatic changes if not disappear. As Michel Foucault anticipated, a concept that came into being at a given moment in history may well disappear in the future. The notion of "author," as Foucault put it, is intimately related to a "privileged moment ofindividualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy and the sciences" (Foucault, 1984: 101). On the internet, there are experiments that use the immense collective creativity found in the global fragmented spaces that may now be articulated online. The global cooperation that currently exists within the virtual

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public space (Ribeiro, 2003) and is practiced by political collectives such as the free software movement provides an interesting example of global creativity enacted by a great number or persons that are not interested in individual authorship and copyright but in the collective perfection of a freely available common good. 11 Such collective online creation may in effect challenge the notion that the relationship between creativity and commerce is always mediated by individual authorship and copyrights. This does not amount to saying that we are on the verge of discovering an alternative to capitalist appropriation of creative work, as some activists of the open source and free software movements would like to believe (Evangelista, 2010). It is not impossible to suppose that a corporation, such as Google, is likely to profit from an environment free of copyrights, a sort of global fragmented creative mind, where global hackers would provide, for free, the work and information needed to improve the company's products. If such a scenario comes into being at this point of computer electronic capitalism's hegemony, we should add Googleism as a new label to classify capitalist production, after Taylorism and Toyotism. 12 Authorship may also radically change in the face of other types of online cooperation, and here the main example is Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia is no panacea (in the end there is always an editor who controls what is publishable or not), it allows us to speculate about the possibility of a radical wiki-anthropology, for instance. Such on- line text construction would go beyond the traditional journals with their referee system, which, in the core of the world system of anthropological production, more often than not replicate the styles and agendas of the Anglo-American academic milieu (Kuwayama, 2004). The possibility of writing with a myriad of other known or anonymous cyber-colleagues may also lead to the emergence of post-authorial academic texts. Are we ready to make global wiki experiments in academic writing and theoretical production? Are we ready to go beyond the notion of authorship in academia, another of the basis of inequality reproduction in a world full of individualism and individual power seekers? I don't know. Perhaps my generation is not. Perhaps younger scholars, natives of digital culture completely immersed in cyberspace, are.

Copying and culture

13 There are several possible ways of exploring the relations between copying and culture. I will tackle only a few of them here. How one acquires or learns a culture and a language, that is, how a person becomes human or a member of a culture and a society, has been a much debated subject in philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Learning is taken to be central to the evolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Indeed, if, say, every hunter and gatherer had to invent arrows and bowls again and again, the human capacity to adaptation and evolution would have been seriously affected. Mimesis, socialization, enculturation, diffusion, borrowing, are recurrent concepts in this universe. Discussions often resonate with questions of structure and agency in ways that resemble the attribution of positive characteristics to authenticity, originality and authorship and of negative characteristics to copying and imitation.

14 A relatively recent revisionist perspective on enculturation, for instance, by Cindy Dell Clark (2005) provides an interesting illustration of a position that emphasizes children's agency. Dell Clark considers enculturation "not so much a straightforward

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mature-on-immature imposition of practices" (p. 182) but "a many-laned and multi- directional matrix in which children and elders interact." Following Jean Briggs (1992, 1998), Dell Clark asserts that "enculturation entails a complex, shifting assortment of ingredients to be actively selected and interpreted by the child." Critical of the notion of "cultural reduplication" she concludes that a "revisionist notion of enculturation implies a dynamism and fluidity to cultural learning, rather than a cloning like social reproduction process" (p. 183). Once more, what seems to be at stake are the tensions between creativity and inventiveness on the one side and repetition, copying and imitation on the other. 15 In the social sciences the notion of imitation enjoys today a greater visibility than in the past. Perhaps we are witnessing a return of its influence as interest grows in the work of French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) and his Les Lois de l'Imitation published in 1890. Matei Candea (2010: 2), the editor of a recent volume entitledThe Social After Gabriel Tarde, speaks of a Tardean comeback and revival. The Laws of Imitation came out in English in 1903. Tarde's mimetic paradigm is, at the same time, an exercise on the value of difference, for in his view repetition provokes difference. His thinking informed disparate but influential works. One such example is Everett Rogers' (2003) Diffusion of Innovations, first published, in 1962, a book that became a classic on the subject. Rogers' theoretical approach is radically different from those of authors such as Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, also influenced by Tarde. I will not summarize Tarde's rather complex texts nor the equally elaborated current appropriations of his work. Rather, I am more interested in looking at the renaissance of his influence as another indication of the increased awareness of the importance of copying and the challenges it brings. 16 While imitation entails complex theories and arguments, mimesis, simulation and mimicry do not lag far behind. Suffice to mention the lasting influence of the Platonic interpretation of the relation between outward appearance and essence in Western philoshophy (Boon 2010), the echoes of which, in anthropology, could be heard in the hot debates, in the 1990's, about identity, authenticity and essentialism. Or we could also mention Jean Baudrillard's (1994) well-known contribution on the role of simulacra and simulations in the constitution and reproduction of current social life. The digital age, where copies do not have originals, may witness, perforce, the death of the original, clearly subverting the Platonic gaze. In this environment, we are inevitably drawn to a discussion on virtuality and the status of reality. Virtuality creates confusion about the phenomenological status of the real world at the same that it magnifies our life experience. This is certainly behind the choice of "Second Life" as the name of a popular virtual place in cyberspace. 17 I have already argued that in order to understand current public space we need to make a distinction between the virtual public space and the real public space that, together, make up public-space-in-general. (Ribeiro, 2003) The increased political usage of the internet, since the Rio 1992 Earth Conference, and of cell phones, since at least the anti-globalization 1999 Seattle battle, as well as the work of groups such as Avaaz, just to mention three out of millions of examples, clearly illustrate the intertwining of the real and the virtual public spaces, thus intensifying what I have called political activism at a distance. (Ribeiro, 1998) 18 Avatars insinuate the possibility of virtual cloning. This is not as disturbing as the possibility of the genetic cloning of human bodies that immediately spurs waves of

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technophobic reactions. To date, human cloning represents the limit that has been imposed on bioengineering's capacity to copy. As the capacity to manipulate the natural world is extended to more fundamental dimensions such as the very code of organic life, the familiar anthropological distinction between nature and culture now needs to be considered through other lenses. In an age of technoculture, it is not by chance that anthropologists became involved with science and technology studies to understand "emergent forms of life", an allusion I make to the title of a 2003 book by Michael Fischer, a leading scholar in this field. 19 Interested in diffusion and dissemination, in the exchange between local and supralocal settings enmeshed in flows of people, knowledge and things, anthropologists know that the relationships between sameness and difference, between homogeneity and heterogeneity are central to human life and to the understanding of the complex symbolic umbrella we all live under. In the past, some influential anthropological visions of culture were strongly informed by a nostalgic ethos as well as by a search for an organic, harmonious, totality within which genuine links between location, history and individuality thrive. A classic reference here is Edward Sapir's well-known 1924 piece "Culture, genuine and spurious." From this perspective, "internal" factors are highly valued to the detriment of "external" ones and to what Sapir described as a "spiritual hybrid of contradictory patches, of water-tight compartments of consciousness that avoid participation in a harmonious synthesis" (p. 315). This position has long been accompanied by another that views cultural life as an amalgamation of several borrowings. Think, for instance, of Ralph Linton's equally classic piece, the 1936 article entitled "One hundred percent American" in which he stresses how Americans use and copy objects and behaviors of many different origins. Almost a century later, we surely are far from Sapir's position not only because hybridity and fragmentation are no longer seen in a negative way (see, for instance, García Canclini, 1990 and Ribeiro, 1992) but also because for many of us it is clear, as Eric Wolf put it (2001: 312) that "in a majority of cases the entities studied by anthropologists owe their development to processes that originate outside them and reach well beyond them, (...) they owe their crystallization to these processes, take part in them, and affect them in turn." 20 However, resonances of the genuine/spurious tension still seem to interfere in current political ideologies and in the pragmatics of identity politics, especially when interethnic politics is at stake. "Strategic essentialism", a concept in postcolonial theory, coined by Gayatri Spivak, refers to the strategic political use of a supposedly unified social identity. In a different mode, postcolonial approaches also made clear the political role of imitation and of "spurious" culture in settings where subalternity is a hallmark of the relations between different ethnic segments. Here a good example is Homi Bhabha's well known essay, "Of Mimicry and Man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse" (1994), on the role of mimicry in colonialism. For him, mimicry is at once resemblance and menace since the discourses that reproduce imperial dominance carry a weakness that destroys domination from within. The subversive force of imitation imposes itself because nothing is pure replication and new critical interpretations and practices may always arise. The realization that borrowing symbols and discourses from the dominant colonizers always involves re-readings and the agency of native populations has its own tradition in anthropology as the classic 1958 essay by Eric Wolf, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: a Mexican national symbol," testifies.

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21 But what is at stake in the several facets and implications I have been exploring of the relations between culture and copying? Why are imitation and copying criticized yet so needed? Always embedded in a hall of mirrors, in a multiplicity of social relations and representations, we fear to lose our uniqueness, to lose control of who we think we really are and to be dissolved in an amorphous and imagined mass of other beings like us or to become avatars in a world without flesh and bones. Even worse, the fear of losing one's authentic being and capacity of being a subject is also a fear of becoming a puppet, a drone, under someone else's spell, desire and power. 22 Somewhat less dramatically, I will also explore another angle to conclude this part of my argument. Can you imagine the amount of time it would take just to move around and live our everyday lives if each object were a unique object? Copying, repetition and imitation allow for previsibility, which is fundamental to the reproduction of what Anthony Giddens (1984) called practical consciousness, our ability to reproduce patterned daily life. Without this ability the human subject and social life would not exist given the enormous amount of energy we would need to expend constantly to monitor extraordinariness and randomness. In the light of this reasoning, I can also conclude that uniqueness and authenticity are highly valued because they represent a rupture in the chain of repetitions, thereby bringing into light extra-ordinariness and newness. It is the failure in repetition, in the series of events and objects, it is the unexpected, in one word, it is serendipity that constitutes a privileged mode of creating and innovating. In the end, copying and creativity depend on each other because without copying and the flaws it implies there would be no extraordinariness.

Copying and economy

23 There would be no economy without copying. Labor processes and technologies rely on repetition, replication and predictability. Production relies on re-production. Consumption relies not only on innovation but on the capability of predicting an object's usefulness. The multiplication of copied objects for consumption according to previously existing templates (let's call it mass production) is not new. Coins and bottles, for instance, have been mass-produced in the West since ancient times (Boon 2010). However, the Gutenberg Revolution, first, and the Industrial Revolution, later, dramatically increased the mass production of objects. More importantly, the Industrial Revolution, with its accelerated production of copies, imposed the hegemony of commodification as a regime of social (re)production that impacts not only the economy but all corners of human life, in a process well captured by Karl Marx's seminal work, Capital, especially his notion of commodity fetishism. Hereinafter, social actors would be mesmerized by commodities and the market in ways that hindered their understanding of the social forces and the processes responsible for the re- production of their own lives.

24 If capitalist commodity production in the 19th century was already so powerful as to commodify the lives of the inhabitants of industrial nations, imagine today when even the unconscious has been colonized by capitalism. The digital era with its tremendous copying capacity was at its dawn when Fredric Jameson published his prescient 1984 essay on the cultural logics of late capitalism where my last assertion about the unconscious comes from. The proliferation of copies of creative works granted by digital technologies also makes Walter Benjamin's classic 1936 essay "The work of art in

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the age of mechanical reproduction" a little dated. It couldn't be otherwise. His writing reflects the analogue logics of reproduction of his own lifetime. Currently, we are under the hegemony of electronic and computer capitalism. Mechanical reproduction no longer sets the pace of social life. But Benjamin is a great thinker. He anticipated, for instance, that the notion of authenticity does not make sense for reproductions as well as that "technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations that would be out of reach for the original itself" (p. 13). Also, from his work, we can imply that there are no Benjaminian originals in the world of commodities. Originals suppose an aura that withers in systems of mass production. 25 More than seventy-five years later, notwithstanding Benjamin's work of genius, it is possible to see some of its limits. This, as a matter of fact, does not detract from the brilliance of the essay. Quite the contrary, its limitations can only be seen because their potential existence was already in the text. For instance, his comments about the power of photography to accelerate "the process of pictorial reproduction" (p.12) could not suppose the digital convergence that made possible mobile phones to become photographic and video cameras. Nowadays taking pictures or making videos is so easy and massified that it is impossible to calculate how many pictures and videos are made and shared in a year. With the popularization of cell phones, everyone will soon be a camera. Concurrently, the internet has become a fantastic treasure of images. Consider, for instance, what Facebook and Youtube mean as repositories of testimonies. The scope of the Youtube archive is so immense that it makes me toy with the idea that, now, researchers in the social sciences and in psychology have the Jungian "collective unconscious" - a notion I was never truly comfortable with - available for inquiry on their computers. In the same vein, Benjamin saw that with the "increasing extension of the press," "an increasing number of readers became writers": It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for 'letters to the editor' (...) Thus the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. (...) At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. (...) the reader gains access to authorship (p. 24). 26 What would Benjamin write if he could see today's proliferation of authors on blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter? A world where everyone is potentially or de facto an author is a world so saturated with authors that the very notion of authorship seems senseless. But not only writers proliferate on the internet, there are also crowds of photographers, filmmakers and musicians who publicize their work online. Youtube is actually functioning as a screener for the discovery of new talents by the entertainment industry. The number of exhibits of a video is a free of charge global poll. Youtube is a virtual mega impresario and employment agency for artists of all kinds on a global level.

27 But, at the same time, the internet also represents the greatest challenge to copyright. If, on the one hand, economic life depends on copying, on the other hand, economic agents need to control copying since retaining the rights over certain commodities is to maintain a monopolistic market niche. Yet is is increasingly difficult to maintain such control especially over transactions involving the digital culture. 28 Notions of originals and authenticity have long been formulated to help control economic competition. Indeed, coins have been falsified since ancient times and the history of the term piracy (Johns, 2009: 33-34), meaning the antithesis of civilization, is

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associated with the rise of Athens. However, according to Adrian Johns (2009: 8) in his book on piracy, although appropriators of ideas may always have existed, societies have not always recognized a specific concept of intellectual property. (...) [that concept] owed its origins to the cultural transformations set in train by Johann Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. 29 Although patents were granted in Italy and England already in the fifteenth century and "patents controlling the 'rights in copies' of books can be dated to 1563 in England" (Boon, 2010: 48), people started to refer to "intellectual purloining as piracy ... sometime in the mid-seventeenth century" (Johns, 2009: 23) and the first copyright law emerged only in 1709. However, intellectual property as a regulatory mode of economic activities developed only in the 19th century. Currently, as Brazilian anthropologists Ondina Fachel Leal and Rebecca Henneman Vergara de Souza (2010) show, intellectual property is intrinsically linked to the 1994 legal global regime called TRIPS - Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that is administered by an agency of global governance, the World Trade Organization. This international agreement legitimates a "power structure that gives support to an emerging knowledge and information economy" (Leal and Souza 2010: 15). Globalization and the digital age thus brought copyrights and trademarks to the center of economic conflicts. This is why many analysts (see Johns 2009, for instance) view piracy as the greatest threat to national and global economies or believe that the regulatory framework needs to change. Lawrence Lessig's (2004) Free Culture, for instance, is a well-known book on the new scenarios the internet generated regarding copyrights and the free exchange of ideas. For him current laws are used by corporations to "lock down culture and control creativity."

30 At the same time, the production of unauthorized copies is a most stigmatized activity (see, for instance Naím 2005). Nevertheless, it is a major economic force everywhere (Johns 2009: 14) and not only in the so-called "developing nations." Here we enter the realm of the appropriation of flows of global wealth at the grass roots, by people who participate in what I call economic globalization from below and the non-hegemonic world system (Ribeiro 2007, 2011; see also Mathews, Ribeiro and Vega, 2012). What is behind the unauthorized copies of a Louis Vuitton purse or of DVDs sold in street markets almost everywhere? 31 'Trader-tourists' and street vendors of global gadgets, for instance, are but the tip of the iceberg of economic globalization from below which, in turn, is part of the non- hegemonic world system. I call their activities non-hegemonic because they defy the economic establishment everywhere. Their occupations are considered as illegal, as 'smuggling'. In consequence, the trading networks and markets are repressed in the name of legality. This form of trading is usually defined as piracy. Sometimes they are simulacra of superlogos, i.e. highly desired global brands controlled by major transnational corporations in order to keep monopolistic niches of the global market (Chang 2004). The difference between the prices of original superlogos and fake ones is the source of profits that makes working in the non-hegemonic world system worthwhile. Economic globalization from below provides access to flows of global wealth that otherwise would not reach the more vulnerable ranks of any society. 32 Economic globalization from below is made up of (1) nodes, i.e., of markets where global gadgets and copies of superlogos are sold, (2) flows among such nodes, typically

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connected by way of migratory networks and diasporas such as the Chinese and Lebanese ones, and (3) of production centers. Larger nodes of the system feed smaller ones in a trickle-down fashion. The totality of the activities within the markets, routes and production centers of globalization from below compounds what I call the non- hegemonic world system. One may find nodes of the non-hegemonic world system as large as the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, or the city of Dubai, markets that move billions of dollars annually, or in areas of major cities such as China Town in New York and in small street markets scattered on the sidewalks and squares of major metropolises of the world (Ribeiro 2006, 2006a). These are (i)llicit activities, i.e., they are considered illegal by the state and the economic establishment but are socially accepted and viewed as legitimate by their practitioners who do not consider themselves as criminals (Abraham and Van Schendel 2005). The main production centers that feed these global networks are located in Asia, in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and especially in China. The province of Guangdong in China is the center of the non-hegemonic world system.

What's in a copy?

33 The campaigns against piracy are expressions of a crisis of the notion of property and of the related normative frameworks that are central to the reproduction of capitalism (Boon 2010; Johns 2009). This is why copying is taken so seriously by the economic and political establishment. Unauthorized copies of commodities are subversive forces. They denounce the arbitrariness of the extraordinary profits that trademark and copyright allow, they make the promise of consumption to everyone more feasible through unregulated means and defy the monopoly and privileges of the largest corporations of the world. In the end, copying is also a political issue as the expressions copyright and copyleft make clear. Indeed, the struggle to free copies and the innovation processes from the hold of powerful corporations is basically a political struggle (Evangelista 2010).

34 Ultimately, the main issue at stake is whether we want to live in a world completely colonized by flexible capitalism with its tremendous copying capacity and voracious desire to control intellectual property. It seems we are almost there. I see two possible outcomes. Both in one way or another are related to the efficacy of commodification. The first could be called hyperfetishism, meaning the hyper efficacy of fetishism in a world completely colonized by copies without originals and by their central role for accumulation within the cutting-edge sectors of electronic and computer capitalism. In such a realm no one would really care about alienation. The current almost complete disappearance of the term is an indication of this. The other outcome is what I would call hyperanimism, or a return of the metaphysics of animism among the moderns1. One expression of hyperanimism is the prestige currently enjoyed by some theories that attribute agency to things. Perhaps it is a reaction to a world where copies have no originals but algorithms, a reaction to the possibility of a shallow world, finally and completely disenchanted in which human clones may exist. 35 There are other dilemmas brought by the enhanced capacity of copying. I argued that the very notion of author as originator (Schwartz 1998: 248), as someone who gives existence to anything is being challenged by the rise of collective and anonymous global forms of creation. I also argued that the notion of authenticity is being

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challenged by the disappearance of the original and of genuineness. It is hard to anticipate what a world without authors and authenticity would be. Will it be a world with a more collective sense of membership? 36 Finally, copies compel us to think about the dialectics between difference and similarity as a necessary component of perceiving and acting in the world. On the one hand, if everything were the same it would be impossible to distinguish any particular part of the real world, it would be something akin to experiencing an empty space where recognition through contrast would be nonexistent. On the other hand, if all things were different from each other, it would be impossible to predict form, function and process, it would be something akin to experiencing an overwhelming chaotic space where all our energies would be spent to understand the uniqueness of everything and where re-cognition through resemblance would be nonexistent. In short, I consider copying as a total social fact, in Marcel Mauss' (1973) terms. It is an activity that has economic, sociological, psychological, cultural, artistic, scientific, legal, academic and political implications. Indeed, mimesis is a fundamental quality of human life in every sense. As copying has always been central to social, cultural and economic life, and is increasingly more so, it is hard not to conclude that we are on the verge of a great change in the way we perceive and react to the role of copying in the production and reproduction of our lives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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MATHEWS, Gordon; RIBEIRO, Gustavo Lins & ALBA VEGA, Carlos (eds.). 2012. Globalization from below. The world's other economy. London: Routledge.

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NOTES

1. I am aware of Fabian's (1983) critique about the use of "animism." My use of the term does not imply a negation of coevalness nor is it meant to be an invective. For me, what is at stake here is not the notion of time nor its political and ethnographic usage. Rather, what is at stake are the different understandings of humankind's capabilities of changing natural and social realities by means of human labor.

ABSTRACTS

I will answer the question "what's in a copy?" by considering three sets of related issues: the importance of copies in academia; in cultural life; and in the economic world. In academia the current capability of making copies is challenging pedagogical practices and the trust of its members, plagiarism being the most immediate problem. The notion of authorship is also undergoing changes provoked by a proliferation of authors and new possibilities opened up by cyberspace. In cultural life, imitation and mimesis have long been fundamental engines of

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socialization. Our enhanced capacity of copying problematizes, with new intensity, the relationships between homogeneity and heterogeneity, between the genuine and the spurious. In the economic world, the digital era is threatening some of the fundamental tenets of capitalism, especially of its variant called the "knowledge society", regarding the control of intellectual property rights. The gap between normativity and social practices is widening. The many dilemmas and tensions identified in the text are understood as symptoms of two major characteristics of the current times: hyperfetishism and hyperanimism

Responderei à pergunta "o que existe em uma cópia?" considerando três conjuntos de questões relacionadas: a importância das cópias na academia, na vida cultural, no mundo econômico. Na academia a presente capacidade de fazer cópias está desafiando práticas pedagógicas e a confiança dos seus membros, o plágio sendo o problema mais imediato. A noção de autoria também está sofrendo mudanças provocadas por uma proliferação de autores e novas possibilidades abertas pelo ciberespaço. Na vida cultural, a imitação e a mimese de há muito são importantes motores de socialização. A nossa capacidade ampliada de fazer cópias problematiza, com nova intensidade, as relações entre homogeneidade e heterogeneidade, entre o genuíno e o espúrio. No mundo econômico, a era digital ameaça algumas das premissas fundamentais do capitalismo, especialmente da sua variante "sociedade do conhecimento", no tocante aos direitos de propriedade intelectual. Cresce a distância entre normatividade e práticas sociais. Os muitos dilemas e tensões identificados no texto são compreendidos como sintomas de duas grandes características do presente: o hiperfetichismo e o hiperanimismo.

INDEX

Keywords: copy - digital era, knowledge society, imitation, plagiarism, fetishism, animism, property rights

AUTHOR

GUSTAVO LINS RIBEIRO

Department of Anthropology, University of Brasilia

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Networks of desire The specter of AIDS and the use of digitak media in the quest for secret same-secret relations in São Paulo

Richard Miskolci Translation : Miriam Adelman

EDITOR'S NOTE

Translation: Miriam Adelman (UFPR) Received April 1, 2013 and approved May 5, 2013

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Special thanks to Richard Parker and Peter Fry for their insightful comments on this paper.

1 Diogo1, a thirty five year old liberal professional from São Paulo city, cannot remember exactly when he got on the internet for the first time, but from the very start, he used this new resource to arrange dates with other men: "It was completely new, it was at the end of 1990s, I was finishing my undergraduate degree and was only going out with women, but I was really curious about going out with a guy... secretly. I got on chat and also on an on-line dating site. I still have a profile on those sites. And for the last two years I also use Grindr."

2 Diogo lives in an upper middle class neighborhood and works in the financial market. He claims to lead "a predominantly straight life", but has incorporated the use of new digital media into his daily life to such an extent that he reports he "lives on line," using sites and applications to find sexual partners and sustain a social network which he considers he would not have access to if it were not for these technologies. As is the case for most of those who collaborated with me on this research project, he expressed the enormous pleasure he takes in this form of socializing.

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3 Since 2007, I have been doing ethnographic research on men who use digital media in search of other men for love or sex in the city of São Paulo.2 My contact with them began through participant observation in chat rooms for gay and bi-sexual men living there, and I went on to do extensive interviewing - written and through video- conference - with the thirteen who consented to it. I also met five of them in person, four of whom I have been able to stay in touch with, following through on their lives for a period of more than three years. One is more recent. They are all at least thirty years of age today, have university degrees, work as liberal professionals (lawyer, business manager, doctor, economist and musician), are white and upper middle class, and come from Catholic families from smaller cities in São Paulo or neighboring states, but have been living in São Paulo's capital city for many years. 4 They have all been using digital media since 1997, in other words, since the Internet was made available commercially in Brazil, and since that time have made use of it to find partners for sex and love. Thus, the use of digital media that I analyze in this article is marked by generational affiliation, yet not one which would lend support to the notion of beginners' "lack of skill" in dealing with these technological instruments. On the contrary, the people in my research make up part of a generation that is privileged insofar as it was the first to learn how to put these medias to use and how to do it well. At present, according to the Internet Management Committee, close to 80 million Brazilians have access to the web (almost 42% of the country's population) and in São Paulo, its largest metropolitan area, more than two thirds of its 20 million inhabitants have web access.3 At the time my collaborators4 were beginning their use of the internet, however, it had quite a different social profile. Its users were, in their overwhelming majority, people from the upper and upper middle classes. 5 This contemporary Brazilian reality is part of recent social and historical processes in the sphere of sexuality, associated with major changes that began in the decade of the 1960s. This is when, as Jeffrey Weeks has pointed out, the process of liberalization, secularization and growing "individualization" of sexuality begins. He enumerates four major recent transformations in the sphere of sexuality and eroticism: 6 The first is the democratization and informalization of personal relations that sees the gradual development of profound caesuras: between sex and reproduction, between sexual relations and marriage, between marriage and parenting. Second, we see the development of a highly conscious sense of sexual agency, especially on the part of women and increasingly lesbians and gay men (...) Third, I suggest is a profoundly important reshaping of the boundaries between public and private (...) Finally, a heightened sense of "risk" is dramatized by the HIV/AIDS crisis from the early 1980s. (Weeks 2007: XI-XII) 7 The above-mentioned changes are interrelated and, within the sphere of homosexualities, are associated with economic, socio-demographic and political change. And it is in the context of post World War II economic growth and the passage to post-Fordism that the consumer society marked by greater room for leisure and the cultivation of life styles emerges. Since the decade of the 1960s, consumption and eroticism increasingly mold our lives, modifying our subjectivities, identities and social relations (Crane 2006; Gregori 2010; Preciado 2008). 8 With regard to the way these transformations intersect with technologies, Nancy Baym (2010) has argued that, the contemporary use of digital media is the most recent chapter in a long history of the desacralization of personal relations, that is, the

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erasure of boundaries separating the public and the private which began, most probably, with the popularization of the use of the telephone in the second half of the twentieth century. In what was initially a parallel process, personal computers came on the scene during the 1980s. These technological inventions were widely disseminated and moved closer to one another in the following decade. The linking of telephones and personal computers made commercial internet use possible in the decade of the 1990s. 9 In Brazil, this historical turn in modes of communication took place somewhat later, but also more radically. Unlike the pattern prevailing in "central" countries, in which the home telephone became common as of the 1950s, residential telephones in Brazil remained expensive and therefore were commonly found only in the homes of the relatively wealthy upper classes until the 1980s. The privatization of telecommunications midway through the 1990s inaugurated a drastic increase in access to phone lines, giving a boost to commercial internet services, most markedly as of 1997. 10 Nineteen ninety seven is also a crucial year for understanding this new scenario within the context of Brazilian homosexualities, a year marked by several significant events: in addition to the emergence of commercial internet, it was also when the free distribution of drugs for HIV treatment began and the first year that what became the world-prominent São Paulo Gay Pride Parade took place. These facts are thus associated with an historical turn taken in the way Brazilian society understands the universe of homosexualities. 11 The internet made possible the creation of relational networks that would have be unthinkable for previous generations. These networks now connect people who once lived their desires predominantly in a secret or solitary way. Furthermore, AIDS drug treatments began little by little to diminish the sexual panic that had sprung up around the epidemic and, at the same time, gave rise to a new way of seeing AIDS - no longer as a fatal illness but as one that was susceptible to treatment. This has led to the contemporary perspective according to which the disease can be seen primarily as chronic, although it is a view that health authorities attempt to contest (Pelúcio and Miskolci 2009). Gay Pride Parades and columns in newspapers and journals associated with the expansion of commerce directed to a homosexual public have also helped to foster this new visibility. 12 Middle and upper class adult men who grew up during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) were affected by overwhelmingly negative images of homosexuality. Their teen years were marked by the impact of the AIDS-related sexual panic. They experienced the post-1997 shift as adults, thus constituting a veritable transition generation situated between those who had lived most of their lives without access to technologies, medicines and more positive forms of political and media visibility and those who were born and raised within this new scenario. Fernando Seffner's research (2003) on a bisexual men's postal network, between 1995 and 2000, provides an excellent overview of the previous generation, marked primarily by negative images of same sex relations. In his view, these negative images were intensified by the way media presented the AIDS epidemic. Thus, the men with same sex desires who took part in his research attempted to avoid association with homosexuals (2003: 112), preferring to advance the possibility of a bisexual identity. 13 Seffner's work bears some similarities to my research, yet there are also some significant differences. Among the similarities is his focus on men that have sex with

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men, but do not aspire to a gay identity; in terms of findings, his interlocutors also valued secrecy (2003: 240). Among the differences, I would highlight the fact Seffner analyzed a generation born around 10 years before the one I explore, his larger sample (around 500 people, 306 engaged in long exchange of letters) and the fact that he built his connection to them through a non-profit mailing network based on the exchange of letters. In contrast, my research deals with a new generation, my sample is smaller and more socially homogenous and the persons I work with do not consider the possibility of a bisexual identity. It is also important to consider that I made contact with my interlocutors through the internet and that mobile networks increase the role of the "market" in their lives, in comparison with the non-profit exchange of letters Seffner analyzed. 14 In contrast to the generation studied by Seffner and the younger ones, Diogo is a member of the generation that I have denominated as transitional. While previous generations were obliged to deal with stigmas about same sex desire, associated with "perversion", mental or psychological disorders, or religious notions of sin, Diogo's cohort grew to adulthood at a time in which male to male relations began to be seen as an epidemiological problem characterized by the risk of infection. His memories of the epidemic, and also about internet use, go back to the end of the 1990s, but also help to understand the uses that he gives, even today, to applications for mobile devices like tablets and cell phones.

Desires, markets and digital media

15 According to Eva Illouz (2006), the on-line search for partners is part of the history of the relationship between love and capitalism. In her book Consuming the Romantic Utopia (1997), Illouz asserts that after the First World War, new desires were bred within the commercial and media context of mass society. In the West, and particularly in the United States of America, traditions of separate socialization of young men and women and courting within the parental household yielded to a new practice of dating: the romantic encounter in which boy takes girl out for a "date" outside the family abode.

16 The substitution of the old patterns of romantic courtship under strict familial control with the individualized encounter in a public environment is related to changes in values and in the position of men and women in social life, but also to the invention of the automobile, the popularization of the movies and the growth of an entertainment industry. Advertising and film began to work as key forces molding people's desires and ideals (Illouz 1997: 33). Thus it becomes important to draw attention to an aspect that has been frequently neglected in studies on love and sexuality: how desires and feelings are both created by and feed into the creation of technology. 17 If film and publicity have been so fundamental to the invention of "dating" over a large portion of Western society, the former have also encouraged the use of the automobile not only for utilitarian purposes but also and above all, as a place for intimacy and even sexual experimentation. This observation is corroborated by the strong emphasis that advertising has given, throughout the decades, to linking cars to masculinity and sexual conquest. In the case of erotic contacts between men, it was not long before certain movie theaters and certain parking lots in big cities or outside them became meeting places for men seeking sexual contact with other men.

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18 Something similar began to occur with the advent of the revolution in information technologies. Manuel Castells explored this deep social transformation in his works from the 1980s, which he then went on to summarize in The Rise of Network Society (1996). More recent works like Scott McQuire's The Media City: media, architecture and urban space (2008) associate the digital media turn to new means of producing social space and new forms of social agency. In Anthropology, Tom Boellstorff's book Coming of Age in Second Life (2008) shows how an ethnographic approach can improve and expand the achievements made by digital media scholars who have placed priority on issues of economic and public sphere impact.5 19 From a perspective that is also attentive to the impact that these technologies have on private and sexual life and love, digital media can be seen as enabling the creation of selective relational networks within a sex and love market. Relationships emerging through the use of digital media become part of an interwoven dynamics of desire and market interests that make up what I understand as "networks of desire": people's desire for partners in love and sex - or even for friendship - undergirds their use. 20 The men who have collaborated in my ethnography, even those who have female partners or who are currently involved with a man, continue to use chats, websites and applications in search of partners. This then demonstrates that there is no univocal relationship between being without a partner and looking for one online - the search itself should be seen a source of pleasure. It attracts people, among other reasons, because of the possibility that Illouz has noted: it makes potential partners visible. In other words, the media beckon us by removing the blinds around a form of relationship market. In the case of the men in my research, there is a differential component, insofar as they are seeking other men through platforms and applications that provide them with the anonymity they covet, enabling them to express their desires with relative safety and to enjoy prohibited pleasure in their daily lives: flirting with other men. 21 The desire guiding the quest, therefore, cannot be reduced to sexual desire. This is corroborated by the fact that neither momentary satisfaction of sexual desire, nor fulfillment within a relational context, necessarily lead users to distance themselves from digital media. In addition to this particularity in the use of digital media by men who seek amorous or sexual liaison with other men, there is also a market logic that seems increasingly to impose itself through the perception that relationships are time- bound and that there are always other options available, perhaps better ones. In Illouz' view: "No technology I know of has radicalized in such an extreme way the notion of the self as a 'chooser' and the idea that the romantic encounter should be the result of the best possible choice. That is, the virtual encounter is literally organized within the structure of the market (2006: 7)." 22 The premise that it is possible to make romantic choices through the market is reinforced by the most popular mechanism that dating sites offer: the personal interview or questionnaire. In sites geared toward the formation of "stable" relationships, such as the Brazilian version of Match.com, which goes by the name Par Perfeito [Perfect Match], questionnaires have been created in conformance with an ideology of compatibility (Beleli 2012). According to Illouz, one of the most famous, e- harmony, was created by a clinical psychologist who hoped to identify possibilities for successful marriage (2006: 4). These questionnaires/search engines offer an ample number of "choices" for particular questions that have been formulated, regarding

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personal tests, professional profile and the type of partner the respondent is seeking. To a certain extent, the search engine works as an instrument for giving concrete or visible form to the user's desire. 23 In sites geared toward men who are seeking relations with other men, there is a clear sexualization of search mechanisms, with an emphasis on bodily characteristics such as age, height, weight, build, sexual position, eye color, hair, body hairiness, penis size and erotic interests. (Zago 2009; 2013). This gives us an idea why such sites are so profitable - they promote a visualization of what is available in the sex/romance market and apparently offer the means for "making the best choice". Above all, they place the user within a new economy of sex and romance that is no longer marked by the scarcity of dates and potential partners "off line" but rather by the presumed abundance of opportunities and people available on line. 24 Sites that are used for finding "stable" couple relations are almost all "heterosexual", although there is a non-negligible presence of women who seek relations with other women and, to a lesser extent, men who seek men (Beleli 2012: 68). In turn, the chat rooms and sites that are geared toward an all-male population are heavily sexualized. In Brazil, until quite recently, chat rooms and searches set up with a homosexual or bi- sexual population in mind were always situated in the "Sex" department of those sites. It was not until 2012 that the UOL (Universo Online) chat room service, the most popular in São Paulo, created the first set of rooms for same sex romance. 25 The most popular [non-straight] dating sites in Brazil are Manhunt.com and Disponivel.com ["available".com]; their very names imply that their purpose is to facilitate "hunting for a man" or taking advantage of what is "available on the market". There is also significant evidence that dating sites, as a business sphere, tend to associate heterosexuality with a quest for love [romance] and homosexuality with a quest for sex; heterosexuality, it would seem, is associated with some degree of non- market psycho-social compatibility, relegating (male) homosexualities to a market guided by a search/hunt that associates desire and interest. 26 In spite of the above-mentioned separation, it is not hard to find users who affirm that they use online platforms with goals that are quite distinct from those imagined or proposed by those who have set them up or run them. There are women who use sites meant for romance and couple-forming to find sex, just as there are men who seek some sort of stable relationship through sites set up for casual encounters. Furthermore, as observation and follow up on the life of my collaborators in the city of São Paulo shows, encounters that begin merely with sex in mind may turn into something that is more lasting (Miskolci 2013). 27 Use of an on-line dating site or application for cell phone or tablet begins with creating a user profile. This always demands a certain amount of reflection on the self. One must choose a name or nickname, a headline and present a description of oneself which, in Illouz' terms, involves a process of "textualization of subjectivity" (2006: 6) and analyzed recently by the Argentine researcher and Brazilian resident, Paula Sibilia, in her book O Show do Eu(2008) [The Me Show]. This process also leads to the creation of profiles that have been referred to as false or fake, yet studies like Vessela Misheva's (2011) indicate that most people, through their profiles, want to create an "authentic image" of themselves. 28 The search for authenticity represents a challenge, especially when we are guided by our own self-image, which we are also creating for the reception and evaluation of

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others. It is the other who will judge the adequacy or the inconsistency or imprecision between profile and user. That is, an "outside" perspective is just as marked by its own subjectivity as that of the person who created the profile. Thus, both of the people involved become enmeshed in the uncertain logic of contemporary fascination with the notion of authenticity (Turkle 2011: 183). 29 People are also motivated to add at least one profile photo, an aspect that brings the body into the picture, quite literally. Choice of photos is marked by and thus reveals the user's cultural references, but reflects, above all, a process of "commodification" of the self, an attempt to present oneself as "saleable" on the sex/romance market. In a number of ways that are not necessarily made explicit, the user is encouraged to represent himself or herself as a personality of publicity, film and fashion - and to use his/her photo as a "shop window of the self". 30 Part of the charm of using these sites comes from the very process that turns people from media spectators to what could be seen as a type of participant/protagonist. If choice of photos leads to a consciousness of the centrality of physical appearance within the love/sex market, it becomes all the more exacerbated as the person proceeds in filling out the simplest of questionnaires, for which numbers are given or options are checked off: age, height, weight, etc. In sites set up to help men find other men, this is the type of data that tends to be given the most importance. This is evidence of the significance the body takes on between men, established as the principal form of personal capital within this highly competitive arena. 31 Contrary to early analysis of the internet which saw it as a "disembodied" sphere of social activity - probably due to the limited resources that were available therein during the decade of the 1990s - the online world has revealed itself more and more "embodying". When the internet began, written language was predominant. Yet it moved quickly toward other forms of visual expression. This is demonstrated in my collaborators' accounts on how, toward the end of the 1990s, they bought scanners, enabling them to digitalize photos for exchange with other users via e-mail, or for posting on dating sites. Not long thereafter, webcams became available, but were infrequently used due to their price and problems with the speed and quality of connections. At the beginning of the decade of 2000, photos taken in digital cameras started to be posted on photo blogs. No surprise, then, that these cameras soon became a common possession, and photo blog links were passed on to others through Messenger and chat rooms. In more recent years videos, cameras and microphones have become basic elements in whose absence contacts are limited. 32 To a certain extent, the old "date" has become instant and no longer requires physical presence in public space, now substituted through the use of a Messenger or other video-conference programs. This new form of connection is more individualized, anonymous and intimate. It is not rare for users to use a portable computer from their own bedroom or even from bed. Thus, they may present themselves to a potential partner from an already intimate angle, suggesting and often ending up with exposure of nude bodies that both parties involved in the interaction may evaluate. 33 In my fieldwork, the frequent reports I heard of video interaction that ended in blocking the other person after he showed his body or face seem to indicate at least two distinctions that can be made between these contacts and those that are made off-line. Online, people deal with their contacts in a somewhat depersonalized way. Above all, the evaluation of another person follows more rigid patterns and demands higher and

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harder to meet bodily standards than in off-line scenarios. Thus, rather than constituting a "disembodying" medium, digital media reveal themselves as highly- focused on corporeality as the key to contact.6 34 In online contacts between men, there is veritable dispute over who evaluates and who is the evaluator. Competition is contextual and, in the case of my collaborators, mostly men who have commitments to women, they assume that it is the other person - particularly if this person is single ¨who should exhibit himself more". Thus, they expose the body, but reserve their faces as the "reward" for a personal encounter. They are usually men who show skill in transforming invisibility into an attribute for potential partners who are seeking a discreet person "out of the scene": someone who initially refuses to reveal his face on-line, thereby inciting the other's imagination with the possibility of meeting heterosexual men who only sporadically seek homosexual contacts. 35 Most of the men whom I accompanied in their use of these sites applied a pre- conceived model of what they were looking for, such that however wide the universe of potential partners on the website data base, a refined search tends to limit them to a small pool of "interesting" profiles. When they get in touch with the people that they have identified in this manner, the number of replies they get back is even smaller. Notwithstanding the varying degrees of frustration that this scenario produces, men go on searching rather than leave the site. They continue negotiating the terms of their search, since idealized [exact] criteria tend to prove unrealistic. 36 In contrast to what sites boast and clients desire, the use of search mechanisms guarantees neither dates nor relationships. This is due in the first place to the fact that people tend to seek persons who are "better" than they are, that is, partners who are more socially recognized as "good-looking", also associated with aspects such as youth and place of residence. As data, the neighborhood in which a person lives is more than mere geographic location - rather, it denotes social class, income and life style. 37 Thus, in São Paulo, the neighborhood called Jardins [Gardens] and surrounding areas are highly valued. The Eastern Zone of the city is devalued, considered poor and working class -despite the fact that it also includes some upper middle class areas such as Tatuapé and Jardim Anália Franco. A closer look at what is going on enables us to see the centrality that is placed on the neighborhoods of Jardins, Higienópolis and Vila Nova Conceição and the contempt for the Eastern Zone of the city as forms of evaluating consumption circuits and life styles in which the latter part of the city has come to be considered, in on line terms, the "Lost Zone". Elite neighborhoods are, on the other hand, seen as the center where a life of privileged access to consumption and social recognition unfold. 38 As I have already stated, the desire that underlies the search is one of social adequacy as much as sexual desire. In São Paulo, one of the most frequently repeated online questions is, "What are you looking for?". The most common answers tend to be evasive and uncertain. Some people seem not have the faintest idea of what they want, while most summarize similar lack of definition with the oft-repeated, "whatever happens", meant more as a manifestation of being open to the other's intentions than a real willingness to accept anything. The goal of the search is uncertain or highly idealized in the image of a "dream person", yet high value is placed on the search in and of itself, as I was able to verify through the persistent investment that my collaborators make in it.

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39 Some of my collaborators reported that they have kept profiles in a number of dating sites and applications for over a decade already, and use the comments of other users who define themselves as "eternally on line" to show that this is a common situation. Among them, my collaborators mention two profiles that are among the most common on the sites Manhunt and Disponivel.com: men who seem to correspond to or at least come close to the type of profile they are looking for, yet whose continued online presence over the course of the years raises the issue of their apparent inability to find what they are looking for.7 40 The first is the profile of a 28 year-old man who currently presents himself under the headline "Hot Hung Brazilian Guy" - "Dotado Sarado". He describes himself as "macho, well-endowed, 1.93 m, 103 kg, muscular 12%", in which the latter percentage is a reference to his low rate of body fat. In the photos he has posted - almost all of which show him bare-chested on the beach - as well as in his more detailed description, it is apparent that he is trying to present himself in a very standardized way that fits the model of the upper middle class gay male and supposed participant in international consumption circuits. "Dotado Sarado" defines himself as a dominant top guy, provides information on the size of his penis and observes that he does not like to penetrate other men. 41 The second profile to which my collaborators have made much reference belongs to a 39 year old men, who presents himself in the following way: "I AM a MATURE, GOOD TEMPERED STUD...WANNA TRY?" He is a tall (1.84 m) white man who is well built, hairy-chested and whose description begins "I AM NOT an internet 'whore', even though I am here". He defines himself as top and claims to be looking for a relationship in which he can be a "real good husband". 42 The profile of the 28 year old is more sexualized and does not make necessary reference to the desire for a relationship, while that of the 39 year old mixes appeals for sex and affection with the search for a romantic partner. What they both share is a strong emphasis on their own masculinity, as well as a desire for partners who are similarly masculine. They emphasize their active role in intimacy and, among their preferences, list "hetero/bi". It is not difficult to recognize these profiles and all that distinguishes them: they share an interest in placing themselves at a distance from the negative stereotypes of homosexuality that prevail in Brazilian society, associating it with "effeminateness" and "marginality". 43 Everything seems to indicate that their self-representation as men who, although seeking male sexual partners, are in complete conformity with socially recognized and desired notions of the masculine constitutes their greatest appeal. Furthermore, fitting the model so well yet maintaining this "perennial" presence on the net diminishes their credibility. It rouses not only curiosity but - above and beyond all - suspicions regarding their authenticity: what could be lurking behind their extremely stylized self-presentation? 44 Among the negative comments I heard at different moments during my research in relation to these profiles, two suspicions stood out: that of a "promiscuous gay" and of a "man who's got problems" respectively. In the first case, life style and body type are associated with reprehensible sexual behavior; in the second case, in which a romanticized profile presents the person as morally unobjectionable, the suspicion is that this is a person who is incapable of relating off-line. Yet in spite of the criticisms and suspicions that my collaborators voiced, in both profiles we can recognize an

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attractiveness that is attained through some sort of successful attempt at "purification". Dotado Sarado underscores the claim that he is not a drug user and the other man begins his self-presentation by asserting that he is not an "internet whore [puto]". 45 It is not within the scope of this study to speculate on the veracity of posted profiles - that is, the extent to which self-presentation and "reality" actually correspond. Rather, I explore the ideals and fears that guide the way profiles are created and "read" by my collaborators. Notwithstanding their ironic treatment of the quantity of users who claim to live in wealthy neighborhoods, it is precisely the men who reside therein that seem to be the object of their attention. "Effeteness", drug use and promiscuity stand out among their greatest fears, an injunction that is imposed in a manner that is both curious and efficient. 46 Promiscuity tends to be associated with a passive position in sexual relations, while predatory sexual behavior, associated with an active position, is seen as a virile attribute. A man who has a preference for being penetrated tends to be devalued on this market or will at least have a harder time than others in proving his virility and moral rectitude. This phenomenon helps us to understand the existence of so many profiles of men who claim to be top and looking for others who also are, or, as in "Dotado Sarado's" profile, refer to themselves as top men who do not like penetration. The devaluing of passivity also becomes visible through the absence of profiles of bottom men seeking similarly bottom partners. The "top" position is related to a highly valued masculine position that is associated, although without evidence, to men who also relate sexually to women. It may be this which has generated a considerable increase in recent times in nicknames and profiles in which users describe themselves not only as top but also as "straight" - even while they search for other men for sex and love through sites geared toward a homosexual public. 47 The profiles that my collaborators mention most frequently refer to men who present themselves as discreet, "out of the scene", "masculine", top or in variations such as "active/liberal", "flex" and the less frequently used "versatile". The devalued types are, on the other hand, not recalled in detail. "Rejected" profiles fall into the common junk pile of those who deserve contempt because they "live on the outskirts" of town or seem "effeminate", which in effect means that they are recognizably gay - judgments that become even more radical when a person declares himself as bottom.

"Out of the scene" but online: the specter of AIDS lurking in the present

48 Within this highly competitive market, the most valued commodity is the image of complete social adjustment, that is, someone who bears no outward signs of homosexuality. The need to distance oneself and possible contacts from the "gay scene" is evident, corroborated by the expression. "I'm out of the scene" that is repeated in many introductions and profiles. This phrase, according to someone interviewed by Isadora Lins França, comes from the decade of the 1980s, the period in which AIDS- related deaths reached their apex: "If you were a gay out of the gay scene - the expression 'out of the scene' [fora do meio] dates back to that time - , if you didn't hang out in those environments, you were less at risk (França 2010: 50)."

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49 To be "out of the scene" and/or be looking for someone out of the scene was almost imperative during the time in which AIDS was considered fatal and being HIV-positive was equivalent to a death sentence. Internet use began when AIDS was still seen as a fatal disease and HIV positivity, as a highly disqualifying condition. In the words of one man who discovered he was HIV positive: "To die of AIDS at that time was a horrible, shameful thing. I don't know if you can imagine (...) The worst thing that could happen to a person was to contract AIDS. The worst! Worse than being a murderer. The ugliest, most disgusting (Zamboni 2012: 12)." 50 The specter of AIDS was projected onto bodies, as Grant Tyler Peterson and Eric Anderson observed for the U.S. case: "Men's suspicions of other men's serostatus functioned as a form of sexual survival and fostered an environment of systematic corporeal policing among men (2012: 126-127)." Within this context, the use of steroids, originally used to treat AIDS patients, was soon associated with practices of working out at the gym, geared toward body-building. Thus it was at the peak of AIDS-related deaths that this beauty standard emerged, associating health, masculinity, muscularity and, increasingly, lack of body hair. The success of male body hair removal is related to the demand for bodies that evoke strength and youth, meant to produce a contrast between them and those of the generation that had been devastated by the tragic consequences of the epidemic. 51 Commercial internet emerged, in Brazil, at more or less the same time that the anti- retroviral cocktail was invented, but much before the consolidation of the perception of the disease as "chronic". The use of the expression, "out of the scene", at least for the generation that we are looking at here, gives credibility to the hypothesis that for São Paulo men who seek relationships with other men, the use of digital media expanded and was even propelled by the AIDS-spurred sexual panic. A consequence of this is the growing - and now consolidated - association that my collaborators made between being discreet and having a well-muscled body,sarado (healed one in Portuguese). The expression sarado sprang up at the height of the AIDS epidemic to refer to muscular guys. 52 Although my collaborators rarely make overt reference to AIDS, its influence on the way they understand their desire for other men materializes indirectly in the specter evoked by the disqualifying use of the term "gay scene". When they assert they are "out of the scene" and are looking for someone who also is, they express an anxiety to dissociate themselves from environments or behaviors associated with the sexual promiscuity of the time in which AIDS related deaths were at their peak. At the beginning of the 1990s, that is, during the sexual panic, they were teens or young adults who quite likely associated the desire for other men to the risk of getting or dying from AIDS. 53 The AIDS panic not only created subjectivities in search of purification, but a new male corporeality which was linked to a "health and fitness generation" [geração saúde in Portuguese]. In André Masseno's words: 54 This health and fitness generation, with its way of thinking, introjecting and educating the body (..) did not cease to represent a response to the AIDS virus epidemic, which at that time was dizzily spreading over the land. The images that the media exhibited of men with muscular bodies, healthy complexion and playing sports on and around beaches sought to establish a public counterpoint to the proliferation of sunken, wasted

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faces of people who were infected, increasingly present within the social arena of the time (2011: 2219). 55 Thus, at the end of the twentieth century, commercial circuits where luxury and social recognition were sought substituted the older spaces for homosexual social life in major Brazilian cities. The internet emerged from this process and is intrinsically related to it, thus substituting an older "scene" for a segmented commercial circuit. It represents the possibility of individualized sexual access, free a culture or identity that had been equated with illness and the risk of death. 56 Among my collaborators - and this is particularly the case for the youngest ones - there is no longer a direct association between homosexuality and marginal experience associated with dangerous or socially stigmatized places such as saunas and red light districts. Nonetheless, the dominant view that posits any exclusively gay place as "impure" and as a point of contact with other forms of social marginality is still strong; in particular, the powerful myth that was socially constructed over decades associating homosexuality with deviation from social and familial values persists. 57 In the face of this ghost from the past, particularly alive in the minds of men who are over thirty, new digital media have emerged as privileged means that allow people to establish individualized, anonymous and above all, "clean" forms of contact. In fact, these media sell the idea that they work as mechanisms that enable people to select whom they contact. Never before did the market seem to enjoy such affinity with hegemonic morality as it does in these sites and applications that are able to sell the possibility of choosing, thanks to users' subjective willingness to associate the search for dates and partners with a form of purification. 58 In the face of the supposed immorality or superficiality of meeting points and social spaces linked to promiscuity, these platforms offer their clients the comforting idea that it is possible to socialize without exposing oneself, in a controlled and selective way. Although they permit "transgression" of the heterosexism and homophobia that permeate most of daily life, the use of digital media indicate something similar to what Larissa Pelúcio et al. found in their analysis of betrayal sites8: "transgression that favors the [social] order" (2012). 59 Although in fact I tend to agree with Eva Illouz regarding the existence of a sex and love market, my ethnographic work shows that its economy cannot be reduced to a logic of accounting and rationality. Holding strictly to the hypothesis of the interdependence between capitalism and the sex market would inhibit us from looking at elements of this economy that go beyond mere cost-benefit analysis. There are also other values that define our search for love and sex. Even though internet dating sites and applications for mobile devices are part of a commercial circuit, they are seen as instruments to access this circuit without exposing oneself and without a complete acceptance of all of its values. 60 In the face of moral "condemnation" of the "scene" as a space of immorality and promiscuity, the lucrative business of sites and applications offers a supposedly clean space that allows for selection. Search mechanisms act as filters which permit the subject who uses them to gain access to a morally respectable sphere where true and false, pure and impure can be distinguished. Thus, they are effective in providing users with the sensation of being "out of the scene" and appear to offer the possibility to

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chose someone whom "even though he isn't perfect" is still "cleaner", "truer" or "more honest" than someone who one might meet randomly. 61 For a large portion of my collaborators, a "family" morality seems to inhere even in the search for a partner for casual sex. A discourse of responsibility, family values and trust is what seems to most attract potential partners. I confirmed this through my own observations several years ago: the way in which men presented themselves on line as "Machos" or "Brothers" in constituting relations with other men, many of whom are openly homosexual (Miskolci 2013). The "familial" discourse of men who carry on relations with other men in secret "purifies" them, creating the apparent paradox in which their experience of secret homosexuality then appears not as weak character or evidence of "deceiving" their wives and families but as a commitment to socially prioritized values regarding family and wife or girlfriend. In this manner, they get involved in relations between "closeted" men or even others who are not necessarily in the closet in an apparent moral paradox: they tend to create contacts which, for the most part, are doomed to fall apart, interrupted sooner or later by the commitment to the partner with whom they are bound through heterosexual sociability. 62 It is the desire for social adequacy that marks my collaborators' online search for a partner. This explains why they indicate a preference for guys who live in rich neighborhoods, look "straight" and bear signs of hegemonic social position. I am aware of the polysemic meaning of the term "hegemonic", so it is important to specify that it refers here to the reality of upper and middle class São Paulo men, roughly between the ages of 30 and 45 years. For these men, it is the hegemonic which becomes erotic. This leads us to rethink what is meant by the "erotic regime". Rather than as a given or natural system connecting individuals on the basis of private or intimate interests, I suggest that we think of erotic regimes as historical, culturally-varied and grounded, as well (or perhaps predominantly) in collective interests. 63 Erotic regimes thereby become more important than most social theories have recognized. At the same time, they must not be thought of as a tabula rasa from which autonomous subjects seek to constitute relations - in fact, the point of view on which the study of supposedly minority sexualities was based. In this regard, and from the vantage point of what are still initial and exploratory reflections, my ethnographic fieldwork with university-educated men, white and of Catholic origin enables me to recognize a set of hierarchical classifications that are schematically sketched out in the tables below:

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64 The diagrams above that I have tentatively named as "Appearance", "Socioeconomic origin" and "Behavior/values" are meant to have validity only in relation to current São Paulo realities and considered in relational, dynamic terms. The columns on the extreme right constitute the "ideal" that was most frequently mobilized by my research collaborators in their search for sex/love partners, in São Paulo, between 2007 and 2012. The middle column is indicative of how people negotiate between the above- mentioned ideal and what they actually find, and the left column attempts to condense those characteristics that are most frequently rejected, or even avoided, by my informants in their on line search for dates or partners. 65 As a whole and taken in a dynamic and situated manner, these diagrams permit a preliminary approximation to what I call erotic regime or network of desire, which in turn should be clearly distinguished from conceptions that are rooted in common sense or in some psychological theories. These conceptions and their premises naturalize the erotic sphere, associating it to desires which are understood as only or predominantly originating within individuals; perhaps we may think of them as remaining hostage to theories and sexual categories that do not enable us to capture the historical and located character of these social relations. In this case, the centrality of the image of complete social adjustment is evident, and in particular in a very concrete sense, which I will discuss in the following section: the ability to pass as straight.

Network of Desire

66 The desire that drives my collaborators in their use of new digital media is the desire to develop a social life in which eroticism oriented toward someone of the same sex can be expressed as normal. Many of them reported living in families or exercising professions that they qualify as conservative; they even see themselves as men with "traditional

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values". They also commonly describe the ways in which their desire for other men creates tensions - in diverse ways and forms - in their relationships with their colleagues, bosses or parents. In this context, social medias allow them to establish a comfort zone within daily life, whether at home or within the work environment, which then becomes more bearable.

67 Online, these men live a contemporary form of 'being adrift ' that runs parallel to what Néstor Perlongher (2008; 1987) described in his analysis of homosexual flirting in the decade of the 1980s on the streets of São Paulo. The men he observed took pleasure in moving between heterosexual norms and homosexual margins, much like those in this study do through the use of digital media. This is something they experience without ever overcoming their fear of losing the privileges of their supposed heterosexuality. Thus, this "being adrift" is both a source of pleasure and of tension, creating a context in which desire and paranoia alternate and merge, never able to separate completely. In contrast to the men in Perlongher's field, my collaborators search for safe relations online and fear the environment and behavior of those searching for commercial sex in the streets. So, their "paranoia" is an unpleasant and undesired component of their online search. 68 Authors such as Sherry Turkle (2011) and Manuel Castells (2011) argue that we live in an era that is obsessed with being connected, that is we want to be online all the time, connected to others through cell phones, tablets and computers. In my fieldwork, the search for connection unfolds around the fact that daily life impedes or creates particular difficulties for experiencing desire and eroticism. This in turn leads to major psychic investment in one's own sexuality, pleasures and - "apparently" - in running the risk that sexual desires and practices oriented toward other men be "discovered" or have a negative impact on family, professional or love life (for example, if the man has a commitment to a woman). 69 The need to be discreet or secretive in one's relationships with other men underlies the uses that these men give to digital media, so that the desire for continuous connection and connectivity depends on the user's sensation of total control. If our social lives unfold through participation in these networks, what being online offers is the apparent possibility to create - "individually" - a network sociability that is completely adjusted to our interests. My collaborators search for and choose people with whom they establish sexual and emotional ties as well as friendships within an imperative of controlled segmentation of intimate life, insofar as their relations with other men are concerned. In other words, they seek to create a time/space of their own for a sphere of homosexual eroticism while at the same time, leaving the arena of family and work untouched "as much as possible". 70 Iara Beleli argues that the internet appears as a "network of information in which data are configured in such a way as to create in the user the illusion of control" (2012: 58). This illusion of control seems to be one of the major attractions of these media, a way of constructing segmented networks of relations, offering safety in contacts with people who come to learn each others' secret. Adding to this illusion of control and safety is the fact that the use of platforms and applications becomes a "rational" form of search, counterbalancing the powerful stereotype that same sex desires belong to the domain of the irrational and uncontrollable. At the same time, some reflection on a sensation that some of my collaborators report seeking on line - and that they refer to as "adrenaline" - is worth further consideration. It mixes the desire for the prohibited

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and its fulfillment, reinforcing an image that is deeply rooted in Brazilian culture, that men should live their desire without ever losing self-control (Villela 1998, Seffner 2003: 211). 71 Within this online context, sociability is constructed through the imagined position of a relatively autonomous, liberal individual. Thus, it is no coincidence that users participate in a sphere of "weak ties" that is highly coveted by people who in their daily lives, have no one with whom to share their sexual interests nor wish to expose their desire to family members or colleagues. Weak ties seem safer, for, in the end, these are the ones that link them to persons with whom they do not develop deep and lasting commitments, as they would with friends, family members and partners. These "ties" aid them in the constitution of networks shaped through a logic of shared interests, where "friends" are those with whom they share a common interest or activity, falling within what Wellman (1998) has referred to as a culture of network individualism, an individualized version of community. 72 New medias provide degrees of control, the possibility of choice, the safety of anonymity but mainly with the promise that, through them, the user is able to create a personal, alternative or parallel version of society or of the social circles in which s/he normally participates. Residing within these desires or intentions is an erasure of the boundaries between public and private that is similar to that which has created an altered sense of privacy in people; this, in Turkle's view, can be gleaned in the way in which people use the cell phone in public, assuming that "those around them will treat them not only as anonymous but as if absent" (2011: 55). 73 Understanding current usage of digital media requires an analysis of new ways of articulating public and private life, by modifying or even inverting our way of getting to know one another: it now begins within our own personal, intimate space and only later leads to face-to-face encounter. As Beleli observes: "This subversion enables us to reveal desires that we would not be inclined to make known in a first face-to-face encounter (2012: 68)." In other words, intimate and even erotic desires act as defining elements in our relations with others as of the first moments of contact. 74 In my fieldwork, many informants reported that digital medias facilitated sporadic sexual encounters which were followed by a loss of contact with the person. They classified encounters that generate greater contact as less frequent and rare those that lead to the development of a "friendship" or relationship. They attributed this to a variety of factors, amongst which we find a certain disqualification of the other in virtue of his availability. This is similar to what Eva Illouz has noted in heterosexual contexts. Thus, within the online sex and love market, seen as an infinite source of novelty and abundant options, when a face-to-face encounter finally occurs, the person often seems less interesting that s/he did online, representing an unfulfilled possibility, a desire rather than a consummated fact. Moreover, within my fieldwork, off line contact may often "disqualify" the other by virtue of his own sexual availability, sometimes confounded with signs of "promiscuity". 75 This regime of visibility is supported by heterosexuality, which is also the erotic regime in which most of my collaborators participate, maintaining relationships with female partners. Their self-representation as discrete and their search for men who do not bear outward markers of homosexuality are a clear indication not exactly of the eroticisation of the heterosexual man but, more probably, of someone who reveals himself as better at handling the secret and discretion of his relations with other men.

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My collaborators who seek same-sex partners and present themselves as Machos or Brothers also refer to themselves as "heterossexual" or "bissexual", which increases their value within the universe of online searches. In the view of some their partners, they are not straight or bi but rather pass as hetero, which is equivalent to the ability to disassociate the desire for another man from homosexuality, understood as a dislocation of the male gender or as a deviation from collective values. 76 Passing for straight is not only a convincing performance of male gender but also involves recognizable signs of participating in the universe of heterosexual sociability. A generation of men who lived through the height of the sexual panic wrought by the AIDS epidemic has tended to see homoerotic desire as a threat to the most esteemed of social values, such as respect for family. Thus, to consider oneself discreet is not only an affirmation of masculinity but of normality, which signifies commitment to a collective order. 77 In our society, regimes of visibility mark the way men use technologies at least as far back as the invention of the car and the telephone. Cars, for example, enabled men to partake in intimacy with women in public spaces; they used the telephone, historically, to control their partners, for example, to confirm if they were at home on particular days at particular times. The novelty that digital media bring is that they allow a segmentation in access to interpersonal networks and the promise of individual modulation of the level of visibility or public exposure of intimacy. In other words, particularly for men with female partners, the use of these media suggest the possibility of remaining within apparent conformity with heterosexist values and conventions, keeping sexual or love relations with persons of the same sex in secret. 78 This contemporary form of use of digital media seeks to maintain homosexuality within the sphere of the secret, the private and the intimate, awarding public sphere with the privilege of heterosexuality, particularly within the family and at the workplace. Thus, digital media become contemporary instruments that sustain a new type of closet, one which we could perhaps call "the digital closet".9 In consequence, this usage has also shaped users and their relationships, even to the extent of creating a new form of loneliness. The promise of individual and autonomous control over use of these media generates a new demand for growing ability to manage these segmented spheres of sociability. Ability here signifies a growing demand for rationalization and control over interpersonal relations in order to avoid people's paths from crossing. Failing to respond to this need involves the threat of exposure of secrets and love affairs that - at least in their minds - could lead to separations or fractured friendships, to familial rejection and disastrous impacts on professional life. 79 In São Paulo, the networks of desire for male same-sex relationships were fueled by the need to avoid prejudice and social rejection during the public health emergency that unfolded over the late 1980s and halfway through the 1990s. In this regard, at least for this generation, use of digital media was stimulated more by the desire to establish or sustain a heterosexual image than actually to find someone - something which could occur through media use or without it. Internet use spread by virtue of its ability to keep connectivity "under control", an apparently infinite type of sociability that was always reflexive, edited and managed according to one's own interest. 80 Yet this control over media use has revealed itself increasingly difficult, due both to limitations of a technological nature as well as users' experience in handling them. Online privacy tends to leak, and dating platforms attempt to respond to this, albeit

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unsuccessfully, with an ever-increasing amount of privacy control mechanisms. With regard to users, increasingly sophisticated use of platforms and instruments has not protected them from the fear of being "found out"; neither has it led to relations of an exclusively pleasurable nature. Sherry Turkle has enabled us to understand this dialectic of controlled exposure together with continuous complaints and frustrations: the fact that we are dealing with other people in a mediated (and even anonymous) way does not stop us from making a major emotional investment in these relations (2011: 235). In some cases, we may invest even more than in off-line interaction, since online it seems that our connections emerge - right from the start - out of the intimate and the subjective, and through our emotions. 81 Thus, new digital media are more than just mere instruments. They are subjective and corporeal technologies that then go on to change their users through the very values that mark and encourage the way they are employed. When used by my collaborators in searching for someone "out of the scene", these technologies have had the effect of creating and giving bodily form to men who yearn to live their sexual desire for other men without being associated with homosexuality. It is, as I have indicated above, only an apparent social and subjective paradox. It is in fact a phenomenon which we see in another light when we observe it in its historical context. 82 A desire to escape the threat of death and social prejudice brought by the AIDS pandemic began to encourage the search for embodied identities that were collectively regarded as healthy and virile. This makes it possible to assert that digital media can be associated with the development of medications and technologies articulated to the then emergent and now consolidated image of the virile gay, fan of bodily practices such as working out at the gym. The entire scenario can be understood as an attempt to keep oneself at a distance from the widely disseminated images of men who were sick and dying from AIDS. This shows how the AIDS epidemic continues to shape people's lives in the way Herbert Daniel and Richard Parker (1991) have described as a "third epidemic", one that followed the actual spread of the virus and the visibility of its biological consequences. In their view, AIDS became a cultural phenomenon that goes far beyond its biological aspect.10 83 As Paula A. Treichler has stated, "The widespread construction of AIDS as a 'gay disease,' (...) invested both AIDS and homosexuality with meanings neither had alone and produced specific material consequences across a broad social and scientific spectrum." (2004: 6) My research shows how a moral judgment once seen as "scientifically based" remains alive in the representations my interlocutors use to understand their desires. This is particularly the case for the representation that associates same sex desire and risky behavior, which thus requires secrecy and a careful screening of potential partners. This also sheds light on one of the dilemmas emerging from the use of digital media: it is ruled by the imperative of "seeing more than one shows", that is, those who have more clues than the other enjoy a higher degree of safety in their relations. But this also means that one person has greater exposure than the other so that interaction is necessarily unequal and unjust, since having more information is equivalent to having power over another person. The online dispute that has been referred to here, in which the person who reveals himself first or more than the other one rewards the one who exposes himself less with the role of adjudicator, a position that is curiously close to the [male] straight gaze.

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84 The frustration of exposing oneself without reciprocity or, even more, being blocked after showing one's face is equivalent to a probable judgment regarding the person's inability to pass for straight, as well as a fragile "victory" on the part of the one who did not expose himself, whose failure in finding what he was looking for fuses with a certain pleasure in reaffirming his idealized heterosexual position. This regime of visibility, premised on the "discrete man", updates the behavior that Perlongher defined as the terrorist agent of the law (2008: 223), that is the man who engages in sexual relations with another man but in such a way as merely to use or even humiliate him, insofar as the latter is less capable of attaining social recognition as heterosexual. 85 The use of digital media by men of this generation is characterized by their cultural and historical references, the very ones that shaped their desires, including the desire not to "seem homosexual" in a context in which to be identified as one was equivalent to being declared a social pariah. As Treichler (2004: 37) reminds us, during the worst period of the AIDS epidemic, gay men were seen as sexually driven as alcoholics or drug addicts. Rafael, a thirty year old Grindr user and musician from Rio de Janeiro who has been living in São Paulo for more than seven years states: "I hate the gay scene. (...) I don´t want a boyfriend who belongs to it. I can´t stand drugs and alcohol. The milieu makes me sick!." Like most of my collaborators, he speaks from the point of view of someone who is "in the know", since he has been to night clubs and other gay spots, although he feels out of place there. 86 My collaborators are almost unanimous in complaining that digital media do not deliver on their promises. This leads them to substitute or associate the use of different platforms and applications in search of better results. After several years of work following these dynamics as they unfold, I believe that these complaints and user strategies are less indicative of the failure of these medias in making good on what they promise and more indicative of a desire that they function as a panacea for men who have difficulty in negotiating their desire with other people. They are unwilling to negotiate the time and space they reserve to their sexual and love relations with other men within lives that are marked by the priority of work and family - spheres of sociability that are, at least for my collaborators, still heavily marked by heterosexuality, its values and habits. 87 Rafael is the youngest of the contacts I am working with in my ongoing ethnography. Like my other collaborators, he states he "doesn't have a very active social life", is a homebody and a family guy. He also claims that his disappointments in the use of digital media have led him to reduce his expectations in how he employs them - "as a mechanism to meet people but not to start up relationships. Relationships happen off - line." His observation that these medias may create contacts, yet it is only people who can turn them into relationships is - in its simple and direct wisdom - a welcome provocation.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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BOELSTORFF, Tom. 2008. Coming of age in second life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CASTELLS, Manuel. 1996. The rise of network society. Cambridge: Blackwell.

CASTELLS, Manuel. 2011. Sociedade em rede. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.

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DANIEL, Herbert & PARKER, Richard. 1991. A terceira epidemia. São Paulo: Iglu Editora.

FOUCAULT, Michel. 2005. História da sexualidade I: a vontade de saber. São Paulo: Graal.

FRANÇA, Isadora Lins. 2010. Consumindo lugares, consumindo nos lugares: homossexualidade, consumo e produção de subjetividades na cidade de São Paulo. Tese de Doutorado em Ciências Sociais, Programa de Pós Graduação em Ciências Sociais, UNICAMP, Campinas.

FRANÇA, Isadora Lins & SIMÕES, Júlio Assis. 2005. "Do gueto ao mercado". In: James N. Green & Ronaldo Trindade (orgs.), Homossexualismo em São Paulo. São Paulo: Editora Unesp. pp. 309-333.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena. 2010. Prazeres perigosos. Erotismo, gênero e limites da sexualidade. Tese de Livre Docência, Departamento de Antropologia, UNICAMP, Campinas.

ILLOUZ, Eva. 2006. "Romance and rationality on the Internet". Congress of American Sociological Association. Mimeo.

MANALANSAN IV, Martin F. 2003. Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. London/Durham: Duke University Press.

MASSENO, André. 2011. "O rosto do desejo: posições e (en)cantos". Anais do XV Encontro Nacional de Linguística e Filologia. Rio de Janeiro: CiFeFil. pp. 2215-2222.

MCQUIRE, Scott. 2008. The media city: media, architecture and urban space. London: Sage

MISKOLCI, Richard. 2013. "Machos e brothers: uma etnografia sobre o armário em relações homoeróticas masculinas criadas online". Revista Estudos Feministas, 21(1):301-324.

MISKOLCI, Richard. 2009. "O armário ampliado - notas sobre sociabilidade homoerótica na era da internet".Gênero, 9(2):171-190.

MISHEVA, Vessela. 2011. "Online profiles and authenticity". Curitiba: Congresso da Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia. Mimeo.

MOWLABOCUS, Sharif. 2010. Gaydar culture: gay men, technology and embodiment in the digital age. Farnham: Ashgate.

PARKER, Richard & AGGLETON, Peter. 2003. "HIV and AIDS-related stigma and discrimination: a conceptual framework and implications for action". Social Science and Medicine, 57:13-24.

PELÚCIO, Larissa et alli. 2012. "A vida é curta, curta um caso". São Paulo: RBA. Mimeo.

PELÚCIO, Larissa & Miskolci, Richard. 2009. "A prevenção do desvio: o dispositivo da AIDS e a repatologização das sexualidades dissidentes". Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad - Revista Latinoamericana, 1(1):125-157.

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PERLONGHER, Néstor O. 2008 [1987]. O negócio do michê: a prostituição viril em São Paulo. São Paulo: Editora Perseu Abramo.

PRECIADO, Beatriz. 2008. Testo Yonque. Barcelona: Espasa.

PETERSON, Grant Tyler & ANDERSON, Eric. 2012. "Queering masculine peer culture: softening gender performances on the university dance floor" In: John Laundreay et alli (orgs.), Queer masculinities: a critical reader in education. London/New York: Springer. pp. 119-138.

SEFFNER, Fernando. 2003. Derivas da masculinidade: representação, identidade e diferença no âmbito da masculinidade bissexual. Tese de Doutorado em Educação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, UFRGS, Porto Alegre.

TREICHLER, Paula A. 2004. How to have theory in an epidemic: cultural chronicles of aids. Durham: Duke University Press.

TURKLE, Sherry. 2011. Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.

VILLELA, Wilza. 1998. "Homem que é homem também pega aids?" In: Margareth Arilha et alli (orgs.), Homens e masculinidades: outras palavras. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34/ECOS. pp.129-134.

WEEKS, Jeffrey. 2007. The world we have won: the remaking of erotic and intimate life. New York: Routledge.

WELLMAN, B. 1988. "Networks as personal communities" In: B. Wellman et alli (orgs.), Social structures: a network analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.130-184.

ZAGO, Luiz Felipe. 2009. Masculinidades disponível.com: sobre como dizer-se homem gay na Internet.Dissertação de Mestrado em Educação, UFRGS, Porto Alegre.

ZAGO, Luiz Felipe. 2013. Os meninos: corpo, gênero e sexualidade através de um site de relacionamentos. Tese de Doutorado em Educação, UFRGS, Porto Alegre.

ZAMBONI, Marcio. 2012. Dor, ressentimento e negociação: homossexualidade e soropositividade na trajetória de um herdeiro. Teresina: XV Encontro de C. Sociais do Norte e Nordeste.

NOTES

1. I have changed all names used here, in order to preserve the anonymity of those who participated in my ethnography. 2. The research is sponsored by CNPq (The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil, www.cnpq.br) and follows its ethical requirements. 3. The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee website is available in English on http:// www.cgi.br/english/index.htm. IBOPE Nielsen Online has also released data about the internet access in Brazil: http://www.ibope.com.br/pt-br/Paginas/home.aspx 4. I have decided to refer to the participants in my ethnography as “collaborators”, as a way of emphasizing the help they have given me in its development. 5. Boellstorff explores how friendship plays a major role in online relations (2008: 157). Despite his statement that sexual relationships were not the core of his interlocutor’s lives within the social platform he examined, he also adds: “I encountered many cases of bisexual men and women who were heterosexually married, had chosen to be monogamous with their opposite- gender spouse in the actual world, but with their spouse’s blessing pursued same-gender sex and even relationships in Second Life.” (2008: 165)

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6. On this aspect see Mowlabocus analysis of cybercarnality “’From the web comes a man: profiles, identity and embodiment in gay dating/sex websites” in Mowlabocus 2010: 147-182. 7. Despite the fact profiles are public and open to anyone that creates an account on the website, for ethical reasons I do not reproduce them neither offer their user names. 8. Larissa Pelúcio (2012) has researched these websites that are geared toward an audience of married men and women who search for extra-conjugal lovers. They are very popular in Brazil, especially Ashley Madison or AM as people call it. 9. The closet is an American expression that summarizes the way white middle-class men deal with their homosexuality hidding it or exposing it in a process known as “coming out”. For a critical analysis of the racial aspect of the closet script see Manalansan, 2003. 10. Parker and Aggleton have developed this cultural perspective about the social consequences of the epidemic in an inspiring essay entitled HIV and AIDS related stigma and discrimination (2003).

ABSTRACTS

This article seeks to analyze the emergence of an on-line market for love and sex partners in São Paulo, as of 1997, when the internet became commercially available in Brazil. Focusing on the first generation of digital media users, my field research looks at men who entered adolescence or adulthood during the AIDS epidemic. I analyze how the use of digital media has been molded by people's desire to dissociate themselves from the image that homosexuality acquired during the sex panic. In Brazil's largest metropolis, this use of digital media is linked to historical and cultural transformations within the realm of homosexualities, as they move under the aegis of an erotic regime based on the desire for social adjustment.

INDEX

Keywords: digital media, sex market, male homosexualities, AIDS, subjective and corporeal transformations

AUTHORS

RICHARD MISKOLCI

Department of Sociology – UFSCar

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Antonio Arantes et Antonio Motta (dir.) Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

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Foreword

Antonio A. Arantes e Antonio Motta

1 Cultural heritage and museums connote many diverse realities, especially since the last decades of the 20th century when the demand for and access to cultural rights became more diversified and when the social and technological bases of politics and communications were undergoing structural change. Heritage and museums were emancipated from their original function as support for the ideological underpinning of nation states, becoming more flexible and acquiring multiple meanings through their most diverse usages.

2 Anthropological research in Brazil has reacted actively and critically to these changes as may be seen in recent publications and events organized by the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) and other professional and academic organizations. A possible common denominator of the various points of view, theoretical and thematic preferences adopted by researchers has been the understanding of heritage as a complex socio-cultural construction that results from negotiations and conflicts involving actors, objects and administrative practices. Museums have become loci for the production of memory, the reconstruction of collective identities and demands for social recognition. As such, they have become much more dynamic, open to experimentation and new ways of communicating with their publics. 3 These changes came about in Brazil as the military regime came to an end in the mid 1980s and with the promulgation of a new Constitution in 1988. In it, the State was required: "to ensure to all the full exercise of cultural rights" (Art.215), "to protect the expressions of popular, Indian and Afro-Brazilian cultures, as well as those of other groups participating in the national civilization process" (Idem, Para.1); and Brazilian cultural heritage as "the assets of a material and immaterial nature (...) that bear reference to the identity, action and memory of the various groups that form Brazilian society" (Art. 216). 4 This dossier aims to illuminate the conflicts and ideological wrangles of the field in order to present a wide view of the state of the art in contemporary Brazil. Reacting to the diversity of issues and theoretical perspectives of the papers submitted, we decided to organize them in three thematic sections. We then created an introductory section in which, following Vibrant's tradition of republishing important works in its section

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Déjà Lu, we have included texts extracted from debates on the issue and reports on the listing of specific monuments and cultural practices in order to add historical depth to this volume. 5 This section, The 1980s agenda, concentrates on the challenges to notions of cultural heritage and museums as then practiced by leading Brazilian institutions of cultural policy, that were part of the intense mobilization of civil society during the fight for democracy in the 1970s and 1980s. This period represents a turning point in the theoretical and political posture of anthropologists, as they strengthened their relationship with the public at large and those professionals who had, up to that time, been responsible for running museums and developing cultural heritage policy in Brazil and abroad. With a view to providing insights into these questions when they became more strongly voiced by anthropologists - coincidently just three decades ago - we include contributions by Eunice Durham and Antonio Arantes (Arantes, 1984), an unpublished public lecture by Ruth Cardoso and a text written by Gilberto Velho published in the official journal of the National Heritage Institute, all dated 1983. A selection of images has been added to draw attention to the polemical and historical listing of the Afro-Brazilian temple Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká, known as the Terreiro da Casa Branca, as a national monument. The National Consultative Council of the Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage approved the designation on May 31, 1984, on the basis of a report by Gilberto Velho, then ABA's President, and other studies and arguments, among them texts by anthropologists Ordep Serra, Olympio Serra and Peter Fry. 6 In the second section called Heritage, memory and the city, José Guilherme Magnani, José Reginaldo Gonçalves, Roberta Guimarães e Rogério Proença Leite explore different aspects of the way heritage issues affect contemporary urban experience and are related to social and economic transformations in the great cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife. In the fourth article in this section Maria Ignês Mantovani Franco focuses on the building of contemporary collections that reflect the diversity of experiences of urban living. 7 Otherness, the third section, contains texts on the way in which museums and heritage policies are related to social inequalities and discrimination. Yvonne Maggie and Ulisses Neves Rafael analyze museum collections of articles apprehended in Afro- Brazilian religious centres. Livio Sansone discusses the challenges of using digital technologies for disseminating information on the Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage. Lux Vidal writes on the building of indigenous museums based on her longtime experience with the indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque region, and appears giving an interview in a video made by Regina Abreu. Fabíola A. Silva and Cesar Gordon evaluate an interesting experience as co-curators together with the Xikrin People of an ethnographic collection in a university museum in São Paulo. Finally, Ilana Seltzer Goldstein discusses the paradox of the fact that museums and art galleries all over the world and in Australia hold important collections of aboriginal artworks while in their native country they became socially invisible. 8 In the last section, Safeguarding the intangible, interest turns to the challenges to the administration of cultural heritage by recent legislation: the Federal Decree 3551 of 2000, that inaugurated the register and the National Program on Immaterial Heritage in Brazil; and the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, that was ratified by Brazil in 2006. Geraldo Andrello

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tells of the first experience in designating immaterial heritage in Brazil: the register of sacred indigenous sites while Vincent Carelli engages Andrello's work with a poignant video made during the work of identifying these sites. Guillaume Samson and Carlos Sandroni embark upon a comparative analysis of the motives and justifications that led to the inclusion of samba de roda (Bahia, Brazil) and of maloya (Reunion Island) in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind created by the UNESCO convention. To complete the dossier, Daniela Alfonsi and Clara Azevedo describe the process of constructing registers of the memory and practice of playing football in the city of São Paulo with the aim of bringing about an innovative museum experience. Their text is complemented by a video by Aira Bonfim and Danilo Delfino. 9 Finally we would like to point out that in organizing this dossier we have followed the established practice in this field of study of bringing together photographs and audiovisual materials as heuristic devices to dialog with and complement the texts themselves. By the same token, we invited José Roberto Aguilar to participate in the dossier with his paintings entitled Bandeiras dos Visionários (Flags of the Visionaries). His contribution to a dossier that is authored by anthropologists in Brazilian universities questions our certainties and shifts the horizons of our enquiry, not only of our interpretative paradigms, but also the limits of the language we employ most of the time. 10 The theme of cultural heritage necessarily raises a number of questions relating to the kind of country one lives in, the world one inhabits and the future one desires. Increasingly, museums have become places to house views of the world, one's country and the future as well as various ways of expressing them. 11 We thank the authors, editors of Vibrant, the translators, the technical staff and the webmatser who patiently and generously responded to the somewhat uncommon demands that we have been making throughout the process of construction of this dossier.

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Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

Part 1: The 1980s agenda in Brazil

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Reflections on culture, heritage and preservation

Eunice Ribeiro Durham Translation : Peter Fry

1 Since culture is the subject of this seminar1 I would like to begin with a discussion of the commonsense notion of culture. As CONDEPHAAT is charged with formulating cultural policy, it is important to understand commonsense meanings of the term in order to be better able to reach the most diverse public possible. This is relatively easy to do because commonsense notions of culture are part of our own understandings of the concept. Could one of you please give me a commonsense definition of culture? (From the audience): "For the majority of people culture is somehow intangible and far above ordinary things. It includes painting, music, theatre, cinema." This is a good definition and contains important points for us to analyze. First of all, it reveals that culture has to do with the elite. It is sophisticated and therefore requires sophistication to be understood. But this elitist conception of culture contains two dimensions: that of the nature of cultural goods themselves, somehow spiritual and elevated; and that of the special ability that only a few people have to be able to appreciate them. "To be cultured", according to commonsense views, means having a certain amount of knowledge and information that aren't necessary for day to day life and also having a special ability to appreciate culture and to make use of it. In addition, culture so defined tends to be highly valued, not only by intellectuals but people in general, who show respect and admiration for people considered cultured, even if this attitude may contain some degree of ambiguity. Those who research in working class areas know about this. The fact that most people see researchers as highly educated and cultured means that they are treated with a certain respect but also possibly with a degree of suspicion or even hostility as if they were unable to understand the problems of ordinary people. Even so, the idea that the social world is split between "those who know" and "those who don't know", those who "are cultured" and "those who are not" is an idea shared by all.

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(From the audience) - "Do you mean to say that the Secretariat for Culture operates on the basis of this meaning of culture?" I believe so. Apart from anything else, the Secretariat is composed of people who "are cultured", who tend to think that they alone are able to define what culture is. In the case of CONDEPHAT, this means deciding what should be included as a part of cultural heritage and what should not. Coming back to the basic understandings of the concept of culture, we can conclude that it covers diverse aspects. In the first place, the idea that culture is valued and should be preserved establishes a bridge between the interests of CONDEPHAT and those of the people as a whole who give legitimacy to preservationist policies. Secondly, it is important to recognize the multiple referents of the concept of culture, including objects, knowledge and abilities. This second aspect is important because it formed the basis for the way anthropology came to reformulate the term, creating an entirely new concept. The fundamental shift consisted of "de-elitizing" the notion of culture, removing the idea that culture consists of special and superior knowledge produced by certain people of a particular social class. All of the commonsense meanings of culture were maintained but they were extended to include the entirety of human production and all social behavior. The commonsense notion of culture recognizes that certain goods are considered superior and of great symbolic complexity. The anthropological concept of culture starts from the premise that such qualities impregnate all human behavior: in the ceremonial of official receptions as much as in the relations between workers and their bosses; in the painting of a picture as much as the cooking of a cake; in the understanding of a book on geography as much as the ability to move around a city. By classifying all behavior as culture, anthropology presupposes a distinction between nature and culture. The basic idea of the anthropological concept of culture is that human beings as very special animals, whose specificity lies in the fact that most of their behavior is not genetically transmitted. Thus, collective social action is organized through symbolic systems. In this way specific forms of adaptation come into being, producing knowledge and regular patterns of behavior that are learned, transmitted and also transformed from generation to generation. All human behavior is in this sense "artifical" and not "natural". Human beings are animals who build artificial environments through the development of symbolic systems, in which they live. Culture, then, is the creation, transmission, reformulation and transformation of these artificial environments. There is something very democratic about the anthropological notion of culture, based as it is on the recognition of the immense creativity and the abilities of all human beings. This can be seen clearly through a consideration of language. Languages are an extremely rich and complex cultural creation. Almost all humans learn to speak and are, therefore, "cultured". Anyone who is able to learn something as complex as language is fully able to manipulate symbolic systems and thus participate in any cultural activity. Recognizing the importance of the symbolic dimension of human behavior allows us to reposition certain aspects that we found in the commonsense notion of culture. One of them points to the products of human activity, in particular the production of material goods: paintings; monuments; objects. But one must also take into account specifically symbolic production that involves the manipulation of language: literary works; scientific theories; religious systems; judicial codes. The notion of symbolic

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production is fundamental because it allows us to focus on the central problem of the concept of culture: the question of meaning. Seen from the perspective of meaning, the distinction between material and symbolic production disappears. It is easy to see how material goods carry symbolic meanings and that it is the wealth or importance of these symbolic meanings that characterize those goods defined as culture under the commonsense definition of the term. A work of art, and by extension any material product, is simultaneously the matter out of which it is made and the meaning it crystallizes and expresses. But there is another aspect of the concept of culture which I could like to discuss. The commonsense definition of culture covers not only goods, but also the human ability to make them and to enjoy them. When we say that someone is cultured, we mean to say that he or she is well informed and that he or she is able to enjoy cultural goods. A cultured person is someone who goes to a concert and feels pleasure when he or she hears a symphony. So the concept of culture is not passive. It includes not only cultural goods but also the actions surrounding them. Since its inception, Anthropology has been concerned with the dynamic aspect of culture through the study ofcustom. The concept of custom is slightly different from the concept of a symbolic good, because we are not talking about the product of human action, but the very nature of such action; a standardized action that is organized through rules which are symbolically coded and thus, as is the case of cultural goods, bearers of meaning. This is the dimension of culture, which, I would argue, is fundamental. It implies a definition that is based on the regularity and meaning of behavior that have resulted from the manipulation of symbolic systems. If we think of culture in this way it is possible to compare it to the notion of work in Marxian theory. When Marx refers to work he is thinking of material production. But by analogy we can think of symbolic production. One important aspect of work is its cumulative nature: through work, men not only establish a relationship with nature, extracting from her useful goods that may be immediately consumed, but they also produce tools, knowledge and techniques (acquired bodily abilities) that constitute the means of production. Culture is like this. Once it has been created it establishes the basis for future creativity. But there is another important factor in the notion of work and, particularly that of means of production, namely that any good contains dead work that may be brought to life by further work. For example, a pen is the product of work. If it is kept in a drawer this work is effectively dead. But if the pen is then used to write an article through this additional work it becomes an instrument of production. We can think of culture and symbolic production in a similar way. Symbolic products also possess a certain concreteness. But if they are not used, the work that brought them into being is in a sense dead. This is the case of an article that was never published nor read by anyone. But once published, read, discussed and contested through additional "cultural work", it becomes an integral part of culture. The basic idea I am trying to impart is that culture is not so much goods themselves, but their utilization. We should think of culture as a process through which human beings are obliged constantly to produce and utilize cultural goods in order to be able to act in society. This is the only way that collective life can be organized. Mendel's theory of heredity is a good example of what I am trying to say. As we all know, Mendel's theory was ignored for a long time. It was in a way dead. It existed. It

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had been written. But in effect it was dead because no one knew about it or used it. When it was rediscovered and people began to undertake genetic experiments and to interpret the world in terms of the theory, it became alive as a part of culture, a tool for men to act on the world and for them to relate to one another. It may even be understood as a consumer good since I am sure that certain people derive pleasure from understanding Mendel's theory even if they do not utilize it in practical terms. This notion of culture as something that is constantly recreated and re-utilized, a basic instrument for all human action provides us with a powerful analytical perspective just so long as it is not employed in an exaggeratedly utilitarian mode. Culture satisfies more than material necessities. Indeed, much of what we call culture has no practical utility whatever. In most societies, people spend an inordinate amount of time producing things that are economically useless but which are esthetically satisfying and have the effect of establishing social relations. Take body painting for example. Among many indigenous peoples of Brazil a great amount of time is dedicated to painting elaborate designs on faces and bodies. But the adornment survives only two baths. There is clearly no practical utility involve. It is however a source of esthetic pleasure and a way of bringing about social relations. People admire one another, sometimes competitively. Painting a son or husband can show affection. A particular pattern might indicate the member of a kin group or a position in the social hierarchy. Painting bodies may also have important ritual significance. All cultures are full to the brim with apparently useless and frivolous activities. Look at our own habit of baking elaborate cakes, especially for birthdays and weddings. An enormous amount of work is invested in producing cakes that will immediately be consumed. Yet it is such activities that are the pleasure of living, exactly because they celebrate social relations. It is true that everyone worries a lot about making sure they have the basic necessities. Yet whenever possible even these are subject to "superfluous" elaboration. An example of this is provided by the way the Trobriand islanders studied by Malinowski deal with their yams at harvest time. You might imagine that once the harvest is over the yams are simply stored for future consumption. But that is not what happens. Once they have been harvested, the yams are carefully cleaned to the extent that even the filaments are shaved off. Then they are arranged in huge pyramids with the largest and most beautiful yams on the outside so they can be easily admired. A shelter is then constructed to protect them. After a few days and much admiration, the pyramid is broken down and most of the yams are transported with much pomp and ceremony to the house of the farmer's sister's husband where the pyramid is rebuilt to receive more admiring visitors. Finally the yams are stocked in large granaries, which surround the central patio of the village. They are elaborately constructed out of trellised wood with the largest and most beautiful yams on the outside. Thus, food is produced not only to satisfy hunger but also to mark out social relations and to provide esthetic pleasure. We are not so different. In our own society the exhibition of large quantities of highly elaborate foods constitutes the very soul of our celebrations. So it is clear that we cannot understand culture in utilitarian terms. Even the most useful of material goods are immersed in a dense web of social relations, esthetic elaborations and ritual forms from which so much satisfaction is derived. Returning to the notion of culture as signifying action that relies on the manipulation of symbolic tools, we can now try to apply it to the notion of cultural heritage. To do

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this, we must define heritage in terms of the meaning that it has for the population at large, on the understanding that the meaning of a cultural good depends on the way in which it is used in society. We should understand cultural heritage as a series of crystallizations of "dead workers", that has become important again with an investment of "cultural work", through which the good in question acquires new uses and new meanings. Indeed, one of the characteristics of this process of cultural construction lies in the fact that the greater the symbolic charge conferred on the past of a cultural good, the greater the possibility of its future use. So we can agree that there are certain special goods that deserve a special effort to preserve them for future generations because of the meanings they have acquired. While it is relatively easy to discuss all this in general terms, the problem becomes more complex when we turn to the constitution of heritage in our own society. Here we must return to the discussion at the beginning of this talk, namely the elitist nature of the concept of cultural heritage under the commonsense definition of culture. When working with primitive societies this problem ceases to exist since they tend to be relatively homogeneous and egalitarian-all members of the society know the same things, use the same techniques and have equal access to the material and spiritual resources of the culture, which is thus a collective heritage available to all. In a differentiated society such as our own, the question must be asked in a different way. The culture, which is produced by society as a whole, is still a collective heritage. Yet distinct groups and social classes do not have the same access to this heritage, just as these diverse segments of society contribute in their own specific way to this heritage. To a certain extent this is inevitable since the social division of labor has led to such a wealth and complexity of cultural production that no one individual is able to cover it alone. In a differentiated society, different forms of work, regional and ethnic differences, together with various historical traditions contribute to an increase in heterogeneity. In the very process of nation building, groups and classes appropriate specific cultural elements that are frequently used to differentiate one group or class from another. Such cultural differences are often highly valued by the groups concerned and lead to the development of specific moral and esthetic patterns. It would however be disingenuous to suggest that these phenomena are fully reciprocal. The fact that social relations are permeated by power means that certain groups manage to impose their tastes, deciding what is good for the others or, inversely, restricting the access of dominated groups to highly prized cultural goods. In effect, the dominant classes direct material and cultural production, which they then have the privilege of appropriating for themselves. This means that dominant groups in society have access to cultural goods that are different, but also often better and more elaborate than those available to the others. A certain amount of leisure and material resources are needed to be able to acquire and use a sophisticated cultural good, above all those that are considered superior because of the quality and quantity of work that has been invested in their production. The building of a house requiring specialized labor, architects, engineers and a wide range of material resources, is quite different from building a house in a favela. Great creativity can go into building a house in a favela but the material resources will be limited. A considerable amount of creativity and work is required to produce a technically adequate solution for a dwelling. This is true for cultural goods as a whole. Owning and appreciating a cultural good requires a certain amount of

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training, the right education, a certain amount of leisure time and the necessary material resources. This is why class differences are not qualitatively equivalent. The elitist component of the commonsense definition of culture contains a grain of truth in the sense that it recognizes that dominant classes have the privilege to possess the resources, the time and the knowledge necessary to appropriate and appreciate the most elaborate cultural goods. Members of the working class lacks thee resources. Often they are obliged to produce their own cultural goods with much difficulty and shortage of resources. As this kind of cultural production is not stored, it can rapidly be lost. Thus, working class memory tends to be short because it depends entirely on word of mouth. The history of Brazilian trades unions is a case in point. The vast majority of Brazilian workers have not the slightest idea of trade union history. Those who do are the intellectuals in the universities who have the time, resources and training necessary for safeguarding it. So what are workers' chances of recovering the memory of their struggles and traditions? This will depend on the word of mouth within the unions themselves. They lack the time and training to study trade union history. That is why they tend to have access only toe recent data. This is not the case of the dominant classes. We work with much greater historical depth. We are privileged classes because we are able to produce and utilize cultural goods of this nature. Looking at things from this point of view enables us to envisage with greater clarity the sort of policy on cultural heritage that might be developed in a society that aspires to democracy. It is based on the notion that cultural heritage which in effect is produced collectively should be appropriated collectively as well. This means that ways must be found to make sure that members of all social classes gain access to those elements of cultural heritage that are symbolically charged and yet which have until recently been monopolized by the dominant sectors of society. When I think of cultural policy I don't simply in terms of folklore and the populist celebration of popular culture. Surely we must give value to popular culture, but we must also ensure that so-called high culture ceases to be the monopoly and privilege of any one class. A collective heritage must be available to all. Bricklayers, tile layers, plumbers, etc produce great works of architecture. Yet the dominant classes use these buildings investing them with symbolic importance. A more democratic conception of cultural and historical heritage would diminish this kind of class privilege. Heritage policy in Brazil has two important aspects. In the first place, the history that is preserved tends to be the history of the dominant classes. The monuments that are preserved are the ones associated with the historical and cultural achievements of these classes. The history of the dominated is rarely preserved. Looking again at working class movements, it is easy to see that the long history of past political action is not marked by physical objects (monuments, museums, exihibitions, commemorations) that would serve to keep them alive in people's minds. This is not the result of purposeful mystification. Many of these events and cultural achievements are not even perceived by the members of the dominant classes who control heritage policy and who are led, often unconsciously, to think only of their own history and those symbolic goods closest to their own experience. To a certain extent these attitude can be justified by the fact that such cultural artifacts are effectively more elaborate, more "monumental" than those produced by subaltern segments of society. Yet it is true that this process leads to the loss of innumerable cultural goods whose importance has not been perceived by the elites. Thus,

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significant and important historical events that are important for understanding society as a whole are forgotten. Although my presentation of these cultural phenomena is somewhat simplified and schematic, my talk aims to draw attention to a few issues that seem relevant to those who are interested in formulating new policy for the preservation of our historical and cultural heritage. In the first place, I argue that we should to give importance to the use of this heritage in such a way as to ensure that the "dead work" that has been invested in it can be transformed into new symbolic investments. Secondly, we should democratize collective cultural heritage in two ways: by eliminating the material and educational barriers that exclude the vast majority of the population from gaining access to cultural goods that tend to be monopolized by the dominant segments of society; and by preserving and disseminating the cultural work of the working class, making sure that members of this class have access to the tools required for this work, for communicating it to society as a whole and for transmitting it to future generations. These are the ideas I wish to put forward.

Excerpts from the debate

A question from the public: You observed that the cultural goods of the dominant classes are more elaborate and require more work to produce. From the point of view of anthropology does this mean that they are really better? In addition, is there any anthropological criterion for determining which heritage items should be given priority for preservation? Eunice - Two difficult questions. The reply to the first is that there arte no such criteria. It is possible to evaluate the technological processes involved, but even this depends on a plethora of criteria. For example, you could devise as criterion the survival and expansion of the group that carries the culture. If you did that you would be giving value to the arts of war. You could argue then that barbarian culture was superior to Roman culture because it was able to destroy it. The history of humanity is full of examples of cultures that have disappeared because the groups that developed them were destroyed by others. So a truly objective criterion exists. But you may not wish do adopt it (as I would not). I would expect more form a culture than its ability to conquer others. But this is an objective fact that cannot be denied. For example, the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution had the effect of eliminating the possibility of the survival of older technologies. This is an historical reality. We may not approve of all that came with this revolution, but it took place. Lévi-Strauss has argued that this criterion marks two fundamental periods of human history. He pointed to two revolutions that led to fundamental changes in the way natural resources were appropriated and, consequently, in social relations also. The first was the Neolithic Revolution that involved the domestication of animals and plants, the development of pottery and metal working. The second was the Industrial Revolution. In fact we could add a third revolution that Lévi- Strauss does not do. The first revolution was the production of fire, the first industrial revolution, in fact. But the Neolithic Revolution changed the relations between peoples to such an extent that those groups that first embraced it gained such an advantage that the people who did not adopt agriculture, the herding of animals and other Neolithic techniques were relegated to distant and inhospitable

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regions of the earth. They were therefore in a totally disadvantageous position when the Industrial Revolution arrived. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, these were the hunters and gatherers of Australia, the pygmies of the African forests, the San of Southern Africa, and the peoples of Patagonia. Groups who had developed in one way or another the techniques of the Neolithic Revolution had dominated the rest of the American and African continents and all of Asia and Europe. So in a way an objective criterion exists, or rather two: one is the degree of control over nature, the other, related, is the possibility of dominating other groups. The Industrial Revolution brought about such an enormous transformation that societies it passed by lost all competitivity. While we must recognize that societies compete with one another, this criterion is relative. We cannot deduce that the "winning" culture is better than others. You may say that it is more competitive than others. But by other criteria, even technological prowess, one cannot say that one culture is better than another. In Western societies, for example, the technique of working with feathers that had been developed in the Inca empire does not exist. Those adornments can no longer be made because no one knows how. Even the societies of the Amazonian forest have sophisticated techniques for working with feathers that we do not. For certain forms of artisan work, techniques do not vary along with general development; basketry, for example. The best examples of basketry are made by primitive people and not by our own artisans. The same is true of pottery. The ceramics produced in the empires of Mexico, the Maia, Toltec, Aztec, etc. are simply wonderful. The ceramics of the Assurini, a Brazilian Indian society, are also truly wonderful and esthetically highly elaborate, even if somewhat limited by the fact that this small group produces them only for utilitarian purposes. This limits variability. When turning to symbolic production, ritual for example, there are no criteria for excellence. Indeed many anthropologists suspect that the development of western civilization had a negative effect on people's lives. Recent calculations show that members of primitive societies worked generally for four hours per day, using the remaining hours for flute-playing, rituals and other intense social activities. Exhausting work occupied a relatively short amount of time. Even if people died earlier they spent most of their time enjoying themselves. On the other hand, it is clear that the Industrial Revolution ushered in a daily working day of 16 hours in dangerous filthy environments. Manufacture was increased but with it a brutal exploitation of labor. So, returning to judgments of value, we can say that they exist and yet don't exist. As far as technical goods are concerned, a more objective view is possible. You can say with objectivity a pot that is worse than another is the one that cracks when put on the fire. It is also possible (with a certain effort on account of highly variable patterns) to admire the esthetic refinement of certain goods. As Boas wrote, "an artistic good is one that shows a particular rhythm allied to excellence in manufacture". It is possible to judge material objects in this way. Among primitive people, where all production is by artisans, these patterns are shared so that there are commonly shared criteria for evaluating production. The best work is thus recognized. This is the opposite of what happens when such objects become tourist items. This is because the tourists, who have no knowledge of native criteria of quality, often prefer goods considered by them to be inferior. This leads to the almost inevitable deterioration of artisan crafts. While one may define certain goods as better or worse, this is not possible for other

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ones. What, for example, would be the criterion used to claim that a monogamous family is better than a polygenous one or even a polyandrous one? None. It just is not possible to compare them, saying that one is better adapted, or more natural or whatever. They are different. In this case no comparison is possible. That was the first question. I took a long time to reply. The second question? .... P - I asked if there were criteria for creating priorities for the preservation of material goods. E - Well, I think that here also we have two answers. One reply is to say that it depends on the meaning it bears; its historical significance. Some goods that are full of meaning. These can easily be re-appropriated and reutilized. They are always at the top of the list of heritage items to be preserved. The other answer is that it depends on politics. We tend to preserve those things whose political significance is greatest. They may be monuments to the achievements of the dominant classes or the dominated ones. Then there is, I think, a tendency to preserve the greatest variety of cultural products, because so much of human creativity is easily lost. In our own society less is lost because of our tendency to document everything. I recall again Malinowksi when he drew attention to the importance of tradition for the Trobriand islanders. He argued that we had to imagine how their elements of tradition had been obtained and preserved with great sacrifice. In the case of an epidemic that kills four key members of society, they might not be able to build a canoe again. Say there are two specialists who know the sacred myths. Should they die without passing them on, this heritage is lost. All that humanity has created was in effect was brought into being with great effort and in large part with the gross exploitation of many people. The possibility of recovering and developing this heritage as something that circulates in cultural action must be taken into account in the planning of the institutions responsible for cultural policy. P - How would you relate the preservation of cultural heritage and the nation? When was the nation born? E - Well, in the modern sense of the term, the Nation-State came into being through an act of domination. It was based on the fictive existence of a common cultural heritage, which is evidently a gross fabrication. A common cultural heritage was created through the action of the State. Take the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for example. What we call the United Kingdom resulted from the brutal conquest of the Welsh and the Scots who still refuse to see themselves as truly part of Britain; not to mention the Irish. The same is true of France, where, especially after Napoleon, regional languages and place names were prohibited in the name of a common culture. Until quite recently you couldn't register your child by a Basque name. From the point of view of the nation builders, cultural particularities are loci for the crystallization of political opposition such as the Walloons in Belgium and the French speakers of Canada. I am not sure whether this was exactly the question you asked. In Brazil the same process is very clear. The Portuguese conquerors expropriated and destroyed indigenous culture and the very Indians themselves. After this, similar efforts were made to eradicate the cultural forms brought by slaves from Africa. Slavery is one of the most violent forms of cultural destruction. Absolute control was established to impede the reproduction of African culture and to bar slaves from access to the dominant culture. The immense black contribution to Brazilian culture is nothing short of a miracle; the miracle of survival in the face of the most hostile

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circumstances. These are the negative aspects of nation building. But there are also positive aspects. In general the contact between two groups results in cultural enrichment. Most inventions do not occur independently in distinct groups; rather they pass from one to another. This applies to productive techniques, myths, histories, games, hairstyles, bodily adornments etc. Human beings are good imitators like their closest kinsfolk, apes and monkeys. Contact heightens the imagination. Cultural exchange has been continuous throughout the history of humanity. This has two implications for any nation state: the weakening of specific manifestations due to the denial of internal cultural difference; or a strengthening of many diverse cultural aspects that are in their turn appropriated by diverse groups. So as far as culture is concerned, no easy recipe for action exists. It all depends on you're your aims are. P - I am interested in the way you see culture as an ideological issue. When I visited the United States I was impressed by their museums. I was a bit shocked to fnd that they had appropriated cultural items from all over the world and put them in their museums, as if to say, we possess the world's cultures, it is not by chance that we are who we are... E - It is not by chance that we have the world's cultures; we have them because we are who we are, right? Well the question is a difficult one. In the first place I would argue that each people should struggle for its own heritage. But the accumulation you mention is somewhat inevitable. If you think about dominant societies throughout history you will see that they systematically took over the cultural production of the groups they dominated. That was the source of the wealth of Babylonia, of Assyria, of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, of the Holy Roman Empire, of the British Empire, of the United States. Those who have shall have more and there is no way of avoiding this problem. The only way is to have more yourself. The competition for power implies competition for resources. So I would argue that we should leave behind moral indignation and enter the political arena, recognizing that those who have most power have more, right? Let us see if we can be a bit more powerful. There is no other solution. You might prefer that the United States had never bought the works of art that they now show off in their museums. But what would you do? Would you develop a moral attitude of restriction? I think it is unreal to think in these terms. We have to protect our national heritage to avoid it being exported. But to imagine that it is possible to stop countries buying from other countries is a little simplistic. The question of ideology is a complex issue. I am somewhat tied up in this having spent three years trying to write an article about how to distinguish between culture and ideology. To tell you the truth, I don't really like ideology as a concept because it has two meanings with which it is difficult to work. It contains the notion that ideology is mystification. You can't work with the concept of ideology without this idea creeping in, forcing us to begin by distinguishing between what is being mystified and ewhat is not being mystified. As an anthropologist, I start from a different point of view. I prefer to use the term ideology in a wider sense, as a vision or project for ordering society as whole. When we talk of a liberal ideology or a socialist ideology the term makes sense. But for other ends, I prefer to use terms such as cultural relations, cultural policies or political aspects of cultural relations. You went to the United States, right? Go to Mexico. There you will find is a constant utilization of popular culture and indigenous culture as a way of glorifying the State through the so-called Mexican Revolution. En passant one might observe that this is

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something of a hoax. The truth of the matter is that nation states are built on the cultural creation of a common heritage and a common identity. There is no other way to build a society. States do this to a great extent to benefit the dominant classes. You can't get away from the fact that the states themselves operate in this way. Since nations are organized by states and since nations can only function through a common heritage (this is what expresses the idea of nation) this process is inevitable. I see no other way forward. We may say that we should act politically to make this process less exploitative, less violent and less likely to destroy existing cultural diversity. This would be an ideological attitude, a political attitude I would defend. It is, I argue, a necessary cultural policy. Take the case of Brazilian history: a history of the dominant classes. This creates serious problems for the members of the working class who have no access to this history. During recent research I have been interviewing members of segments of the working class, especially those living on the periphery of São Paulo, to see how they understand their relationship to the State. The complex way in which this issue is thought through will not however result in a satisfactory political project because there is a lack of general information. When you talk to these people the State appears as so distant that any attempt to influence it would be impossible. Well this is not a false perception. It is correct because the State is indeed distant and there are no mechanisms available for influencing it. But people do not distinguish between the Legislative Power, the Executive Power and so on. It is important to understand why they do not have this information. This kind of knowledge is power. And members of the working class are only too aware of the importance of acquiring such knowledge if they are to improve their living conditions by obtaining resources through and from the State. The notion of ideology is complex also because it is ubiquitous in the sense that it is always associated with specific interests and political projects. In fact everyone has an ideology. The concept only really works well when related to major projects for social organization. On the other hand, I do not see the possibility of organizing a society that is culturally totally segmented. This is not because it would be economically unviable, but because it would create unnecessary conflicts. I think that all should have access to all cultural goods and that all of them will be ideologically contaminated. This seems inevitable also. P - I understand that dominant groups were interested in preserving things that identifed the dominant within the wider historical orocess. So one would think that a central interest of these groups would be to preserve what we call historical heritage in order to strengthen their own identity. Yet in practice this does not happen. How do you see this question? E - We should look at the present moment. The Brazil we have today is a very recent Brazil, fundamentally post 1945. We must not forget that industrialization brought about a major change in the composition of the dominant classes and their interests. Their interests are different, they are of distinct social origin and their histories are also different. And there are certain specificities in the Brazilian situation, which I find difficult to explain. In Brazil there is a fascination for all that is new. In other countries there is a greater interest in the past. This is not exclusive to the dominant classes. Everyone is enchanted by novelty. I still remember the introduction of louvered windows. It was madness. Everyone removed their venetian shutters to put in louvered windows. It was an immediate success. I remember also when it became fashionable to paint walls in different colors. This was also a success in Brazil. It began among the dominant classes but five years later it reached the town in the

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hinterland where I came from. Soon every wall was in a different color. You would go into your friends' houses and all the walls were different colors and the windows were all louvered; a total success. I undertook my first research project in the hinterland of the states of Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais soon after the opening of the main road linking Rio de Janeiro to Salvador, Bahia. It amazed me to see the building of lots of little houses along the road, all built in "modern" style; the popular appropriation of what was called "modern": with geometric designs on the façades, all in different colors. Impressive. The same applies to clothing fashions. I really can't explain why this is the case in Brazil. People love all that is new. This is not the case in Mexico, so much so that I have the impression that this is because in Mexico the State was so active in promoting an interest in national heritage as a form of strengthening the state and building national identity. P - Isn't this the central issue? E - Now we identify ourselves through things that are new instead of things from the past. That is what is happening. P - But things that are new cannot constitute an identity because they are ephemeral. Is all that is new really new? I don't know. E - You've raised a very interesting problem. I have no ready explanation but it would be interesting to investigate this in relation to the cultural history of Brazil, which is not my specialty. But what I observe is that people identify themselves by their willingness to adopt novelty. If you are working with people who have just arrived from the rural areas and compare your interviews with the opinions of others who have lived for a longer time in the towns, you will see how extraordinarily ready they are to accept change. I also think that this has not always been the case in Brazil, but it is a characteristic.... E - I would just like to mention one more little thing. I am not sure whether all this is new or whether it arrived on the last boat. P - This is old.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E - Yes, very old. I think it is a bit of both. In fact it is not just that which has arrived on the last boat but also something of the novelty produced here in Brazil. In the modern world the economy is internationalized and national cultures have to be looked at relatively. We should not think that each country will produce its own little culture. There is movement always in two directions, at once of uniformization and of differentiation. I cannot present this as a general theory, but as something to be investigated in concrete cases. And just to reply again to another question, I would like to insist that the dominant classes are not monolithic. They are diverse and open to criticism. Indeed the ability to elaborate a critical position is also an example of class privilege since critical faculties are also social constructed. Also, this is often associated with power struggles between distinct segments within the

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dominant classes. And, finally, it is a powerful weapon in the hands of the intellectuals as they struggle to move into a privileged position in this process. Criticism is this also.

ARANTES, Antonio A. 1984. "Cultura, patrimônio, preservação." In: A. Arantes (ed.), Produzindo o passado: estratégias de construção do patrimônio cultural. São Paulo: Brasiliense/CONDEPHAAT, pp. 23-58.

NOTES

1. Lecture followed by a debate held in July 1983 during the seminar Culture, heritage and preservation, organized by technical staff from CONDEPHAAT (Historic, Artistic and Tourist Heritage Defence Council) of São Paulo State. The sound recording was transcribed by Mada Penteado, revised by the author and published in Arantes, 1984.

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On the crossroads of preservation Revitalizing São Miguel chapel in a working class district of São Paulo

Antonio A. Arantes Translation : David Rodgers

1 Here I provide a brief account of a project conducted in São Miguel Paulista in 1977-1978.1 As will become clear over the course of my lecture, the revitalization of a listed building poses problems in various directions. I defer exploration of these various directions to our later discussion: I believe this will be more productive for everyone.

2 The events originated from a proposal by the São Paulo Prefecture's Department of Historic Heritage, which looked to obtain a socio-cultural profile of the population living in the city's East Zone, combining this survey with the revitalization of buildings of historical interest located in the area. This concern was related to the broader issue of revitalizing monuments in areas occupied by sectors of society that did not necessarily share values that, for the conservation bodies, justified their protection.. As a researcher, it promised to be an excellent opportunity for me to explore the insertion of 'historic heritage' in the cultural dynamics of the working classes, specifically in relation to the planned appropriation of a building of particular significance to the history of São Paulo and even of Brazil.2 3 The proposal set out from a premise that, in my view, was false: namely that the population that lived in the area where this building was located, São Paulo's East Zone, was culturally poor and that their forms of expression were slight or virtually non- existent. One of our first clashes occurred precisely around such conceptions, derived from preconceived notions of what 'art' or 'culture' are or should be. 4 Given this situation it struck me as fairly unproductive to engage in an abstract discussion of deep-rooted conceptions concerning what 'culture' or 'art' were, and I proposed a kind of adventure, primarily involving an attempt to discover what so- called 'local cultural production' amounted to from the viewpoint of the people concerned - what they would effectively consider to be 'art.' In other words the research proposed to identify in situ the material on which the agents of the conservation body would work when developing a revitalization project. Clearly an enterprise like this, which took revitalization to be an intervention and sought to

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'excavate' the site where this process would take place - i.e. explore its local cultural production in search of something that was not immediately visible to the administrators - is a long-term project. We decided, therefore, to limit the research field to an area around a single building, choosing the São Miguel Paulista Chapel for this purpose. 5 A research assistant3 and I went to live for a period in São Miguel with the aim of mapping the political field of cultural production in the neighbourhood, the context for the planned 'revitalization' process that, in our view, would have to be implemented through a project developed in collaboration with its intended future users - a somewhat daring proposal at a time when Brazil was still living under the military dictatorship. 6 All excavation work - cultural archaeology, so to speak - necessarily begins with what is visible on the surface. Our starting points were the neighbourhood associations, churches, football clubs, a surprising number of networks of every kind that we discovered there. This was the first surprise. The sheer number of formal institutions found in the district was the first sign that we were going in the right direction. In fact given that most of the population of São Miguel Paulista, the overwhelming majority of which is working class, only returns home late in the evening and leaves very early, often before dawn, to work outside the district, the number of active associations and entities was very high, just as their purposes were extremely diverse. 7 However, it was not actually with the formal associations that we wished to work, in part because we had observed that they were already in contact with various theatrical and musical groups in São Paulo city. Clearly life did not stop on the borders of Penha... 4 Many of these groups indeed took advantage of these contacts to promote and develop their own work. Moreover our focus was on the potential users of the space in question, since we deemed it unlikely that residents from other more distant districts or from the middle or upper classes would take any active part in revitalizing a 'dead' space, so to speak, in an outlying place like São Miguel Paulista.5 Indeed, in contrast to what was being planned,6 we thought it reasonable to consider future use of the Chapel in conjunction with local residents, particularly those without access to the facilities needed for 'artistic' production. 8 So we began the research. Firstly we more or less arbitrarily delimited the area in which we would map the activities of interest to us. We observed that the Penha district was a significant limit, along with Itaquera and Itaim. The social and cultural boundaries of this area of the city are partly defined by the clubs people know, theterreiros that they frequent. Students who go more or less to the same schools and courses, people who share the same problems like a lack of adequate public transport, the poor state of public roads, the rundown housing, the lack of hospitals. Sharing these impoverished conditions made people feel identified with each other and develop some sense of commonness. 9 Having delimited the territory through social (rather than administrative) criteria, we deepened our 'excavation.' Setting out from this network of more visible institutions, we looked to unearth the initially invisible meshwork where culture is produced in everyday life. Our goal was to encounter groups with whom we could discuss the Chapel's revitalization. We began by conducting several formal interviews with directors of neighbourhood associations, Rotary Clubs, the Lions, and we were told to contact various people in the district renowned as experts of its history. In the process

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we collected some really very beautiful testimonies that allowed us to chart a series of historical events deemed significant by local residents. We continued until eventually we began to locate the tips of these roots in the dance halls, barber shops, bars, street corners, squares and markets and in the most unexpected places - including an Esperanto School! 10 However this was only possible after the initial superficial survey and from the moment when we began to live in the neighbourhood. We rented a small room in a kind of slum tenement. Despite our endless explanations, we were almost immediately identified as vendors. People created a history for us, they changed my name, calling me Toninho instead. This process of incorporating newcomers through forms of local sociability was extremely interesting! When you attain this degree of proximity, the social differences among the people with whom you are living become visible and stand out, but at the same time they are culturally elaborated by the group and by ourselves, including even changes of name. I was rebaptized, so to speak: I became Toninho the Bookseller. However much I insisted that I was not, I was a university professor and conducting research, this made little sense to them. They really did not believe me. So I continued to be a 'seller' for a good while until my work as a researcher turned into a reality for them. Unlike other residents, I spent the whole day in the neighbourhood: in other words, I did not leave for work in the morning to return only at night - or go out looking for a job. That made a big difference for them. 11 The first prolonged contacts took place on Saturday mornings, when local people generally met up. In São Miguel, residential blocks with a number of rooms are very common, one built next to another with a passageway between, a shower and a water tank for collective use. So neighbours meet each other at the tank, when going to take shower or in their doorways... The first positive sign of contact we received was on a Saturday morning when a note pushed under our door invited us to an Esperanto course. It came from a neighbour who attended classes on Saturday mornings. This middle-aged man was one of the first to lead us into these informal neighbourhood networks. The other was a barber who after attending to his last customer, at around nine in the evening, would shut the shop doors and, accompanied by two or three other musicians, would play and singchorinho deep into the night. 12 So we gradually encountered these small groups and worked with them to try to understand how cultural production unfolded in São Miguel Paulista, seeing things from a different angle; not from the viewpoint of the institutions that had been the most visible when we first arrived. We began to identify another dimension, equally structured, only in a different way. It is more fluid, much more tenuous, precisely because it lacks the physical infrastructure, institutions, personnel and equipment to make it visible. Very often their raison d'être is this very invisibility, which, in the circumstances of São Miguel Paulista under military repression, was almost a condition of survival. Faced with conditions extremely adverse to the exercise of freedom and the use of creative spaces, in sum, adverse to pleasure, this is precisely what happens: expression is diverted to the bars, the backyards, to sporadic and occasional encounters. And in fact this was looked down on by the neighbourhood's more prominent people. After a month and a half or two months had passed, we left São Miguel having already set down roots there and we began to return specifically for encounters, meetings or interviews, or to make our observations on weekends.

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13 This initial network began to expand and we changed the original research area since there were certain places where the relations were more dense, forming clusters of closely interconnected networks of musicians, poets, painters, illustrators, theatre groups, dance groups, circus performer groups, the aforementioned Esperanto group: numerous people who dedicated themselves individually or collectively to some form of artistic expression, not on a professional basis but regularly in their spare time, or in some cases even during work hours. For example, one duo who we knew first met in the factory bathroom. One was humming a tune, the other replied. They greeted each other and soon formed a musical duo that went on to enjoy considerable success in São Miguel. A theatre group, for its part, was formed in a section of Nitroquímica, a factory that also comprises one of the landmarks in the district's history. Two men who worked there came up with the idea of assembling a theatre group, writing a play and performing it. Their theatre group in fact lasted for 13 or 14 years and became highly popular. A couple who performed caipira music also ran a theatre group that was active for many years. Their group also kept records of its history, ranging from meeting minutes to financial reports, photos and newspaper cuttings. 14 It is also interesting to note that almost all these people had a box of keepsakes with souvenirs and objects representative of their memory and that of the group.Once a more friendly, frank and direct relationship had been established, people would bring a shoebox with papers inside. "Look, perhaps this will be of interest to the research." These were unpublished poems, or theatre plays that had never been performed, some handwritten, others typed or photocopied. In this way we gradually made close contact with their histories and experiences. Though it was not our objective, this history started to interest us since we noted that the landmarks that appeared in the reconstruction of these individual and collective trajectories more or less coincided with the history of the district's urbanization. Indeed people very often used the reforms of the square as temporal markers in their individual and group histories. "Ah, it was in Adhemar's time when they did that..."; or: "it was when they constructed that bandstand in the square"; or: "it was when they added those flower beds to the square..." So this intersection of the trajectories of the groups and the history of the district's central square, where the historic Chapel is situated, became something of real interest to us.

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Couple in Padre Aleixo Square, with a side view of São Miguel Chapel

Photo by Antonio Saggese, 19777

15 The moment had arrived, then, when, in my view, we had the conditions to ask people explicitly: "What do you think of the Chapel? How do you think it could be suitably used?" The Chapel had been closed for around ten years without any regular activity. For them it was an empty space in a square that over time was being increasingly excluded from the daily life in the district. Excluded by the reforms; excluded by the intensity of the surrounding traffic; and excluded above all because the life of local inhabitants was mostly located outside the neighbourhood, i.e. around the factories and workplaces. In other words, there was a general trend towards confinement of these workers in rented rooms and, to a certain extent, this confinement was reinforced (in terms of the district's history) by the history of the square.

16 It was when I sat face-to-face with the people with whom I intended to discuss - with them and not with others - what to do with the Chapel that I revealed my objectives more clearly, not without some embarrassment over the fact I had not been able to do this openly from the beginning. 17 We had got on well before, but from that moment on, when I introduced the issue of what to do with the empty Chapel, our relations gradually became structured differently. We started to meet in a group of five people, who represented five fairly well-known music and theatre groups. Little by little we introduced other participants. After almost a month we began to hold meetings in the Chapel, which were open up to anyone interested. We already had a starting point for discussion. Prior to this, the meetings had taken place at the Esperanto Club, or in the shed used by an amateur theatre group, the Corpo Cênico Parque Paulistano. 18 At these meetings it was decided that they did not want to elaborate an abstract project for occupying the Chapel. They wanted, in fact, to occupy it effectively and in doing so

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express and explain their idea of how it could be used. It was possible at the time to negotiate this proposal with the municipal authorities and with the Diocese, which owned the property, and an agreement was reached for us to put together an experimental program. I had already suggested this possibility in my first contacts with the DPH (Historical Heritage Department) because, despite the good intentions of the people coordinating the work at the time, I had no faith at all in made-to-order plans, which materialize as though out of the blue. The groups also thought that way and, rather than develop a project, preferred to undertake a series of activities that demonstrated what they wanted in practice. 19 They formulated some general principles on how the experimental program should be organized, and this was implanted in more or less two months of production. The programmed activities took place during the course of December 1978. I wish to quickly present some of the principles established by the groups for organizing this activity, which are interesting since they make explicit the ideology that little by little took shape. It should be added that shortly before the start of this final phase of meetings, we had already been using the Chapel at certain times, which is why it had become urgent to begin some kind of activity to ensure access to the space granted. 20 The decision was taken to draft a document to be distributed during the program, in which these people canvass others who wanted to take part in these events, explaining their intentions and the issue of the Chapel's revitalization. According to them, the revitalization was not a question to be resolved by one, two or fifty people vaguely interested in that matter, but by those taking part in the activities. This was why it was very important for there to be no prior divulgation by the newspapers, radio or television. They believed that it would be extremely artificial to include people from other regions of the city, since although they might bring ideas, they would certainly not follow the process for too long. 21 They produced the document and before releasing it publically, the inevitable question arose: "Who signs it?" At that moment what they themselves would later refer to as a Popular Movement of Art (explicitly not a movement of popular art, which was a more widespread idea at the time) had already taken shape. In other words, over the course of this process a nucleus of debate and activity was effectively formed around the question of access to cultural production facilities in the East Zone of São Paulo, with all the characteristics of a popular movement: groups with similar needs, without affiliation to a specific political party and with diverse experiences, working towards common objectives. 22 The document contained the following. At the top of the pamphlet is written 'Popular Movement of Art' and below, where the author's signature usually appears, is written 'Free entry.' Here I should acknowledge that much of the wording that follows is clearly my own handiwork as an attempt to express the views of the assembly:

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"Our objective is to draw the attention of the residents of São Miguel Paulista to the existence of local popular artistic production and to the problems that its producers have been facing. This experimental program is the first activity developed by our movement. As well as offering a sample of what currently exists in this area, we wish to unite people interested in the popular arts and to promote debates on the best ways of stimulating and developing them." 23 One point was considered fundamental by the group: they did not want the issue of the Chapel to be posed specifically or exclusively. Now as before, they did not want to focus their concern or the movement's raison d'être on the Chapel, access to which was

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problematic. Their main issue was their own musical and theatrical productions. Here it is worth adding a side note. As can be seen, the processes of reflection and activity were focused much more on cultural production in São Miguel Paulista - and, in this context, the possible uses of the Chapel - than on the Chapel itself. The focus was not the Chapel, but the social movement that had formed around its use.

24 The document went on: "As well as exhibitions and presentations by the groups, there will be a meeting at the end of each working day to discuss how our activities are progressing. In this way we intend to assess the interest of the residents of the São Miguel region concerning the use of the Old Church [the term local people used for the Chapel] for the development of local arts and for exchanges with groups from other localities. If, as well as watching the program, you wish to present a work or take part in the debates, ask for us at the Chapel entrance." 25 This movement drew together various individuals and groups linked to theatre, dance, music, poetry, fine arts and so on, forming a collective that, at a given moment, took the following decisions concerning use of the Chapel during this program:

26 "1.Use mainly the interior of the Old Church, as well as the side and front porches, the churchyard and Padre Aleixo Square, in accordance with the specific characteristics of each activity." Even when thinking about the Chapel, the focus and object of interest was the Chapel in the Square. For them, the Square and Chapel formed a single unit. 27 "2. Simultaneously present more than one activity in different locations, so that the public is encouraged to move around the space." This is an idea reinforcing the first, that the Chapel was not to be used at one moment and the Square the next, but that people should circulate continually between the Chapel and the Square, the porch etc., and that, with this aim in mind, the main door should be left open, meaning that some kind of windbreak should be used. A suggestion was made to hang some kind of fabric in the entrance, which ended up being a very beautiful patchwork quilt. They also placed a small table there with a cardboard sign declaring "'Free entry.' This was actually very important since many people did not dare enter the Chapel, believing they would have to pay a large entrance fee to do so as usually happened.

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28 "3. Organize permanent shows to avoid reducing the flow of visitors at the weekends and leave the Chapel open every night so that it can be visited after work hours." Because, of course, everyone works, arriving home after eight in the evening. So if they left the Chapel open during the day, during the week, it would be left to the children - which was good - or the flies. So it was decided to keep the Chapel open at night. 29 The Chapel was lit externally by the Regional Administration, which also wired the inside of the building, since electricity was also needed for the spotlights and sound system. In addition, after much insistence, the authority also constructed around 15 benches as the space was completely empty. Once it could be opened at night, a rota system was organized among the participants to ensure the physical integrity of the building. This is very interesting since, as time passed, people began taking control of the building and making it clear that they assumed responsibility for it. The local council staff were responsible for looking after the Chapel during the day, while the key was left at night with members of the Movement who took turns according to the pre- established rota. They ended up sleeping in the Chapel: they did not want to leave. At night, after work - and this is fascinating - people came to see the exhibition and stayed their talking, mainly in the front porch, which began to be used regularly as a meeting point. People met, talked about the program, of course, but also about everything else. And this helped create a climate highly conducive to the revitalization of a space that had been closed for such a long time. There was a horrible smell of insecticide, fleas, leaks, it even rained inside. On the night of a show by a group from Ferreira - set to present a very beautiful bumba-meu-boi - it poured down and everyone was soaked. End result: the group was unable to perform because of the rain! 30 The document continues:

31 "4. Concentrate the live shows by groups on holidays and weekends, since on these days there is a higher flow of visitors and the artists themselves work during the week." The group presentations were made at the weekends, while during the week there was always an exhibition of drawings, paintings, carvings, leatherwork, and so on, and a form of artistic expression with which I was unfamiliar, which they called poesia de varal,

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'washing line poetry.' This involves suspending a cord from which people hang texts with their poems, much like a washing line. Funnily enough an officer from the local council was with us the day that the suggestion was made: "Shall we do some varal poetry?" He corrected them: "No, cordel poetry" ('twine poetry,' referring to a genre of pamphlet-based poetry typical of the Brazilian Northeast). They said: "No, it actually is varal," explaining that the sheets were hung on the line like clothing. It was incredible. They put up a clothes line in the church porch, just like in someone's backyard, then another going in another direction, then another, until finally the line stretched across the entire nave, through the side altar and beyond, extending further and further. Every day someone else would arrive and hang up a poem; they changed the poems, left one for a few days and then replaced it with another; they left messages on one another's poems: "I read your poetry, I liked it," "I thought this was rubbish," etc. Some brought drawings. These activities flourished.

32 "5. Distribute the activities to increase over time, so as to facilitate production and meet the probable growth in visitors." This is another relevant aspect. The group's intention was not to equip the Chapel in such a way that they would become dependent on the facilities, all the paraphernalia needed to produce any kind of work. Their idea was for the Chapel to have water and electricity, and no leaks, so that they could continue their activities with their own equipment. All they requested was the installation of electrical lighting and some benches for people to sit on. No infrastructure was assembled. The loudspeakers came from one group, a microphone was lent by a man who ran a street advertising service. In other words, the equipment used in the program was what the organizers were able to find, borrow and place in the space. The program had to adapt to this independent form of production. 33 Next came: "Free public access to the activities with no entrance fees or collections." This principle was very significant since residents from the district are extremely reluctant to enter the Chapel, given that, at least during the decade after the church's closure as

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a religious venue, a number of exhibitions, book launches and other activities took place that were very clearly elitist by the standards of the Movement's participants. The people visiting the Chapel now had not 'dared' to enter in the past.Some had been afraid: they thought that inside "there were just mosquitos, bats and Indian skeletons" and that entering was extremely dangerous. Others considered that the place had nothing to do with them, they were excluded. Some people would look from afar and would ask things like: "But can you enter?" "How much does it cost?"

34 "As far as possible, avoid competition in the program, encouraging contact and collaboration between the different participants, and between them and the wider public." This idea of community is common in social movements. For them there was no sense in creating an award for the season's best musician or the best drama group.

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Instead the idea was to bring together and unite people around common interests, people who shared the same needs and interests. 35 "Participants must provide whatever is needed for their presentation, asking for assistance from others where necessary. In the final resort, in order to meet the basic requirements for the program's production, they may ask for assistance from the Regional Administration or the DPH, the public bodies to which the Chapel and Square are directly connected." This justified the requests for electricity, benches and exclusive access to the public toilets located underneath the bandstand in the square, which were closed and being used informally. 36 "As well as the programmed activities, stimulate new affiliations and ensure the conditions for the participation of new groups and artists, both immediate and more long-term, which includes allowing the additional space and time needed for staging a theatre play, for example." Various groups were included over the course of the program. The idea was to bring together groups and collectively develop ideas on the use of the Chapel. 37 "As well as neighbourhood groups and artists, stimulate the participation of outside groups who can contribute to the proposal's development." A group from Ferreira also became involved. One of the high points of the program was the encounter between the Ferreira group and the groups from São Miguel Paulista. Firstly because of the encounter itself, and secondly because of the Ferreira group's work, which has its origin in the work of Solano Trindade, and is very strongly linked the question of negritude, which is immediately relevant to São Miguel Paulista's residents. 38 "Hold frequent meetings with the participants at least weekly, freely open to the widely public, to evaluate the progress of the work. Ensure that some members are always on hand and hold at least one meeting at the end to discuss the results and publicize the program, in the district and region especially, as a means of assessing the likely public for any long-term program of activities. Use billboards and mobile services for this publicity..." - which was basically what was used: a mobile loudspeaker service - "...so long as they are free. Do not issue formal invitations or involve media coverage so as not to distort the public and the purpose of the experiment."

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39 Following these guidelines, therefore, the Chapel was occupied for around a month, at the end of which it was closed again and the electricity switched off. From January the 1st 1979, the authorities were once again faced with the problem of the "revitalization of the São Miguel Paulista Chapel." 40 The experiment was highly productive since it showed that, in contrast to the Martins Penna Theatre in a nearby district, for example - which then had a maximum average public of one hundred people per month, despite promoting activities with schools, diploma award ceremonies, and very often attracting highly-rated theatre companies or musicians from the centre - the flow of visitors in São Miguel's case was really astounding, way beyond our expectations. During the second or third week of the program, we decided to leave a visitors' book for people to sign and collected more

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than 4,000 signatures in two and a half weeks. On one hand, this revealed an enormous demand in the region for activities of this kind. On the other hand, and in contrast to what is usually thought, it showed a large capacity for mobilization among the informal networks in which 'cultural activities' are produced on an everyday basis. It also showed the capacity to organize around common objectives, informed by a political knowhow that did not make access to the Chapel the sole objective. 41 In fact they continued to be involved in this dispute until 1982. They have insisted on this demand because, in fact, the Chapel is a space with this historical connection, because it has to do with the neighbourhood's identity, because, until the moment when the square was cut off from the neighbourhood's life, it was the central space in the area, because it was a place where things happened and people met, fought, dated, went to mass, and where children played - the local meeting place par excellence. 42 By chance I was in São Miguel around two months ago and it was startling. They had installed a fun park on the square, on top of the flower beds. There is an enormous carousel in the churchyard. I was left speechless.

43 I believe that this experiment showed all this potential. In fact, as had been proposed initially, the movement continued outside the church. Following the Chapel's closure - the authorities claimed it was closed for restoration, or some such - they carried on working and meeting in other places. 44 I do not wish to go on too long, but another aspect worth highlighting is the desacralization of the Chapel. Obviously the Chapel is a place of religious worship and many people were baptized and married there. By definition, it is a space where the sacred is produced. The idea of the Popular Movement of Art was that the program should begin and end with much noise, like almost any rite. It was, so to speak, a ritual of inversion which we lived in the Chapel over the space of a month. The district's samba school, though very low profile, thought that they ought to appear at the front of the church and the drum section in fact marked the start of the activities one Saturday afternoon. They thought that the samba school should enter the Chapel and that the people assembled there would form a procession after the drums. And that is

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what they did. Clearly it was a scandal from the viewpoint of the Diocese, but not from the viewpoint of the residents, i.e. the actual users. 45 I find this implicit knowhow embedded in social action extremely interesting. It was precisely a rite, in all its different phases, beginning with the separation between the time of the festival and the time of daily life in which the Chapel was seen as an empty and haunted space. By being reused for other purposes, the Chapel underwent an interesting process of reform and redefinition without being perforated by a single nail. The walls, communion table and wooden carvings inside the building were respected at all times - demonstrating a much greater respect, in fact, than the public authorities and the Church itself, officially responsible for maintaining the building, had shown it. They reinterpreted all the spaces inside the chapel. The vestry was turned into a dressing room, the main altar into a stage. Utilized in this way, the chapel became a theatre with a meeting room, which was previously the side altar, and a lighting cabin, which was the choir area. What is interesting here is that the spaces of the chapel and the theatre, being structurally alike, allow this process of re-elaboration that begins precisely with the rupture with its religious use.

Excerpts from the debate

46 Question from the audience: What was the outcome of this proposal to revitalize the Chapel?

47 Antonio: There were various meetings after the 2nd of January, already held away from the church, in which the experimental program was evaluated. The idea was that the program would be a starting point for us to consider how to use the Chapel. And a proposal was made. At that time the idea was as follows, according to the research report sent to the DPH by myself:

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48 "1. Given the difficult working conditions of the groups under study, we are in favour of creating the conditions in the Chapel for developing the day-to-day activities of these groups, such as: rehearsals, a laboratory of dramatic arts, and, having resolved this technical aspect, an art studio and photographic laboratory, activities in which a large number of people are already involved." Fitted with basic facilities and equipment owned by various groups, the old church could become a workshop for the artistic groups and, simultaneously, a space for presentations and leisure use by residents from the region in general, since they could be offered activities like those included in the experimental program. 49 "2. Interferences from the public authorities should be minimized in terms of guiding activities and the latter should be developed as far as possible with the resources of the groups themselves." This interference is undesirable because, coming from sectors of society other than the direct producers of these activities and their public, it will tend to dilute their basic meaning : their structural and symbolic rooting in local social practices.

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50 "3. Impede the absorption of the entity organizing these activities by the public administration, since this would undoubtedly lead to its stabilization and increase the possibility of it being manipulated for purposes other than the cultural development of the popular sectors, handing over more space to vested interests based on nepotism and political-ideological control, as has occurred in São Miguel Paulista, just as the present research shows." 51 These were, we could say, the directives that the group decided to present to the Prefecture. In fact, at the group's request, my report was discussed before delivery since at this moment it had become a political document. So copies were made and reading and discussion groups were organized over the space of two days. It was discussed chapter by chapter and I forwarded to the Prefecture what had been approved in the meetings. For me it was a striking experience. Q: Did the proposal not receive any form of continuation within the DPH? A: No, but these ideas were useful for projects implemented by the group elsewhere. They moved to the front of São Miguel Market, which has a reasonable space on the sidewalk, they performed in other neighbourhoods, at the neighbourhood associations, at unions, at São Miguel Church, at the Morumbi Stadium (when they were invited to take part in a welcome ceremony for the Pope). So they continued to work in line with these conceptions, only in other places. Q: My question is intended to help clarify the earlier one. You had the proposal and you had a document produced by the local population. Did you send it to some government body for it to be implemented? And what was their reply? Why wasn't it implemented? Did they explain why the Chapel wasn't put into use? A: I think this is to do with the place occupied by the building in the city's political- administrative space. It's a very difficult Chapel. In fact this was not the first proposal made to revitalize the building. There were others, various proposals and intentions. But it involves a tricky convergence between the municipal administration, the Church, which owns the Chapel, and the residents of a district with whom communication is very difficult, since it involves precisely the exclusion experienced

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by them and which is inscribed in the history of the square, as everyone knows and recounts. Dialogue has become practically impossible. This is why I said that we experienced a ritual of inversion during this month spent occupying the central space of the district, a space of wealth and privilege, so to speak. It is a bit like "the slave quarters invading the manor house." From the political viewpoint, it requires a very long process for this to happen and the obstacles are more or less of this kind. I don't think there are good guys and bad guys in the story, but there is an enormous structural difficulty surrounding the São Miguel Paulista Chapel, which arises from the fact that it is, in a way, completely out of place. Were it in an upper class district like Morumbi, for example, there would be far fewer problems in terms of its revitalization. That's what I mean.

Q: I think that you managed to develop a research project with some autonomy from the public authorities, though indirectly linked to the DPH and other bodies. Now that we, or you, are working within a State apparatus, how would you see this type of experience, given that the decision was taken to avoid any interference from the State or from other fgures who could encroach on local production, or on the specifc production of São Miguel Paulista? A: In my view, this project is dated. There is no question of reheating and implanting it. However there do exist some conceptions that have lasted and today are found on the side of power. And how is it being done, what is being done now? I think we are trying to face this question concretely in the case of Iporanga,8 which in some ways is very similar to São Miguel Paulista. There we find, on one hand, a city opposed to preservation, for various reasons, where preservation is taken as a form of constraint, a strait-jacket, a sham. And on the other hand, our conception that it is our duty to preserve the city, insofar as it involves listed buildings. It is listed historical centre, considered of regional and national interest, and we have to respond to this interest. However we intend to highlight the question of

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preservation, the relation between preservation listing and use: use by the owner and use by the the people who lives in the preserved site. I think that, structurally speaking, preservation falls in this gap between listing, protection and use. So you have to work within this tension. It is an intellectually interesting challenge. And politically, can one deal with it?

Q: I wanted to ask a question which is perhaps a bit specifc and academic. Did the group's process of reappropriating the Chapel not allow - beyond all those cultural manifestations that form the everyday life of this community - some other connection to be established with the listed building, one that can be traced back to its origin? I think this question is

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interesting because situations like that of São Miguel are in some ways clearly marked. They must stay in the memory, transforming and acquiring another meaning that, perhaps, is revealed even in the fear that you mentioned some people had of entering the chapel because Indians were buried there... And again I would say that these locations are clearly marked, citing the example of Carapicuíba9 where there is a very lively artistic manifestation that refers back to its origin in the dance of Santa Cruz. A: Yes, people spoke a lot about the festivals once held on the Largo da Igreja [the churchyard], the festival of Santa Cruz especially. Some people had taken part in these festivals and recalled them. I focused quite a bit on this question because in their view - and I agree - the problem was that the festivals had turned into shows. Like the square, the festivals were gradually isolated, separated from the life of the neighbourhood. Much was said about them, though. And they returned during the course of our activities - obviously reworked over the month - specifically in terms of the distribution of food. Someone always turned up with buns or coffee - this idea of commensality between the participants of ritual celebrations - this became recuperated during the program, though obviously on the scale of the occupation that we were involved in, only very weakly. A reisado dance was also brought in. People knew that an old man who works in a crèche had an Alagoan reisado group with which he would regularly perform. They went there... and invited the reisado. They went to fetch the reisado, they went to fetch their traditions, so to speak, such as they were able to reconstitute them. It is worth mentioning that the following year the neighbourhood's samba school chose 'São Miguel de Ururaí' as its storyline, a nativist theme on the origin of São Miguel. This work, in fact, posed a number of questions and dug up some of the site's origins as well as this question of the earliest foundations of São Miguel Paulista, which was the theme of the samba school, there is the origin of the migrants. We received the proposal to put on five or six theatre plays on the migrants, how they arrived and so on, why the district has so many residents who migrated there relatively recently. So this question of origins was touched on during the occupation of the Chapel.

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Q: I wanted to ask about this reutilization of the chapel for purposes other than religious. You said that it was transformed and that there is a structural relation between the stage and the altar, the vestry and the dressing room: the space can be reutilized because there is a common structure that enables this to be done. I think this idea is interesting that a space can have multiple uses and, in the end, it is the community and the use that confer this meaning; confer it, but not in a random way. There is a structural base that allows this or that use to be given. Now, if this use that was given, a more cultural use, the cultural activities of the community itself, in a way, did your proposal not contain a kind of cultural agitprop? Was the population not persuaded to attribute this use? Where did the religious use go, so to speak? Was it not possible to perceive through the research whether there

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had been a conflict or not? Because there is a conflict, in fact, to decide what the fnal use of the building will be. Did the need for some kind of religious use not surface?

A: It surfaced, yes. I think, though, that these activities are not mutually exclusive. Not all non-religious activities harm the sacredness of the temple equally. One serious transgression, however, was the use of the drum in the church. The dances to drums in the church were considered forms of desecration... Apart from this, there was an immense degree of acceptance for the proposed use. It was not a problem because the idea was not to transform the church into a dance hall, but into a workshop - work that would be mostly shown outside the church. The idea was not to centralize everything inside the church. In the report I even transcribed comments from people who came to the church during the program, such as the following: "To be honest, I would prefer that this location were used for its original purpose, that is, for religion, or for [registering] the past of these districts." To return to your question, a very

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strong proposal would be to form a research centre on the neighbourhood's history - an oral history - on memory of the district. Going back to the comments recorded in the visitors' book: "...for religion, for the past of these districts, São Miguel, Itaquera, Guaianazes. But it is better it is used for the arts than remaining closed." Or again: "I thought this exhibition was very good and used the chance to get to know the church that, though it may not seem like it, I have wanted to see for the past three years. It was really good indeed, those pictures, photos, and especially the poetry, since they don't just teach us things, they show us a bit about ourselves"; "I thought it was cool, interesting"; "I liked it a lot because I was able to relax with my friends." People became involved because it was a place for meeting, relaxing and chatting. Q: I can see that the physical space of the church is similar to the space of the theatre. I wanted to know if the project was concerned to make this similarity explicit. A: No. The space in question is a church, a sacred space, a temple; but on the other hand it has the structural possibility of being explored as a theatre space. This latent possibility to a certain extent shaped its use. The first proposal, which I think is the most obvious one, was the transformation of the church's space, the altar and nave, into a stage and audience area. This was modified over time as the group, from the outset, was concerned not to limit activities to the inner area of the church, but to develop them in the square too. Their objective was the square itself, the church for them is part of the square. And there was more flexibility. The final proposal was for the church to be minimally equipped to be able to function as a workplace for the groups, which was a shift away from the original idea of occupying the church as a theatre. This is more dynamic.

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Q: At any rate, if we return to the origins of the space - and I think this is very interesting - the terreiro, which is the most suitable name for the churchyard since it was a Jesuit terreiro, also had this role originally. Catechism was much more effective with an open space and the liturgy transformed into a dance with the indigenous peoples, rather than taking place inside the church. Some say that one dance was worth more than three hours of talk from Father Vieira. A: That's true. Q: The indigenous dance is performed in front of the church. A: On this point, to be fair, one of the reforms made in the square that deserves highlighting is precisely the recuperation of the space of the terreiro, the churchyard, because it really allows the reconstitution of this original view of the whole. Now it just needs a complementary measure, diverting the traffic. Q: Another thing occurred to me during this debate, after your talk: a building closed for a long time, but where attention remains concentrated, is never really uninhabited since the imagination ends up populating the place with a series of buried indigenous spirits, with ghosts. This building just became inhabited in another form. And, in some ways, this ends up creating a distance between the community and the building. To some extent it becomes seen as an object from a mythic universe. As the chapel becomes occupied, this provokes a dilution of these meanings created over time. My question is: were these elements evaluated in your work? A: It amounts to an interference, for sure, an intervention. I agree that an activity like this creates new meanings for the space, changes its representations. People who associated the building with a mystery from the past, which is a value that should be preserved, were able to live in the space, enter it, look from the altar, open the vestry door and peer inside, touch the things there. This changes the relation. Moreover, if you propose a use different from the one originally intended for the building, the distance becomes even greater. But this isn't inevitable, because sometimes a building continues to be used for a purpose similar to the original... I am thinking, for

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example, of those English constructions, the colleges, buildings constructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which are still used today as schools. And that's interesting, because you live among the bats, the ghosts, stories are told about them, people visit the attics; everything is mysterious, but forms part of the history and, in some form, the present reality. Q: It is integrated... A: It is integrated with your life. The problem I see in relation to São Miguel is that it amounts to a segregated mystery: a mystery and a prohibition. People are not allowed to live with the mystery. In this sense I read the proposed use as a transgression: people really penetrated a prohibited space. As well as being mystery, it's prohibited. Q: So some of the meaning attributed to the group's action in relation to the chapel leaks into other prohibitions. It begins to acquire a strong symbolic aspect. A: Exactly, it disturbs the notion of a mystery associated with the past. Perhaps this is why this huge interest emerged concerning São Miguel's history, which was not only a theme of a samba school storyline, but also provoked a very large interest in forming a research centre on the history of São Miguel, on the history of its immigrant population.. Q: I fnd these aspects interesting, usually they are not taken into account, this sensation of mystery, these other inhabitants of the building. This I fnd extremely rich. A: Yes. The silence, the emptiness, the need to fill everything in. The need to maintain the silence, the emptiness, the mystery, is not taken much into consideration. It is as though everything had to be filled in, unveiled. Q: I wanted to return a bit to the research, when you talk about those more formal associations, the Lions, Rotary Clubs and so on. What happened in terms of the involvement of these groups? Did they dispute the use of the chapel too? How did the issue of the local leaders and the movement turn out? A: They were disappointed because they wanted to appear at the big inauguration, which never took place. They exhibited some works and stayed there the whole time. But they did not keep up with the pace of the work, they were left behind.

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Q: The movement itself, the process itself to some extent pushed them away...

A: It went in another direction and it became clear that it was difficult to share. In other words, the accent shifted, but they took part anyway, they exhibited works, appeared a number of times.

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Q: But in the sense of manipulating this work politically, capitalizing on this movement, were there no problems in relation to these associations? A: My impression is that the difficulty of continuing the group's work was not due to this factor, no. I think the problem was more the conflict generated between the movement, the bishop and the prefecture (Arantes & Andrade, 1981). But I would like to add the following: there was a positive outcome for the group since these conflicts, which lasted more or less two years, considerably strengthened the group's identity, because, clearly, identity is always contrastive and the alter of the group ended up being precisely these institutions, the Church and the Prefecture. These disperse networks, which I cited at the start of my talk, ended up forming a movement, a political entity in the neighbourhood, an entity that for a while occupied the political setting of the neighbourhood and that knew how to maintain its distance from electoral manipulations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

However due to the difficulties of implanting the project in that district, the problems of establishing an effective space (they even rented a house on one occasion), the movement gradually fell apart. But during the process the group clearly formed a social and political identity. And the group always maintained itself as a 'front' - this is also very interesting - the idea never crystallized that it would absorb all the groups in a single political entity. Perhaps this was due to the fact that its strength came precisely from its constitution as a front that combined facilities made available by various partners.: one found space in a parish hall, another in a neighbourhood theatre, someone else a room in union offices, and so on. This formed a pool of resources enabling a collective proposal to advance. But afterwards the political setting changed too. This was a very specific period, since the military dictatorship and its repressive apparatus were still in force. Much changed after the elections, even during the electoral process, and soon after.10 It changed a lot. I don't know if the group would have been interested in maintaining this sort of outlook and organization.

ARANTES, Antonio A. & ANDRADE, Marília. 1981. "A demanda da Igreja Velha: análise de um conflito entre artistas populares e órgãos do Estado". Revista de Antropologia. 24: 97-121. ISSN 0034-770.

ARANTES, Antonio A. 1984. "Revitalização da Capela de São Miguel Paulista". In: A. Arantes (ed.), Produzindo o passado: estratégias de construção do patrimônio cultural. São Paulo: Brasiliense/ CONDEPHAAT, pp. 149-174.

NOTES

1. Lecture followed by a debate held in July 1983 during the seminar Culture, heritage and preservation, organized by technical staff from CONDEPHAAT (Historic, Artistic and Tourist Heritage Defence Council) of São Paulo State. The sound recording was transcribed by Mada Penteado, revised by the author and published in Arantes, 1984. The text was revised by the

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author for the present publication. The conflict between the preservation agencies, the Diocese of São Miguel Paulista and the Popular Movement of Art, which underlay the process described here, was explored in Arantes & Andrade, 1981. 2. São Miguel Church is located in the area of the former village of São Miguel de Ururaí, founded in the mid-1560s, today the district of São Miguel Paulista in the municipality of São Paulo. Dedicated to the Archangel Michael (São Miguel Arcanjo), it was run by Jesuits until 1750. The first chapel, built around 1580, was replaced by the current chapel in 1622, as inscribed on the lintel of the main doorway. The porched building with its single nave, main chapel and beamed ceiling was constructed from adobe and covered with a gable roof. Inside there are pieces made from carved jacarandá wood, officially registered by IPHAN, CONDEPHAAT and COMPRESP. The building was listed at federal level in 1938, state level in 1974 and municipal level in 1991. 3. Tadeu Giglio, then an undergraduate student of Social Sciences at Unicamp. His collaboration has been essential to the accomplishment of this project's goals. 4. A reference to the district that at the time had the highest concentration of public services and commerce in the East Zone. 5. The distance by car between the middle and upper class districts in São Paulo and the São Miguel Chapel is over 40km across the city centre. 6. The revitalization proposal with the most backing among the preservation agencies was to install a Museum of Popular Sacred Art in the chapel. 7. All the other photos published in this article were taken by an unidentified photographer and belong to the archive of the São Paulo Prefecture's Department of Historical Heritage (DPH). They are presently published with DPH's permission. 8. I refer to the challenges posed for reconciling the need to shelter the homeless population and the recuperation of a cluster of 69 wattle-and-daub buildings listed by CONDEPHAAT that had recently been severely damaged by rains and the flooding of the Iporanga River. This urban centre was originally a mining hamlet formed in the 17th and 18th centuries. 9. An architectural complex formed by the Jesuit village formed at the end of the 17th century to confine an indigenous population. Listed by IPHAN and CONDEPHAAT. 10. The Constitutional Amendment that re-introduced direct elections for governors and senators was issued in 1980, inaugurating a pre-electoral period that culminated with the elections of November 15th 1982.

ABSTRACTS

The seventeenth century São Miguel Chapel, located in a working class district of São Paulo city, had been in disuse for around 10 years. In the second half of the 1970s, the body managing this listed building faced the problem of how to revitalize it given the profile of the surrounding local population. The response to this problem, grounded on an initial ethnographic survey of local cultural production, involved mobilizing a substantial number of popular artists from the city's East Zone and led to the emergence of the Popular Movement of Art. Through an account of this experience and a debate with technical staff from CONDEPHAAT, the article explores some of the issues that situate the preservation of cultural heritage within a field of conflicting interests and ideologies.

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A capela seiscentista de São Miguel, localizada em bairro popular da cidade de São Paulo, mantivera-se sem uso por cerca de 10 anos. Na segunda metade dos anos 1970, colocava-se ao órgão gestor desse bem tombado o problema de sua revitalização em face do perfil da população do seu entorno. O equacionamento dessa questão, a partir de levantamento etnográfico sobre a produção cultural local, acarretou a mobilização de um número significativo de artistas populares da Zona Leste e a emergência do Movimento Popular de Arte. Por meio do relato dessa experiência e em debate com técnicos do Condephaat, são explorados alguns temas que inserem a preservação do patrimônio cultural num campo de conflito de interesses e luta ideológica.

INDEX

Keywords: cultural heritage, revitalization, mobilization, participation, popular movement Palavras-chave: patrimônio cultural, revitalização, mobilização, participação, movimento popular

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Building senses of "community" Social memory, popular movements and political participation

Ruth Cardoso Translation : Peter Fry

EDITOR'S NOTE

Translated by Bureau Translations and revised by Peter Fry

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This lecture was performed during a seminar held by the experts of CONDEPHAAT - Council for the Preservation of Historic, Artistic, Archaeological and Touristic Heritage of the State of São Paulo, on June 28, 1983. Document available at CONDEPHAAT's Documentation Center, transcribed from audio recording by Mada Penteado in 1983, edited for this publication by Claudia Cavalcanti and revised by Antonio A. Arantes.

1 When reflecting on the demands that social movements have been making towards the preservation of cultural heritage, it is very important to consider that these movements have become so widespread and embedded, that nearly everyone feels the need to create a memory for themselves.

2 In political science literature, a sense of "novelty" stands out. There's talk of new political players; that social movements compete with the parties even wanting to them. The participants in the movements disagree of course. This very new aspect of movements is always highlighted when analyzing their political role. It obviously it exists and is relevant. But when we come into contact with people who participate in social movements, neighborhood groups or any type of localized movement, what we observe is a search for history, a past, a memory and often the fabrication of that past. This seems to be a phenomenon of fundamental importance. This is curious, since these people don't necessarily identify themselves as participating in something new in society, but always in something which has its roots far in the past and which has

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reached the present after confronting many difficulties. They do this to justify their actions, and to establish a common ground and identity among themselves. 3 It is exactly this characteristic that I find interesting to discuss. But, prior to that, I feel the need to explain what I refer to as "social movements". Social movements are not organized; they do not have specific rules and a rigorous structure. Exactly for those reasons, they are known as "movements". Social movements can refer to a great number of things, so I agree to use that denomination in its broadest sense.1 4 They began appearing in association with the movements of the 1960s, which were quite innovative in their forms of political participation and were not directed necessarily against the State; they identified the powers against which they fought elsewhere in society, not exactly in the State, and brought together people who shared a common experience of discrimination. Here I refer to the feminist movement, the black movement, the hippie movement, the ecological movement, born at different times, yet all of them, to a certain degree, arising from the political transformation that occurred in society, especially in the capitalist world, in the 1960s. 5 I believe that these movements had at least two common features which allow them to be known as such: a certain spontaneity (they were at least perceived as movements that were born spontaneously, created by or appearing from a decision of the people, due to a perception of discrimination, be it against women, against blacks, etc.) and, at the same time - this being their main feature -, they were egalitarian movements, that avoided organizational structures and hierarchical distinctions; all their members participated equally, all decisions were made collectively. Indeed, their main objective was to combat hierarchy. 6 This is exactly why these and other social movements emerged as an outlet for a new way of doing politics, avoiding the political parties that are tiered, structured organizations with clearly defined paths of representation. It is impossible to imagine a political party that doesn't use some sort of representative mechanism, such as the election of delegates, delegates who elect other delegates, and so forth. 7 One of the main topics of discussion in these movements then was to question hierarchical mechanisms of representation and to establish egalitarian participation. Even if they didn't do so explicitly, they did it in practice. They created operational methods which were considered communitarian. In fact, this word was, and still is, of great importance. I believe that, in a distant future, when someone decides to write about the political history of this period, they will be impressed with how often the word "community" is mentioned, with various different meanings. But certainly this word became so widespread exactly because it represented something very important. It went on to be used as a counterpoint to any form of organization which based itself on representation, thus sustaining a hierarchy. It represented a vision that, at last, egalitarian participation was possible. 8 This also unchained the discussion on participation. And what is political participation? It is this fight against hierarchy, based on the principle that where there are hierarchical mechanisms there are also mechanisms that exclude the people from participation; and where people hold equal positions, all issues can be discussed by everyone so as to produce an opinion created by a group as a whole- the so-called community. In other words, representative mechanisms were being criticized by this

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ideology which was basically started in the 1960s, and which was basic to these social movements. 9 The implicit question, therefore, was how to establish truly democratic relations between society and the State? How can this relationship be forged? "Participation" is simply a word to describe this: the relationship between society and the State; and there are different ways of participation, according to the different channels through which this relationship may organize itself. It was this relationship that was being called into question, in the search for a more democratic mechanism for this communication among society as a whole, which at this point was already extremely segmented and extremely complex and featured very intricate communication mechanisms. 10 In the face of all this complexity, held together by the mass media alone, society suddenly struggled to find its identity. Discussion began on the heterogeneity of society and possible relations with the state. That was when this theme of a greater democracy emerged, based on the concept of equal participation by all members of a movement and the perception of a common experience. And here we also see a telling difference when compared to traditional channels of participation. I cite the parties as an example, but it could be trade unions, and it could be all institutionalized channels, which are based on mechanisms of representation. 11 The idea of a political party, for example, is that people agree on some key elements of their viewpoint on society that, generally, are expressed through a platform. The parties' platforms are not always the same; the way they carry out these platforms is not the same. Therefore, a party expresses a vision of society and people agree or disagree. The party doesn't care who they are, whether they are white or yellow, young or old, women or men. These segments are not included in this definition, at least not when related to affiliation to a party, or a trade union, or a professional organization.... If I'm a lawyer, I can belong to the Bar Association, and the Bar Association can represent me before the state, regardless of any other characteristics I may have. I am there merely as a lawyer or as a unionized worker, and so on. 12 In social movements, it doesn't work that way. People are there as people, in their full capacity, as participants of these movements. The very idea of the movement is that there is a common experience that must be shared. Thus, a women's movement is a movement that brings women together. It may include a few men who are sympathetic but, the truth is that no matter how much a man can contribute and fully support the feminist movement, his participation in this movement will never be equal to that of women. Why? Because they have experienced a type of discrimination that is exalted due to the fact that they lived through it firsthand. It is not an experience which can be fully understood by those who have not lived through it. Supposedly, men can rationally understand that women are discriminated against, but the movement's ideology is based on the experience of this discrimination, rather than the rational acceptance of it. 13 The same is true with the black movement. Although there are whites who support the black movements, they are nonetheless discriminated by this movement. They will always be supporting elements, and at some point they will be reminded that they did not live through the definitive experiences which would cause someone to "buy into" the movement entirely.

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14 I mentioned the two most obvious examples, women and blacks, which are based on visible biological and physical characteristics and, therefore, are easier to identify. But, when there are not such clear markers of difference, these movements create elements that imply and celebrate a common experience. That is why they are alternative. They always assume that they have a life experience that is of another nature, and that one must, in fact, have to go through this rite of passage, to have certain experiences in order to be regarded as a true member of these movements. 15 Take, for example, the hippie movement in the United States, and we'll see that the mix between the hippie movement and drug use created the possibility of a highly celebrated and shared experience. This created a great political sense of direction, joining together different groups and distinct forms of activity. Of course, not all hippies were necessarily have to be users of the same drugs, but the shared experience of illegality, of the drug "buzz", etc., was celebrated and considered a key element, since they were at the basis of society's rejection,. 16 When we think of current-day Brazil, what comes to mind are not these movements, although they also exist. Here, when we talk about social movements - or at least in the opinion of sociologists and political scientists who discuss social movements -, we are referring more to the neighborhood groups, which make direct claims on the State. 17 I always like to draw a parallel between two things, which are sometimes artificially separated: movements which demand some type of action are seen as essentially political and positive, since they belong to the lower classes, and those other movements to which I referred, which are interpreted as interclass movements, a "middle-class thing", something that we should be wary of. 18 I think it's time for us to start looking at what similarities, if any, these movements present, and find the relevant aspects of these similarities, which I believe exist. I don't mean that they are the same thing, but I think there are several similarities, which in their organizational modes, in the concept of basic equality for all its members. They share the spontaneity arising not from top down decision-making but from the bottom up. The language we use frequently suggests such ideas are born spontaneously, when people suddenly realize that they share certain experiences and situations. 19 And what are these shared situations for the popular movements that demand action from the State here in Brazil? The fact is that they have been deprived of something: neighborhoods on the outskirts of São Paulo are not connected to the city’s water and sewer system, they lack schools, and their population is systematically discriminated against. And so, it's exactly this language, which talks about these neighborhoods in a uniform way that creates this kind of "community", fruit of the creation of ideological mechanisms. Here, I don't mean to use "ideological" in a critical way, nor do I mean to say that it mystifies anything. There is no mystification. It results from this form of organization, a set of ideas that guide action without mystifying anything; on the contrary, they contribute to social action. 20 This ideology, forged as such, promotes equality between people, even when this equality is not effectively present. When we look at a neighborhood association, we often find people of quite different social and economic backgrounds, a much more diverse mix than we could probably find within a trade union, for instance. However, this diversity is often overlooked. It is systematically forgotten. Let us contemplate this ideology, which considers everyone to be equal. Although one is the owner of the

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bakery and the other is from a family living on minimum wage - it is clear that the level of income and consumption are quite different -, in fact they are equals because they are both residents of a low-income neighborhood, where everyone experiences the hardship of dealing with inadequate transportation, schooling, etc. 21 Of course they face quite different realities within that experience, but the fact that they face the very same challenges in their daily routines is greatly emphasized. This fact overshadows the differences, not because the differences cease to exist - obviously, the difference between minimum wage and five times the minimum wages is real and will continue to exist forever. But there is a way to work around this issue: emphasizing the common element of their life experiences. And that is why one can build a political player - neighborhood associations, church groups or whatever shape this organization takes - which can act as one. A common real experience, something that people have actually lived through is not an abstract identity. It is an identity that is always forged out of a specific discrimination and something that is considered to be an injustice; it brings people together and leaves aside the elements would normally drive them apart. 22 I believe that these features are common among the libertarian movements, interclass movements - such as women's and afro-descendant movements - and the popular movements that we see in the outskirts of our cities. These are the common features which authenticate a sense of community. All these people always speak on behalf of the community, always feel like a community and prevent, in many ways, the establishment of hierarchical distinctions. I'm not saying that their structure lacks authority, or that these groups don't have effective leaders guiding and/or shaping opinion. Of course that can still happen, but the shaping of opinions can happen in a variety of ways. It can happen within the hierarchical systems as well as with the egalitarian and democratic ones. It is possible to be very authoritative when working as a community, and this is what sometimes happens. 23 But that is not the issue. What I'm trying to do here is to highlight the fact that everyone is in the same boat, sharing a common experience, and therefore, everyone gives their opinion, and the group decides on how to act by consensus (there is always the need to create a consensus). And this is not always easy. This is exactly why in all these groups, both in the movements that I call libertarian (the black movement, against racism; the women's movement, against women's discrimination, etc.), as in the popular movements, the frequency of breakaway groups, splits and the emergence of new groups is quite high. If they reproduce through fission resulting in a multiplication of groups that at times compete against each other, only to join forces again later... Such schisms usually occur as a result of a breakdown of consensus and competition for leadership. Rupture usually takes place when one of the parties is excluded and when part of the group stops going to meetings, does not show up, or forms another group. It seems to me that this is a structural mechanism behind the expansion of all of these types of social movements. And that's why I think that comparing the actions of these movements with the actions of political parties and trade unions, is such a difficult task, since they are structured in different ways, and perform distinct roles within the political system. One could probably never replace the other. The idea of joining both is also extremely complicated, since the operating rules on either side are different and incompatible. In my opinion, they will feed on each other, but remain relatively isolated.

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24 I'd like to expand a little on what I call community when I talk of social movements. It is based on the concept of shared experience. This is a basic element of all definitions of community: that people feel a part of it and share a sense of community, of being equals, giving and taking. It also implies collective action. People who have this sense of participation in the community are those who can make things happen, and they make it happen together. Without this, there is no community. So community does not only exist in people's minds. In fact, it's about action, whether demanding change in policy, denouncing discrimination, or simply enjoying doing things together, whether they be meetings of leisure activities, 25 It seems to me that the feeling of belonging together with purposeful activities is exactly what we refer to as its identity. These communities create a particular identity for their members and, as they begin to act as a group, they acquire a significant need to create mechanisms which strengthen that identity and provide the evidence on which to anchor the idea of an identity that until recently did not exist. 26 And therein lies our question, as in nearly all cases groups construct stories that are often imaginary, mythical. 27 Nearly all social movements are such as those in the outskirts of São Paulo, where small groups end up demonstrating a keen interest in local history, in everything that surrounds the history of their neighborhood, celebrating the common experience of living in a particular place. When talking to them, they often tell us: "This was a jungle when I first came here". They claim that it was they would bring civilization to these places. They tell the tale of moving to this jungle, and how there was nothing there - just animals, snakes; they had to walk three hours to cross the river to catch a bus; and all of a sudden, these things were improving, partly due to their own doing, through their domesticating the environment. 28 In point of fact, these memories are largely inventions. But I believe that we shouldn't worry so much about that; instead we should try to understand why there is a need for such inventions. Certainly they are based on some facts, but the facts don't really matter, because we don't even know if the documented history is real. This element is the least relevant of all. The most important thing is to understand that memory creates identity, and that memory is essential to these forms of organization. But this process is not limited to the local level. For other movements, which are the movements that join people of different social classes, there is also a very similar process of trying to rescue the past. It's worth remembering, for example, that a large part of what was written during the feminist movement was the recovery of a history seen from the point of view of women, placing a greater value on women's role. Little- known heroines are re-discovered, taken to new heights, placed in a different context - sometimes in contexts which are widely questionable - women who actually played more masculine than feminine roles in order to gain past notoriety, are rediscovered as examples, as female role models. It would be practically useless, in my opinion, to discuss whether a supposedly 19th-century heroine does or doesn't show the qualities the feminist movement wishes to exalt - and the same could be applied to rediscovering the past from the point of view of the slaves or blacks, and so on. The important thing is this need to rediscover this past. The important thing is the ability to organize some facts which are more or less unrelated, and which depend on how we connect them; how we build something to substantiate our identity.

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29 It is this need to express this identity that seems relevant to me. One of the most entertaining accounts of this process was reported by [Manuel] Castells. While working in Spain with local urban social movements, he noticed that a housing project built by the local BNV on the outskirts of Madrid had been built over an ancient Spanish village, which apparently had disappeared around the 18th century, giving way to an industrial area, among other things. A residents' movement grew to demand a number of urban improvements. What happened, all of a sudden, was that people started to develop their identity mechanisms. They obviously had nothing to do with each other; they had been chosen for this housing project through their social characteristics as defined by governmental data. In their effort build their identity as a movement, they decided that there should be some type of festive activity and that it should have something to do with the place. They accordingly went to the public library in Madrid to research the type of festivities that took place in the ancient village over which the project was built. And they recovered and recreated these festivities, of course with modern aspects, since explicit documentation of the ancient festivities no longer existed. That is, they invented a new folklore and to this day they continue to celebrate their festivals. 30 We see this happening in São Paulo. The younger generation doesn't realize that many of the festivals celebrated today were not celebrated ten years ago and even less so when you go back twenty years. The newspapers talk about the San Genaro festival, Our Lady of Achiropita festival, and so on. I'm not saying those festivals didn't exist; they existed in the past, ceased to exist a long time ago and are today part of a memory that is being rediscovered from a distant past. I think this is a process that we should watch very closely. It would be quite interesting to think a little more about this process, and to do so not by focusing on whether such festivities they are accurate from a historical point of view, but learning more about their current meaning. 31 That, of course, does not mean that we should not take into consideration where the movement's members come from and how they organize. But that is not fundamental in defining them. The key is that these processes are a form of identity creation and that, with these fairs, festivals and even with the preservation of certain folk dances and so forth; they are creating a political identity, which is based on a common experience and which increases the likelihood of collective action. In addition to the experience of being poor, having inadequate transportation and education services, they can also refer to other levels of experience, such as leisure, documenting history, or the preservation of some elements of the space where the community is settled. It is clear that this provides much greater material evidence of this sense of community, and I believe that this is a basic idea for the development of all these forms of organization. 32 What I'm trying to say with all this is that, when I mention the word community as a basic element in the definition of these social movements, I am not using the scientific concept of community (which certainly does not apply), but the idea that the people who participate in the movements want to express. In other words, I mean the idea that they all share a common experience that is the basis for collective action, which is political in nature. This political action is not in lieu of other forms of political action which take place in society; I believe that it is an important complement. Therefore, everything that we can identify as elements that consolidate and materialize the idea of community, and of something shared by all, is essential for maintaining the necessary conditions for organization and political efficacy.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

CALDEIRA, Tereza. 2011. Ruth Cardoso. Obra reunida. São Paulo: Mameluco Edições

NOTES

1. R. Cardoso's essays on the formation of political communities and popular movements were re-published in Caldeira, 2011.

ABSTRACTS

This lecture followed by a debate concerns popular movements, in particular those which the author describes as libertarian, emerging in the city of São Paulo in the late 1970s and early 80s. It focuses on the building of memory, its relevance in creating a sense of identity and of community, and the issue of political participation. The latter was one of the mottos during the democratization of relations between society and the State in Brazil, following the years of military rule, as well as being a major challenge to the creation and development of cultural policies in the country and, among them, those relating to cultural heritage.

Esta palestra seguida de debate se refere aos movimentos populares, em especial aos que a autora qualifica de libertários, emergentes na cidade de em São Paulo no final dos anos 1970 e início dos 80. São focalizadas a construção da memória, sua importância para a formação de sentidos de identidade e de comunidade e a questão da participação política. Esta última foi uma das principais palavras de ordem na democratização das relações entre a sociedade e o estado no Brasil após o regime militar, e um desafio importante à criação e desenvolvimento de políticas culturais no país e, entre elas, as relativas ao patrimônio cultural.

INDEX

Keywords: social movements, community, political participation, memory, urban anthropology Palavras-chave: movimentos sociais, comunidade, participação política, memória, antropologia urbana

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Anthropology and cultural heritage

Gilberto Velho Translation : David Rodgers

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on April 2, 2012 Originally published as "Antropologia e patrimônio cultural". Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, n. 20, 1984, pp.37-39. Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. T.S. Elliot 1 The issues surrounding the preservation of Brazil's heritage have led to a growing involvement of anthropologists in discussions and decisions that until very recently were the domain of architects and lawyers. Although the work to protect the country's historical heritage has included a broadly anthropological concern from the outset, today the development of Anthropology on one hand and the amplification of the concerns with cultural heritage on the other means that the more specialized knowledge of the professional anthropologist is needed. This new situation should be seen as positive, so long as we also strive to avoid dogmatisms and any corporativist sectarianism.

2 As we know, anthropology has many schools and diverse theoretical approaches, meaning there is no single 'anthropological formula' capable of responding to the issue of cultural heritage. I would argue, though, that anthropological thought as a whole involves a relativizing perspective, which allows us to think through a number of questions that, while not new, have become more pressing. A modern, complex and heterogeneous society like Brazil's is characterized by the more or less harmonious coexistence of different traditions and worldviews.1The observation of differences, diversity and sometimes contradictions does not imply being oblivious to the existence of a more encompassing sociocultural system linked to the very idea of nation. In this

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sense, a State cultural policy that aims to be more democratic and pluralist must adequately take into account the question of diversity. This is not an easy or immediately resolvable task. Traditions legitimized by the elites tend to dominate and these are unlikely to face serious polemics or doubts. But the problems become more complex when we turn to the customs and values of groups and sectors occupying subordinate and hierarchically inferior positions in society. The channels of communication themselves are precarious, and the meaning of certain demands and how to make them compatible with official policy often far from clear. It is here that the anthropologist's work and experience can be fundamental. The anthropological tradition has developed largely from a continual experience of dealing with the other, while perceiving the fragmentation that can exist in apparently monolithic units. This permanent interplay of estrangement and relativization2 may be a fertile path for capturing the symbolic importance of manifestations that do not automatically fit into the formulas existing today to protect the nation's cultural heritage. 3 One of the main, albeit not exclusive, focal points of anthropological work has been to investigate groups located on the margins of official history and the dominant culture. Very often their beliefs and values are transmitted through oral traditions. Dates may be imprecise and documentation slight or even non-existent. These are also groups with their own identity, marked by symbolic systems often inaccessible to the traditional elites. The task, therefore, is to interpret the meaning of rituals, sites, etc. within their specific contexts. This was precisely what enabled the recent preservation of the Terreiro de Candomblé Casa Branca, a famous candomblé temple in Salvador, Bahia.3 It was without doubt a rich and fascinating situation given the site's huge importance and significance for vast sections of Brazilian society and the fact it found itself under threat. The decision to list the temple implies recognition of the legitimacy of both a cultural tradition and a system of values that until relatively recently were subject to discrimination and sometimes persecutions. As a result of this initiative, Brazilian society is recognized to be much richer and more culturally diverse than the image afforded by a more traditional view ofheritage. 4 Undoubtedly the key issue remains of whether official preservation orders are always the best way of dealing with cultural facts and phenomena in which past and present remain indissociable. It is essential for us to understand how different social groups perceive and represent what we define as heritage. This requires valuing a particular kind of qualitative research typical of the anthropological tradition, participant observation. Only such an approach enables us to capture the complexity of the singular features of specific groups, local and regional history, less privileged groups and traditions and worldviews more distant from the frameworks that have tended to guide most cultural policy decisions. On the other hand we need to avoid, at all costs, falling into a facile and demagogic populism, lacking criteria and frameworks discussed and elaborated through a systematic and interdisciplinary process of reflection. 5 It is not a question, therefore, of rejecting or disqualifying those aspects of cultural heritage that have thus far received greater attention from government agencies. But in the spirit of Mário de Andrade and other pioneers, this work needs to be amplified, allowing the Brazilian nation to recognize its own complexity. This is a process of research and debate that necessarily implicates different actors. At a time when the importance of civil society has come to the fore, we need to recognize it in all its diversity and density.

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6 As bearers of specialized knowledge, anthropologists, like architects, lawyers, should not be mere mechanical spokespeople for the groups they study, nor should they relinquish their expertise, the outcome of study and experience, that in the long-term can be used in benefit of the same groups. Their role is to engage in an interpretative enterprise, working to make bridges between the different codes and value systems existing in a complex modern society. 7 At the same time, there is no hiding the fact that every cultural policy is inserted within a field of power, complete with interests, factions and often conflicts. But in recognizing this fact, we must avoid any sociologizing fatalism that could prevent us from transcending the immediatism of present circumstances. A long-term cultural policy that rises above our everyday disputes can only be achieved through an effective policy of knowledge, implying both research and reflection. Anthropology tells us that learning about cultural systems and beliefs is a laborious process demanding time and effort. When turning to the study of our own society, looking to make decisions about our own cultural heritage, this care must be redoubled. Brazilian society, as has been amply proclaimed and attested, is constituted by groups widely differentiated in terms of their origin, trajectory and position in the social hierarchy, as well as significant local and regional differences. Where and how these different traditions and experiences meet is a polemical topic. Discontinuity may or may not signify conflict and shared participation in certain beliefs and values does not necessarily express harmony. The more or less tense coexistence of different perceptions of reality forces us to develop more sophisticated methods to account for the complexity of the cultural facts that envelop and constitute us. 8 Avoiding dogmatism or any claim to omnipotency and omniscience, anthropologists need to assume responsibility for implementing a policy designed to encompass the specific natures of the different identities of the diverse social groups making up national society. These identities are associated with worldviews whose singularity means that they may differ radically from the universe of values and knowledge inhabited by the elites, including scientists and researchers. 9 This observation, however, does not mean we are condemning to crystallize differences and valorize a cultural monadism. Remaining on the terrain of religion, for example, recognizing the specific ethos of candomblé, umbanda or Kardecist spiritism does not prevent us from perceiving the cultural continuities between these systems, or with popular Catholicism itself. 10 The anthropologist, though recognizing and calling attention to the specificities of distinct groups, is not unaware of their coexistence within the nation and the reality of the State and its implementation of policies and decisions. 11 For anthropologists, culture is a useful notion for conceptualizing heritage insofar as it allows us to account for the complex relations between what remains and what changes. As in the verse of Elliot cited at the beginning, past, present and future are subtly and intensely interconnected. In the realm of the cultural arbitrary, we need to stay attentive to these nuances. 12 By rekindling the debate on cultural heritage, we must be prepared for potential revisions to the legislation that allow support and protection without lapsing into inertia and paralysis. On the other hand, we need to engage in a reading of the existing

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legislation that facilitates and expedites our goals rather than inhibiting and confining them. 13 Expanding the concept of cultural heritage itself, as well as enriching and flexibilizing the means and instruments at our disposal, form part of a broader long-term project for democratizing Brazilian society. At issue is the notion of citizenship, the question of human rights, and, inevitably, the fundamental question of a nation's memory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DAMATTA, Roberto. 1978. "O ofício do etnólogo ou como ter anthropological blues". Cadernos de Antropologia Social do Museu Nacional, 1. Republished in: E. Nunes (org.), A Aventura Sociológica. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. pp. 23-35.

VELHO, Gilberto. 1978. "Observando o familiar". In: E. Nunes (org.), A Aventura Sociológica. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. pp.36-46.

VELHO, Gilberto and VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. 1978. "O conceito de cultura e o estudo das sociedades complexas". Artefato, Jornal de Cultura do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 1:4-9.

NOTES

1. See Velho and Viveiros de Castro, 1978. 2. See DaMatta, 1978 and Velho, 1978. 3. See "Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká - Casa Branca Temple" in the present edition.

ABSTRACTS

The author argues that anthropology can help define a much broader, richer and culturally more diverse concept of heritage. He advocates for a more democratic and pluralist State policy that takes into account the diversity and complexity of Brazilian society, valuing traditions, symbolic systems and cultural manifestations from all sectors. The preservation of the Terreiro de Candomblé Casa Branca, in Salvador, Bahia, is presented as an example of recognizing the legitimacy of a tradition that was until recently subject to discrimination and persecutions. The author argues that this broadening of the concept of cultural heritage is crucial to the constitution of a Brazilian society that values democracy, human rights, citizenship and its own memory as a nation.

O autor argumenta que a antropologia pode contribuir para a definição de um conceito de patrimônio mais amplo, rico e diversificado culturalmente. Defende uma política de Estado mais

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democrática e pluralista, que leve em conta a diversidade e a complexidade da sociedade brasileira, valorizando tradições, sistemas simbólicos e manifestações culturais de todos os segmentos sociais. O tombamento do Terreiro de Candomblé Casa Branca, em Salvador, Bahia, é apresentado como um exemplo do reconhecimento e da legitimidade de uma tradição que já foi objeto de discriminação e perseguições. O autor defende que esta ampliação do conceito de patrimônio cultural é crucial para a constituição de uma sociedade brasileira que valorize a democracia, os direitos humanos, a cidadania e a sua própria memória como nação.

INDEX

Keywords: cultural heritage, anthropology, preservation, policy, diversity Palavras-chave: patrimônio cultural, antropologia, tombamento, política, diversidade

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Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká Casa Branca Temple

1 This monument was inscribed in the Books of Designated Historical Heritage [Livros de Tombo] of the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage on August 14, 1986. The temple is located at Vasco da Gama Avenue, Engenho Velho, Salvador, Bahia. The designation includes the total area of the temple measuring approximately 6,800 square meters, buildings, trees and sacred objects. Inscription Number in the Book of Designated Historical Heritage [Livro do Tombo Histórico]: 504 (Vol.1. F. 092). Inscription Number in Designated Ethnographical, Archeological and Landscape Heritage [Livro do Tombo Etnográfico, Arqueológico e Paisagístico]: 093 (Vol. 1, F. 043).

2 Photographs selected from the designation file number 1067-T-82, with captions and credits provided by COPEDOC - General Coordination of Research and Documentation of IPHAN.1

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NOTES

1. Vibrant thanks the kind and efficient cooperation of the COPEDOC researchers in preparing this presentation.

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Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

Part 2: Heritage, memory and the city

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Counter-uses of the city and gentrification Consuming heritage

Rogerio Proença Leite Translation : David Rodgers

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on March 22, 2013.

1 The architectural and urban interventions known as gentrification still arouse numerous conceptual controversies. After several decades of use, the term remains somewhat controversial, lending itself to the analysis of quite different empirical situations (Rubino 2003).

2 Since its first enunciation by the British sociologist Ruth Glass in her work London: aspects of Change (Glass 1964), the term has been used to describe different forms of urban intervention, ranging from processes of 'regeneration', 'rehabilitation' or 'revitalization' of patrimonial areas and sites of high historical value - whether residential or not - to contemporary practices of urban restructuring in non-heritage areas, the megaprojects housing the offices of transnational corporations in so-called intelligent buildings, or the construction of luxury condominiums for the middle and upper classes (Smith 1996, Less et al. 1998). 3 As I have suggested in a recent text (Leite 2010), there are many reasons for the growing interest in studies of urban gentrification, as Loretta Less, Tom Slater and Elvin Wily have also argued. Academic interests in the phenomenon are diverse. Some authors argue that gentrification practices are an expression of neoliberalism in urban planning and of globalization processes. Others observe a dispute between the academic fields of geography, sociology and architecture (Less et al. 1998). 4 From another perspective, gentrification practices have been understood as postmodern expressions of contemporary urban planning. Authors like Harvey (1992), Zukin (1995), Featherstone (1995) and Jameson (1997) elaborate this hypothesis from the observation of certain aesthetic and functional characteristics prevalent in these

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processes, such as the perceived visual attractiveness of the sites, the juxtaposition of architectural styles, an emphasis on monumentality and a recognition of the importance of market forces. 5 The process of gentrification in urban conservation areas involves a specific model of intervention that alters cityscapes by accentuating architectural features or transforming them to generate a heightened visual impact, adjusting the new landscape to the demands of the real estate market, safety, planning and urban cleanliness intended to promote the use or reappropriation of the area by the middle and upper classes. This process results in the emergence of socio-spatial boundaries that exacerbate social segregation by fragmenting space into distinct places (Leite 2007). 6 When these urban areas are historical sites or centres, gentrification processes add real estate value and contribute to the symbolic strengthening of a sense of belonging through the enhancement of local culture. At the same time they attract visitors by promoting a sort of detraditionalization of cultural heritage (Fortuna 1997), turning it into a spectacle through its absorption by consumer culture (Featherstone 1995). I return to this point later. 7 In Brazil the predominant form of non-residential gentrification follows what Bidou- Zachariasen (2006) has termed 'gentrification for visitation.' This type of intervention, which largely centres on attracting tourism, does not involve the restoration of low- income housing. The only residential interventions involve the construction of luxury hotels in the place of decrepit town houses. This form of gentrification, common in Brazil, takes place in the context of the physical/architectural deterioration of historical sites and the tendency for the poor to migrate to outlying areas of the cities. 8 One of the main differences between residential and touristic forms of gentrification tends to be the intended destination the area's traditional residents. In some projects rehabilitation of housing is designed to allow local residents to remain in the area. Others prevent the original inhabitants from staying by changing the uses of spaces to tailor them to market demands. 9 In this paper, I discuss one of the first interventions of this kind in the city of Recife in northeastern Brazil: the gentrification of the Bairro de Recife, which I shall refer to hereafter as the Recife Quarter.

Old Recife: the foundation of the MauritsStadt

10 The original urban core of Recife was a small settlement of about 10 hectares, built on the isthmus of Olinda. The natural reefs (in Portuguese arrecifes) formed a safe harbour for ships transporting brazilwood and sugar to the Iberian Peninsula. The Village of Reefs grew as a trading port. According to the historian Evaldo Cabral de Mello (Mello 1997), Rua do Bom Jesus (Bom Jesus Street) - the main focus of the 'revitalization' work undertaken in the late 1990s - was one of the most important areas of the early urban centre. Another street, Rua dos Judeus (Jew Street), was home to a Jewish community that had fled persecution in Europe. They built the first synagogue in the Americas, Kahal Kadosh Zur Israel, probably between 1640 and 1641 (Dantas 1999).

11 With the arrival of the Dutch, who invaded Brazil in 1630, Recife gained its first urban plan. The Dutch built walls, gates and trenches to surround and protect the small

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village and port. According to historian Vanildo Bezerra Cavancanti (1977), one of the gates, the Land Gate (lantpoort), was situated in the Bom Jesus Street. It was later replaced by the Bom Jesus Arch. 12 The Dutch subsequently constructed the Maurício de Nassau Bridge, the first to connect the old isthmus to the mainland. This allowed the increasingly populous city to expand. An area called New Maritius - today the district of Santo Antônio - was built on the island of Antonio Vaz. The subsequent transfer of the seat of the Dutch government and the residence of Count Nassau to New Mauritius boosted the importance of this new area (Cavalcanti 1977: 149).

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13 By the end of the 19th century what remained of the Mauricéia of Pernambuco State was an image of an unhealthy, profane and beautiful place. This spurred a major project of urban reform of the historic centre and port zone, the Recife Quarter, in 1910. Following a trend seen throughout Brazil, the authorities began their work by destroying what were identified as insalubrious buildings. The reconstruction of the Quarter began in 1909 under the responsibility of the Societé de Construction du Port de Pernambouc, and later the Societé de Construction de Batgnolles (Lubambo 1991: 77). Reflecting the modernizing ideas of cleanliness and beauty, the new constructions followed the French-inspired eclectic style. The plan included landfills to augment the size of the port area, construction of warehouses and, more drastically, the alteration of the road network, widening roads to facilitate transport to and from the port. With all these changes, the old colonial civil architecture was destroyed. 14 The emphasis on social hygiene led to the disappropriation of at least 480 buildings (Lubambo 1991: 123) which were pulled down to open up the new roads. Based on the ideas of Hausmann, the introduction of wide avenues sanitised cities, literally and metaphorically. The reforms undertaken in Rio de Janeiro and Recife were intended to eradicate outbreaks of diseases like smallpox and yellow fever, particularly rife in port areas. Disease and the associated fears were major obstacles to any development reliant on international investors: Fabris (2000) has documented the apprehension people had merely of disembarking at the port of Brazil's Federal Capital. 15 The wide-ranging urban reform of Recife devastated the old Dutch district. The narrow streets with their overcrowded slum tenements and brothels, so vividly depicted by Gilberto Freyre in Sobrados e Mucambos, can no longer be seen. Two long and broad avenues sliced through the Recife Quarter: the tiny houses were substituted by monumental buildings modelled on the liberal eclecticism of contemporary French architecture. The neighbourhood that sprang up over the rubble of the burned Olinda

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was also the setting for a major renovation that transformed it into another cultural document, this time of the French Belle Époque. 16 The reform of the Recife Quarter was particularly significant in terms of the economic history of Pernambuco. At the time, Recife was the most important capital city in the Brazilian northeast, the centre of the region's 'new urban elites.' As Perruci (1978) has shown, from the end of the late nineteenth through to the early twentieth, Pernambuco's sugar industry was transformed by the replacement of the old sugar mills with industrial plants. This economic shift contributed to the consolidation of predominantly urban-based industrial capital at the expense of the rural areas. 17 The reforms not only improved the port's operating conditions, they also created a new image for the city, reflecting the ambitions of the State's new elites (Cátia Lubambo 1991). 18 The opening of large avenues was about more than an architectural landscape: it obeyed the political imperative of building a landscape of modernity. As well as being a work of sanitary engineering, it was an operation of social segregation, limiting the free flow of people. Eclecticism - a hybridism scorned by the modernists, characterized by the free use of overlapping styles from the past - amounted to an architectural representation of the new lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie, marked by the monumentality of the buildings. Nevertheless, this modern Brazilian landscape also harboured what this new class saw as a more shameful element. As Carvalho (1999) remarked concerning the reforms in Rio de Janeiro: "In renovated Rio the world of the Belle Époque was fascinated with Europe but ashamed of Brazil, particularly poor and black Brazil" (Carvalho 1999: 41). The discourse on urban planning reproduced the same 'eugenic stigmas' that permeated the debate on national character in Brazilian thought during this era (Lira 1999).

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19 After the reform, the area was mostly taken over by insurance companies, banks and organizations involved in the import and export trade. This 'elitism' had a political consequence for the district's image and use. Following the concentration of commercial activities, housing functions came to be considered as residual and the district was projected instead as a business zone, an image that remained linked to the quarter until the 1950s when other central regions acquired more commercial importance. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the Recife Quarter fell into a slow decline, typical of central areas of big cities, until this situation was reversed with the implantation of the Revitalization Plan, the third phase in the political and visual reimagining of the Recife Quarter.

The process of gentrification of the Recife Quarter

20 From the 1990s the so-called Revitalization Plan for the old Recife Quarter began to be implemented: this was a detailed proposal for short and medium term action, including the physical dimensions and estimated costs of the planned works, presented as part of the Northeast Tourism Development Program.

21 The proposal set out three different sectors of intervention, and also defined areas of interest and a spatialization of activities based on the concrete possibilities for intervention. The main objective of the revitalization proposal was to develop activities related to the services of the Revitalization Sector, turning it into a kind of anchor of the entire Revitalization Plan. The type of use of properties, circumscribed by sector, also facilitated the area's delimitation as a privileged zone for the deployment of more dynamic services associated with leisure and entertainment. This Revitalization Sector contains the highest concentration per square meter of built area, service, housing, and retail trade, while other sectors have a higher concentration of large buildings linked to wholesale trade, utilities and industry.

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22 The technical details of the plan had a clear justification. As already outlined in a previous study (Leite 2007), it was not just a proposal for the restoration of heritage buildings, but an integrated idea of urban intervention in the form of a long-term enterprise. Reflecting the assumptions of market-led city planning (Vainer 2000), the Plan had three main goals, the operational framework for which was the set of Intervention Sectors: 1. transform the Recife Quarter into a "regional metropolitan centre," making it a centre of modern services, culture and recreation; 2. turn the area into a 'space of leisure and entertainment,' aiming to generate a "space that promotes the concentration of people in public areas, creating the feeling of a vibrant urban space"; 3. turn the area into a "centre of national and international tourist attraction." These objectives indicated just how much the proposal was directed towards expanding the local economy, transforming the Recife Quarter into a complex mix of consumerism and entertainment. 23 This view of an economy of culture, which apprehends culture in terms of its economic results and the city as a commercial enterprise, anticipated the concentration of offices of big companies and corporations, boosting the Recife Quarter's "image as a central and noble space of the city." The 'animation blocks' of Bom Jesus Street have been made possible not only by reforms to the area's physical structure, but especially by the program of events that the City Hall organizes throughout the year, which delineates a range of distinct forms of using urban spaces. The cultural turn of the entrepreneurial urbanism described by Otília Arantes (2000) functioned in the Recife Quarter as a mechanism for legitimizing an image attractive to consumers and to potential new investors. Remodelled houses transformed the area into a bustling meeting place where people mingle under the glimmer of the street lights and the noise of many voices, frevo songs and jazz music. Strategically positioned to enhance the restored facades, these beams of light reinforced the feeling of a film set, the impact of which contrasted hugely with the rest of the neighbourhood. After six in the evening, traffic was barred from these streets and wooden trestles were set in place, accompanied by public and private security guards, which helped transform this quarter of the city into an artificial boulevard. Gradually the streets were taken over by people and the sidewalks by bar and restaurant tables. It was estimated that during large events at least 15,000 people would take to the streets in search of fun and relaxation. With the support of local business people, the Recife City Council began to promote an intense cultural program: concerts with local musicians, dance performances, art exhibitions in street, seresta festivals. Various activities staged throughout the year ensured the area remained a vibrant centre of cultural entertainment, integrating the Recife Quarter with the city's cultural calendar. During carnival, a varied and intense program maintained the area's profile as one of the newest options for tourists visiting Pernambuco. The parade of groups in the quarter was a show in itself: blocos, troças, reisados, maracatus and caboclinhos. Aside from the numerous roving events, the City Council maintained the traditional São João festivities in its official program, two typically large-scale street events.

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24 These investments provoked a substantial change in the urban landscape of the Recife Quarter, the new mixture of consumption and leisure redesigning its profile, making it the area with the highest concentration of bars and restaurants in the city of Recife. The new image developed for the area focused in part precisely on the fact that it was one of the few places where consumers had various options within a relatively small area, like a food court in a shopping mall.

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25 In 1998, when the Revitalization Plan for the old Recife Quarter was already in progress, the area was listed by IPHAN, recognizing it as a national heritage, largely on the basis of the urban transformations and changes of styles, especially during the major reform of 1910 that turned the Recife Quarter into what "(...) is today a unique, intact, and hybrid Brazilian example of Haussmann's Paris." This reform, which marked the transition from Old Recife to New Recife, had turned the quarter into a "(...) unique living archive of the overlapping temporalities that have dominated history and artistic production in Recife and in Brazil."

Gentrification and Consuming Heritage

26 The process of tourism gentrification promoted by the reformation of historical sites is typically based around installing services and offering an extensive range of culture, leisure and entertainment for the middle and upper classes.

27 In general, such interventions are preceded by a comprehensive decline of the site, both its physical aspect (including the deterioration of buildings, urban housing and sanitary infrastructure) and its symbolic aspect (the decline in the site's importance relative to other areas of the city, loss of centrality, and an increasingly negative social image, frequently associated with insecurity, inhospitable conditions and marginality). Despite this problematic diagnosis, these areas maintain a strong significance in the city's history, precisely because they were once places of pronounced visibility and economic, political and cultural importance (Leite 2013). 28 Even during its most 'decadent' phase, the Recife Quarter retained its historical importance in the local imagination as the site where the city originated. Once 'revitalized,' the area underwent an adaptation of tradition to the demands of a market of cultural consumption, in what Carlos Fortuna (1997) has called detraditionalizationto refer to a strategic mechanism of contemporary urban planning, designed to revalue local culture and heritage as part of adapting cities to the context of 'inter-city competition': 29 [...] detraditionalization is a social process through which cities and societies are modernized by subjecting earlier values, meanings and actions to a new interpretative logic of intervention. This detraditionalization is driven by the need for each city to revalue its resources, actual or potential, in order to reposition itself in the increasingly disputed market of inter-city competition. (Fortuna 1997: 234) 30 This process does not mean abandoning tradition, therefore, but reworking it in response to the market forces that permeate any kind of contemporary urban interventions. In those cases involving 'gentrifying' interventions, this detraditionalization assumes its most radical form with the possibility of a complete change in the meanings attributed to heritage sites, including the addition of entirely new values. Such interventions therefore enable deep changes in uses and users, affecting especially traditional residents who are usually targeted for relocation away from the area, making room for others more suited to the new intended uses. In some cases this alteration takes a dramatic form with the eviction of former residents, configuring what Michel de Certeau has called 'social curettage' (Certeau 1996). In other cases there may be a search for residents and users with new profiles without, though, discarding those already found there. This is the case - to a lesser extent - of

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the city of Porto, in Portugal, which retained some of its traditional residents, and - to a greater extent - of the city of Évora, also in Portugal, which even today invests in attracting younger residents owing to the aging demographic profile of its resident population. Like Recife, Porto was a strategic centre for the local economy - indeed for the entire Douro region due to its intense social and commercial life. As the Portuguese saying goes, "Lisbon parties, Porto works, Coimbra studies, Braga prays." The city's association with commercial activities is ancient, tracing back to the earliest origins of the city, regarded by natives as the birthplace of the Portuguese nation. This idea derives from a kind of foundation myth in which the city is attributed with the origin of the country's name, due to the independence of the County of Portugal, the Condado Portucalense, from which the word Portugal originated as a composite of the toponymic expressions 'port' and 'cale' (Fortuna & Silva 2002). Labelled the 'Portuguese Manchester,' Porto shared the latter's image of an active, liberal and progressive city. Even with the decline in the use of its historic districts, especially from the 1960s when its resident population decreased substantially,1 Porto retained a central role due to the rich history associated with the city's image. 31 Évora is possibly one of the oldest historical cities in Portugal. Its origin is supposedly related to the Romanization of Lusitania, which elevated the province to the status of municipium Ebora Liberalitas Julia by Emperor Julius Caesar during the exploration of the Iberian Peninsula (Évora Municipal Chamber 1997). With its Roman archaeological remains and a rich architectural complex, including palaces and churches, Évora during the medieval period was an important walled citadel, the residence of Portugal's kings and aristocracy. Its rich heritage contains examples of Renaissance, Islamic, Gothic, Manueline, Baroque and Neoclassical art and architecture. Situated in the region of Alentejo, the idea hovers over Évora that it could have been the country's capital. Prior to the recent interventions, its image was mostly that of a stagnant, small and traditional city, dominated by a few small families and groups of influence (Fortuna 1997). During the 1980s, precisely when emphasis on conservation and gentrification processes was increasing in urban areas around the world, interventions began in Évora that would turn it into an attractive centre for leisure and tourism. Following Paulo Peixoto's analysis (1997), these transformations, which culminated in 1986 with Évora's declaration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, represented a pioneering example in Portugal of the use of heritage resources as a means to project a city at global level.

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32 A significant difference exists, though, between the Brazilian and Portuguese cases, which can be considered a mitigating point in terms of how the Portuguese experience fits into the gentrification pattern. Given the residential characteristics of Porto and Évora, the kind of gentrification that occurred there was less concerned with replacing their traditional residents than, for example, the Brazilian case of Recife (Leite 2010). 33 At the same time, it is also worth observing that although the Brazilian and Portuguese examples of intervention sought the same results - namely, the detraditionalization of their cultural heritage in order to ensure that their respective historic centres were included in inter-city competition - the Brazilian discourse was more clearly focused on creating urban tourist and entertainment hotspots, perhaps because Recife's residential size was smaller. Moreover, the Portuguese concern to avoid creating mere scenarios had not stopped detraditionalization from taking place in Porto and Évora, including the same kind of spectacularization of culture seen in the Brazilian cases.

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34 I take the spectacularization of culture to be the accentuation or creation of cultural traits that look to highlight the singularity of an urban space, through a strong visual appeal and fleeting social practices, intended to turn history and culture into consumable commodities. The idea of a spectacularization of culture has always been present in diverse forms in urban intervention processes. Architectural monumentality is perhaps the best known and certainly the most remarkable element of this desire to spectacularize found in some reforms as part of a search for greater visibility, distinction and aesthetic appeal. Gentrification policies, like the protogentrificationpractices that preceded them, such as Haussmann's famous reforms in Paris and Otto Wagner's interventions in Vienna's Ringstrasse, are clearly monumental experiments in architecture and large-scale urban design (Schorske 1990). 35 However architectural and urban monumentality is not the only form taken by the spectacularization of culture. In Brazil, the heady appeal of the supposed (but questionable) authenticity of popular culture has been one of the most powerful resources for the revival or even reinvention of these gentrified spaces, part of a spectacularizing and market-oriented view of the culture economy. The intervention process is well known: manifestations of the local culture are promoted in order to exploit certain aspects of the cultural legitimacy of these sites, creating thematic spaces through this emphasis on local culture. The ultimate aim is to attract new users by expanding the possibilities for consumption, either in the form of new bars and restaurants or symbolically through the heavily promoted artistic and cultural manifestations. 36 Consequently the notion of the spectacularization of culture can be considered a derivative of the concept of detraditionalization, since it presupposes an accentuation of cultural values and local heritage as part of the visual and scenic accentuation of the urban space and the social practices directed towards symbolic consumption. The primary outcome of the spectacularization of culture in gentrification processes is a

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strong socio-spatial demarcation of public life revolving around the desired/intended uses for these 'revitalized' spaces. Often this demarcation focuses on the ways of inhabiting these spaces, where public socializing is heavily determined by the possibilities available for social interaction.

Sociospatialities and counter-uses of the city

37 One of the main negative impacts of gentrification, affecting its own long-term sustainability, is inherent to the urban strategy of this type of urban intervention: the creation of a strong socio-spatial demarcation in the use of space. This appears to be an insoluble dilemma. To activate new uses of the local area and establish differentiated niches of consumption to attract consumers, these interventions invest heavily in the 'requalification' of spaces, creating relatively well-defined boundaries between different users. This often involves excluding a significant part of the local population, who are left unable to interact within these spaces due to the strong tendency towards market commodification that makes these spaces the preserve of a social elite. In response, non-users create zones of instability around or even within these spaces, generating points of permeability and tension related to the practical and symbolic dispute for the urban space. This also stems from other factors, I think, including the debatable idea that cultural heritage can produce a unique sense of belonging for the entire population, serving as a force for social cohesion.

38 In-depth studies on the polysemic meanings of heritage (Canclini 1997, Fortuna 1998, Arantes 2000) have shown the degree of symbolic complexity that heritage can have for different social groups. Distinct forms of appropriating and attributing meaning are generated when these sites are 'revitalized,' depending on how users see themselves represented in these transformed spaces. Moreover a kind of latent conflict between local residents and outside visitors becomes established, explaining why this type of intervention can seldom be sustained for long. Either the old residents, even if residual, perceive no benefits for themselves from the interventions (the cases of Recife and Porto), or the influx of new users alters day-to-day routines, generating a dynamism not always desired by the local population (the case of Évora). 39 One conclusion seems clear when we analyze these processes comparatively: regardless of the different contexts and variations between the processes, the type of intervention geared towards consuming heritage and towards the spectacularization of culture curbs the possibilities for interaction due to the distinct sociospatialities created in the process. The problem is that the model, as conceived, fails to escape the trap that it sets for itself: in order to generate niches of consumption, users must be selected, but by inhibiting some uses deemed contrary to those intended for these spaces, it weakens the desired urban harmony by provoking a range of reactions that very often take the form of a symbolic contestation and confrontation, what I have called counter-uses (Leite 2007). By counter-uses I mean the daily practices that challenge the disciplinary space in order to subvert expected uses, creating practical and symbolic ruptures within the space.

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40 Hence urban interventions like gentrification would appear to collide with an implicit nonviability: the different interests and social motivations for interactive processes do not fit into a model designed to promote a single predominant urban (economic) use. In some cases, the solution found to reduce the effects of such counter-useshas been to demarcate the 'revitalized' spaces even more radically, creating distinct areas of cultural entertainment. The Recife case provides a clear illustration of this mistaken solution. At the height of the revitalization program, Recife City Council created different 'animation centres' in distinct zones of the heritage site, seeking to meet the demands of different consumer groups. Initially it seemed that the idea would work, since it reinforced the boundaries separating the different areas of the Recife Quarter. But the contact zones remained fluid and permeable, and the boundaries had to be symbolically 'negotiated' by the different users and counter-users as the uses in one area became counter-uses in another. Such urban permeability is inevitable in this kind of process. In Salvador, a recent study showed how the small 'Rocinha favela,' deeply embedded in the city's historic centre, penetrated the gentrified space of the Pelourinho, just as the latter merged with the sociabilities of the favela (Araujo 2007). A similar situation was observable in Recife with the conflicts and permeabilities between the 'Favela do Rato' and the gentrified area (Souza 2007) or again in the 'revitalization' of Iracema Beach and the relations with the 'Poço da Draga' favela (Souza 2007, Bezerra 2008).

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41 referring to the restrictions or curtailments on interaction in spectacularized spaces, I am thinking above all of the social constraints involved in gentrification. The sophistication of some houses, transformed into restaurants and luxury hotels, the widespread adaptation of spaces for tourists and the scant attention paid to local residents and users, all seem to contribute to generating points of tension that, when recurrent, culminate in a conflicting spatial configuration, which can be seen as an important factor in any subsequent decline of these spaces - an exhaustion which, as I have suggested elsewhere, seems to be a post-gentrification and counter-revanchist phase in many cities (Leite 2010). 42 What we can glean from all this is that something appears to be askew: either urban practices are too deleterious when they presume that a city can be created without taking into account the differences between people in their daily routines, or urban life by definition eludes any excessive control, given that it is the locus par excellence of the dissent that animates public life (Leite 2009). I suspect both reasons are valid. Both offer a considerable explanatory power when it comes to understanding the contradictory dynamics of contemporary urban culture. 43 This is not the first time that social scientists have warned that urban intervention projects in historic centres must pay more attention to the aspirations of their main users and residents: their worldviews and their representations of heritage sites and the symbolic places through which they construct their multiple identities. I conclude by recalling a pertinent analytic suggestion that would ideally precede the development of any gentrification policy: 44 [...] it is necessary to imagine people using and transforming the spaces in which they live [...] Empty landscapes can be deceptive. (Arantes 1997).

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NOTES

1. According to data from the Rede Atlante (2005), the population living in the historical region of Porto fell from 16% to 5% of the city's total population between 1940 and 2001.

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ABSTRACTS

Based on research in the old Recife Quarter in the city of Recife, capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil, this study examines processes of gentrification in areas of heritage value. The article focuses on the way in which these urban policies have transformed cultural heritage into a commodity, and urban space into social relationships mediated by consumerism. I argue that heritage sites that undergo processes of gentrification create strong spatial segregation and generate an appropriation of space by the excluded population that takes the form of counter- uses, undermining the uses imagined by urban and heritage policy makers.

Este artigo analisa os processos de gentrification em áreas de valor patrimonial, tendo como referente empírico o bairro do Recife, em Pernambuco, Brasil. O tema central recai sobre as características predominantemente mercadológicas dessas políticas urbanas que têm transformado o patrimônio cultural em mercadoria, e o espaço urbano em relações sociais mediadas por práticas de consumo. Pretende-se argumentar que os sítios patrimoniais que passam pelos processos de gentrification criam forte segregação socioespacial e geram formas de apropriação do espaço por parte da população excluída na forma de contra-usos, subvertendo os usos esperados e o espaço disciplinar criados por essas políticas urbanas e patrimoniais.

INDEX

Keywords: consumption, gentrification, heritage, counter-uses Palavras-chave: consumo, enobrecimento, patrimônio, contra-usos

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The dark side of the moon Heritage, memory and place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves Translation : Isadora Contins

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013.

Heritage as a native category

1 Public and academic debates about "heritage" - generally understood as a form of "collective memory" - have increased in recent decades. The literature is quite extensive, and no comprehensive review will be undertaken..Both categories have been submitted to investigations and inquiries in many disciplines, and have been distinctly present in the political agenda of social movements and government policies. It is difficult to ignore their presence in the social and political life of great cities, where dialogs and confrontations take place, expressing antagonistic concepts of space, time and identity. The current transformation processes of urban spaces - as well as efforts towards their legitimization and questioning - necessarily involve memory and heritage institutions and agents. They also involve the individual and collective responses of city residents to the projects conducted by those institutions and agents.

2 This process has evolved for decades in Brazil. The theme has been strongly present in the communication media and in the academic world, and is a legitimate field of studies in various disciplinary areas, mainly but not exclusively in Anthropology. In my work I have insisted on the need to qualify the category "heritage," exploring its native conceptions, and thus distance ourselves from its ideological and legal uses. Therefore, I've also been focusing on the idea that, from the native point of view, heritages always exist in specific, material forms and are built and noticed by means of sensitive codes - sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste - and not only as abstract formulations that belong to

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programmatic discourses. Moreover, I insist that they exist as material objects situated in certain specific modalities of space, inseparable from the human experience and consequently from the "body techniques."4 In this sense, it is impossible to study "immaterial heritage" without focusing on its eminently material dimensions, its social and individual uses, as well as its production and effects. 3 The importance of heritage consists in the fact that it performs a decisive role in the articulation of individual and collective narratives about memory and identity. It also offers a material and visible dimension to these narratives in the public space. Beyond that, when seen from the native point of view, heritage exists as part of its users' experience. It is in this context that it is perceived, used, transformed and destroyed. Heritage is significantly integrated into the everyday existence of individuals and social groups. 4 Once the categories of social memory and heritage began to circulate broadly in the social and political world, they inevitably took on a highly objectified form. That is, they came to be seen as objects to be identified, preserved or reconstructed by individuals or social groups. Heritage is understood to be a legal entity subjected to public or private property laws. It is the object of preservation policies: as are buildings that are officially classified as heritage sites by the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) or as elements of "intangible heritage" like popular rituals, forms of popular cuisine and popular medicine, festivals like carnival, etc. A building to be officially recognized and protected by IPHAN is collectively perceived as a physical and symbolic unity (besides being a legal entity) that supposedly exists independently from the context of everyday social and cultural relations. 5 The social, political and legal uses of the categories "heritage" (and "collective memory") frequently tend to have anthropological and sociological studies understand heritage as an object in itself, and not as something that exists in a vast network of social and cultural relations. One of this article's objectives is to explore some native points of view on heritage and memory and situate them as part of that web of social and cultural relations.

A huge construction site

6 Due to the projects designed for the events of the football World Cup in 2016 and the Olympics in 2016, the city of Rio de Janeiro has been described in the last few years as a large "construction site," especially by engineers, architects and urban planners. This metaphor is usually brought up in official discourses in a triumphant manner. In the specific case of the large network of roads that cut through various neighborhoods in the outer neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, a series of complicated consequences has reached the people who live in and drive through these areas. As we have extensively seen in the communication media, thousands of people have been displaced from their homes due to the need to demolish buildings and widen streets and avenues to create space for large roads. Besides demolitions and other changes that may be seen as positive or negative, these construction projects trigger a series of collective responses by the population. These responses tend to vary. Some people defend their housing against damage and seek financial compensation from the state; others defend the preservation of areas and buildings that are symbolically associated to the population's

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life and socially recognized as "heritage," a concept which, as we know, takes on varied semantic forms.

7 One of the construction projects undertaken by the Rio de Janeiro city government is the Transcarioca Corridor, a major expressway running from the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood to the Tom Jobim International Airport. The route cuts through a series of neighborhoods and has led to the demolition of many buildings. The purpose of the highway is to significantly reduce commuting time between Barra da Tijuca and the Tom Jobim International Airport. These demolitions are seen to be necessary by the city government because, along most of its route, the Transcarioca Corridor will be built at the level of the existing streets and avenues, will have to be widened in many places, which implies the demolition of buildings. The Transcarioca route crosses the neighborhoods of Barra da Tijuca, Jacarepaguá, Madureira, Bonsucesso, Ramos, Irajá, Vaz Lobo, Vicente de Carvalho and Brás de Pina up to Largo da Penha, where there will be a connection to the Ilha do Fundão and Tom Jobim International Airport. The estimated cost is more than a billion Reals (US$500 million) and the construction, started in 2011, is expected to be partially finished in 2013. The prediction was that approximately 3,630 buildings would be demolished along the Transcarioca route. In addition to the Transcarioca, there are two other road projects: the Transoeste and the Transolímpica. 8 The reflections developed in this article have been raised by the stories I have heard about the actual conditions and destiny of a movie theater in Vaz Lobo ("Cine Vaz Lobo"), a neighborhood situated along the Transcarioca route. As has happened to thousands of other structures along the routes of the recent road construction in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Vaz Lobo movie theater was identified for demolition to widen an avenue. The Vaz Lobo movie theater is located at 4 Vicente de Carvalho Avenue, in front of the Vaz Lobo Square. The neighborhood of Vaz Lobo borders the neighborhoods of Irajá, Vicente de Carvalho, Rocha Miranda, Turiaçu, Cavalcante and Madureira. Vaz Lobo has 110 hectares and a population of approximately 14,041 inhabitants, with a total of 5,333 residences. Vaz Lobo is part of the XV Administrative Region of Rio de Janeiro, which includes the neighborhoods of Bento Ribeiro, Campinho, Cascadura, Cavalcante, Engenheiro Leal, Honório Gurgel, Madureira, Marechal Hermes, Osvaldo Cruz, Quintino Bocaiúva, Rocha Miranda and Turiaçu. Three important avenues in Rio de Janeiro's suburbs come to meet precisely at Vaz lobo Square, where the Vaz Lobo Theater is located: Avenida Ministro Edgar Romero., Avenida Monsenhor Felix, and Avenida Vicente de Carvalho.

The Vaz Lobo movie theater as heritage

9 According to stories told by the interviewees,113 the Vaz Lobo Theater was built in 1939 during the Estado Novo, as the dictatorial regime led by Getulio Vargas from 1937 through 1954 was known. It was inaugurated in 1941 and closed in 1982, never to reopen again. Along these thirty years it was never used as an Evangelical church, a supermarket or a bank, as were many movie theaters in Rio de Janeiro in recent decades. This supposedly did not happen because the former owner, Manuel Mendes Monteiro, refused many proposals to sell the building. The theater has remained closed. In addition to the movie theater, the building had commercial stores on the ground floor, a few of which are still occupied, and a few apartments on the two upper

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floors. One of Manuel Mendes Monteiro's daughters lives there. She is the only resident of the building. According to some interviewees, she used to live with her mother in the building until a short while ago, but now lives alone. The other apartments are said to be empty. According to the stories I heard from my interviewees, she doesn't allow anyone into the theater. Many stories are said to be told about the current state of the auditorium. Although it is said that nobody has visited it in three decades, they describe it as sumptuous, supposedly having a sophisticated lighting system as well as what was considered at the time of its construction the largest architectural span ever built in the city. According to these testimonies, the room is equipped for up to 1,800 people. Some say all of the chairs have already been sold. But none of the people I interviewed were able to confirm this. They also could not say when, for how much or to whom they were sold. But they repeatedly assured me that there are no more chairs. They also say the lighting system still works. According to some interviewees, an electrician hired by the heiress was the one who passed on this information. They also say there is still projection equipment there, but they are unable to say what kind and its condition.

10 Manuel Mendes Monteiro died in 2009. In that same year the Rio de Janeiro city government announced the Transcarioca Corridor project. But it was only initiated in 2011. Then, a local social movement for the preservation of the Vaz Lobo movie theater pushed the city government to officially announce a change in the highway route, assuring that the movie theater would remain where it was. There was also a project for rebuilding the Vaz Lobo Square. The original movement for the preservation of this movie theater became larger and turned into what today is known as "Movimento Cine Vaz Lobo: preservação, cultura e memória" (Cine Vaz Lobo Movement: preservation, culture and memory"). The movement has extended its efforts to the preservation and recognition of other buildings and historic places as "heritage sites" in Vaz Lobo, Irajá and surrounding areas. According to some of the people I interviewed, the Movement has also had repercussions on surrounding neighborhoods whose residents decided to gather in defense of the preservation of some of their public spaces and buildings, including old movie theaters. 11 One could surely say that this is a very common story: an old neighborhood movie theater threatened by probable demolition and the subsequent social mobilization of the local population regarding its preservation as "heritage." But what distinguishes the "Cine Vaz Lobo Movement" is precisely the way its members understand the notion of "heritage." 12 According to the engineers and urban planners of the city's department of public works, who are involved in the Transcarioca Corridor project, the Vaz Lobo movie theater building was considered an obstacle in the process of widening the pathway for the road construction and as such the project called for it to be demolished. However, according to people who worked at the time in the Secretariat of Cultural Heritage of Rio de Janeiro, the movie theater (according to a 2006 project) should be preserved as "heritage" because it was a "street movie theater" and was associated to an important moment in the history of the neighborhood, the city and the movie theaters of Rio de Janeiro. The members of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement, perceive it in a different way, but also claim the building should be considered "heritage," 13 Why did a movie theater without great architectural value, classified by specialists as "late art deco", without any other attributes to distinguish it, and which has been

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closed for approximately 30 years, come to awaken the interest and memory of specific segments of the population of that neighborhood? It is important to point out that this is not an isolated event. In Rio de Janeiro and many other Brazilian cities in recent years there has been a broad movement for the preservation of the so called "street movie theaters," an expression that is used to distinguish them from movie theaters located in shopping centers. The Vaz Lobo movie theater is classified as one of these "street movie theaters." From the point of view of the agents of the pro "street movie theaters" movement, it is public space that is mainly appreciated as a source of social and individual life - not private space. In this way, the decline of the so called "street movie theaters" - because of the city's population growth, real estate speculation, the construction of shopping centers and the emergence of new media - is seen as one of the reasons for the decline of social life. From their point of view, this has dangerously led to what is called the "desertification of public space." 14 The ideas of the members of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement differ from those of the members of the movement for the "street movie theaters." Firstly, because the latter is situated in a generic plan and when they refer to the Vaz Lobo movie theater, it is presented as just an example of the general category "street movie theaters." In addition, in the case of the broader movements in defense of "street movie theaters" there is a clear and explicit project to reopen these theaters, and have them operate with financial support from the city government. In contrast, the members of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement affirm that the Vaz Lobo movie theater has been unique since its inauguration until today. The Vaz Lobo movie theater became a powerful icon and the name of the Movement clearly isn't an accident. Unlike the movements in defense of "street movie theaters," the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement members do not present such a clearly defined project for the future uses of the building. They foresee a wide range of uses: it could become a cultural center, a performing arts center, the headquarters for the Historical and Geographical Institute of Irajá and so on. 15 The social nucleus of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement is composed of local residents, some of them are people like Ronaldo Luis Martins, a 70-year old local historian who studies the region; Doctor Gusmão, a retired lawyer and childhood friend of Ronaldo, although the two only met again because of the Movement. Ronaldo now lives in the neighborhood of Freguesia. Doctor Gusmão still lives in Vaz Lobo. Other members are very young, such as Karen da Silva Barros who recently earned a bachelor's degree in history; Maria Celeste, who is also a historian as well as a local public school teacher; and Fernanda Costa, an architect and urban planner who was responsible for the project that led to the route change for the Transcarioca Corridor, rescuing the building of the Vaz Lobo movie theater from imminent demolition. They are the main social and cultural mediators of the Movement. They are the ones who take the initiative to contact city hall, and politicians from Rio de Janeiro State and in Brasilia. They publicize information about Vaz Lobo and especially about the Vaz Lobo movie theater. 16 Apparently until the year of 2009, when the the Transcarioca Corridor was announced, and the Movement for the Vaz Lobo movie theater preservation began, very few people were aware of its existence. The building, in bad condition, did not arouse great attention or interest on the part of the local residents. According to some of the people I interviewed, the city government had a project for its recognition as "heritage" in 2006. Not for its architectural attributes, but for being recognized as one of the

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remaining "street movie theaters" of Rio de Janeiro. According to the members of the Movement, this project, for unclear reasons, was aborted. The resumption of the Vaz Lobo movie theater preservation project is due to circumstantial factors. 17 According to the interviewees, in 2009, a young architecture and urban planning student at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), Fernanda Costa, had to choose a theme for her final course project. She decided to study the restoration of art deco movie theaters in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Although she lived in the neighborhood of Vaz Lobo since she was born, it was only then that she realized the existence of the old Vaz Lobo movie theater. It was a perfect fit for her paper. When I interviewed her, she said at first that she couldn't manage to gather much information about the movie theater from her relatives and neighbors. People said they knew of the existence of the movie theater, but they didn't remember going there to see a film. And even when talking to other residents, she couldn't get a positive answer when she asked about memories regarding the movie theater. According to Fernanda, given the difficulties, she had to look for other resources for her research on the Vaz Lobo movie theater. That's when they suggested she contact Ronaldo Luís Martins, who is acknowledged in the neighborhood as someone who knows a lot about Vaz Lobo and the neighboring region, and is the author of a book about the Madureira Market ("Mercadão de Madureira"). Since she couldn't have access to the inside of the theater, it was through Ronaldo's biographical memory that Fernanda managed to reconstruct what must have been the inside of the screening room. According to her, Ronaldo drew the room as he had kept it in his memory, since he went to the theater regularly when he was young. 18 In one of her meetings with Ronaldo to obtain information about the Vaz Lobo theater, Fernanda heard his commentary that "there was no way out," meaning that the route planned for the Transcarioca Corridor would definitely require demolishing the movie theater. Fernanda affirmed that "it wasn't really like that" and that there were possibilities to avoid the demolition. She had already been to the Pereira Passos Institute (an urban research institute in Rio de Janeiro), when she found an old project to officially recognize the building as a heritage site. Based on this project and archival research, she gained access to the Vaz Lobo movie theater's original architectural plans. Fernanda designed a new project that would be proposed to the Rio de Janeiro city government asking for the building's classification as heritage and the change of the Transcarioca Corridor route, thus preventing the Vaz Lobo movie theater from being demolished.. This initiative took place at the same time that the leaders of the Movement tried to gather the local population to sign a document to be submitted to the city mayor. They contacted a few politicians, including federal level politicians to obtain support for this initiative. After two years, the city government finally answered positively and the Transcarioca Corridor route near the Vaz Lobo Square stretch was altered, ensuring the building's permanence. As we will see below, this decision was not consensually received by the neighborhood residents, although it was enthusiastically celebrated by the members of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement. 19 We may say that through the narratives and images produced by the members of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement, the building came to be perceived in a new light. It was no longer just an old abandoned and ignored building in Vaz Lobo Square, whose surrounding area was used by residents, those who frequented the local stores and bars, and people who attended a Pentecostal temple and a Catholic church in the area; it was no longer a building whose surrounding area was occupied by a marginal

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population, especially late at night. In a certain way, the Vaz Lobo movie theater came to be metaphorically "re-inaugurated," and seemed to gain new life. 20 The focus of these images and stories is the very origin of the movie theater in a historical time of population growth, and social and economic development of the outer neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, namely the 1930's and 1940's. The focus is also its inauguration as a luxurious movie theater with 1,800 seats, its use by residents during the 1940's, 50's and 60's and after that, its decline through the 70's with the drop in attendance, the declining local population, the real estate depreciation and the closing of the movie theater in the eighties, as occurred with so many other movie theaters in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities. 21 The interviewees emphasize that, in contrast to many others in the city, the Vaz Lobo movie theater was not turned into a Pentecostal church or a supermarket, although, according to them, Mr. Monteiro received many valuable offers. According to some people, he wanted to turn the movie theater into a "cultural center" and for that reason he rejected all the offers he had received to sell or rent it. The building has remained closed since 1982. In the narratives I had access to, nobody explained why one of the owner's daughters, who lives in the building, prohibits anyone from entering.204 They insist on the fact that the movie theater has "resisted" all these years and in a joking manner suggest that the theater has a "corpo fechado." 215 22 As a spatial and architectural structure situated at one of the neighborhood's reference points, the intersection of three important avenues in the Rio de Janeiro suburbs, it was a catalyst for the members of the Movement as for a series of biographical and historical narratives. One of the people I interviewed reports that in one of the demonstrations promoted by the Cine Vaz 23 Lobo Movement in front of the building, a large number of people signed the petition to be sent to the mayor, and some were looking for the leaders of the Movement to give them family photographs and old newspaper articles about the Vaz Lobo movie theater. According to these interviewees, there was a very positive repercussion among the local population. But they also said there were those who simply argued for the demolition of the building and the construction of a new square in that space. For these people, the building and its surrounding area were considered dangerous, since at times it is used by drug dealers and drug users. Some said the best solution would be to demolish the building. Obviously there was no consensus. However, the interviewees who are members of the Movement affirmed unanimously that the neighborhood residents were very supportive.

From some residents' point of view

24 We have presented the point of view of the leaders of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement. The stories they tell about the origin and current situation of the Vaz Lobo movie theater may be understood as a result of an effort to frame a "collective memory." The preservation project for the Vaz Lobo movie theater, its reconstruction through narratives, photographs, old newspaper articles, plans, drawings that imaginarily reproduce the auditorium can be interpreted as an expression of such an effort.

25 However, although the members of the Movement point out the positive reception they have had from many neighborhood residents, they also indicate that there have been

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difficulties in relations with the population. Fernanda Costa tells about her difficulties in obtaining precise memories about the movie theater from her relatives and other old residents of the neighborhood. She even says that she used to walk in front of the Vaz Lobo movie theater everyday and it didn't call her attention at all. She simply didn't notice its existence in the neighborhood's everyday life. It was a kind of non-existent space. It was only when she faced the academic task of writing a paper on an old art nouveau movie theater that she came to notice that there was one very close to her house, although not among the most significant ones. She then decided to write her final paper about this movie theater. After that, she contacted the Pereira Passos Institute and Ronaldo Luís Martins to obtain more information about the movie theater. Michael Pollak's concept of "memory entrepreneurs" is useful in describing her action. 26 But considering that any effort to frame memory is limited, however intense and rigorous it may be, and since there is no memory narrative that is total, homogeneous and without fissures and contradictions, we may ask: to what degree do these narratives express the life of the movie theater? Would it be possible to find some kind of "resonance" of the Movement leaders' point of view among the residents of that neighborhood? 27 In a certain way, if we accept what the Movement's leaders say, we could answer the question positively. But, as we have seen, they are the ones who recognize that some local residents call for the demolition of the movie theater and a radical transformation of its surroundings. When asked, many residents said they were unaware of plans to preserve the movie theater, that they didn't see such an initiative positively and preferred that the whole area be turned into a square.256 Others said that the area has been occupied by drug dealers and drug addicts. One of the interviewees said that those who defend the preservation of the building don't have wide support from the local population of Vaz Lobo and in order to get the signatures for the project support they had to go to a place outside the neighborhood, the Madureira Market ("Mercadão de Madureira"), which is known as a central social and commercial point in the on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. They say that the building is very old and decadent, in very bad condition, and infested by rats and insects. When interviewed, the Catholic priest said many people who attend the church asked him to use his social prestige to intervene and help block the preservation of the movie theater. Apparently, at no time did the residents interviewed see the construction of the Transcarioca and the possible demolition of the Vaz Lobo movie theater building as a real threat. One of them said that after the change in the project, the road would become wider and even more dangerous for the pedestrians who have to cross it, and predicts a rise in the number of fatal accidents on the road. For them, the original project should have been used, and the movie theater demolished.

Heritage, space and experience

28 There is a common aspect between the point of view of the members of the Movement for the preservation of "street movie theaters" at the national level and the point of view of the leaders of the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement. They both emphasize unity in framing the memory of the local movie theater and the neighborhood; they both share a concept of heritage that emerges in the abstract world of laws and cultural ideologies;

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they both share a homogeneous and continuous concept of time when telling the history of the Vaz Lobo movie theater from its origin to present days. To the extent that this is a history of decline, their intention is to interrupt this process and rescue the building from destruction, thus enacting a narrative that I call the " rhetoric of loss."

29 On the other hand, those who simply ignore or are in fact in explicit opposition to the project to preserve the Vaz Lobo movie theater share a concept of heritage that emerges from their everyday life experience as well as from their biographical memory as neighborhood residents. This is to say that considering this point of view we may primarily talk of multiple heritages as well as multiple memories. We should ask ourselves if we still recognize "heritage" as a legal, social and symbolic element in their discourse. In the process of being classified as heritage, the movie theater is no longer the center, but part of a wider spatial and social world. It should be stressed that from the residents' point of view heritage emerges from their existential perception of the space, from their daily passage through the neighborhood streets and from what the latter may offer them in terms of familiarity or strangeness, safety or danger. Their interest is not exactly the Vaz Lobo movie theater as a cultural or legal unit to be preserved, but the neighborhood as a whole, the streets, the house where they live, the streets they roam, the avenues and the traffic, and also the Vaz Lobo Square, where close to so many other buildings the Vaz Lobo movie theater once - but no longer - operated. For them, it is not therefore an abstract and homogenous concept of space, but a qualitative one composed of heterogeneous places, which are first and foremost inhabited, more than perceived and classified as preservation sites. Moreover, they are not telling the neighborhood history from the perspective of a possible "loss," as do those who defend the preservation of the Vaz Lobo movie theater. They don't see the neighborhood and its streets being threatened by a loss. Many see the Transcarioca construction as positive because, according to them, it will bring improvements to the neighborhood. On the other hand, the threat that haunts many throughout the whole length of these great road constructions is the possibility that the construction may require the expropriation and demolition of their homes. In this case, it's a matter of a material loss, which is not usually mentioned by those who focus on the preservation of the Vaz Lobo movie theater. 30 If we were to graphically represent the concepts of space expressed by one or the other group, we'd have on one hand a homogenous surface with the Vaz Lobo movie theater in the center and identified as heritage, as a unit valued in itself, associated to immaterial values and, in this sense, separated from the everyday life around it. From the other point of view, we'd have a heterogeneous space, a meshwork of streets, avenues, houses, squares, buildings, with reference points, boundaries and frontiers used by the residents in their everyday life. So, if there is a central point, it is not occupied by the Vaz Lobo movie theater but perhaps by a certain square, a church, a commercial establishment, in relation to which the proposal to preserve or to classify the theater as "heritage" is not necessarily in their horizons. Not the concept of heritage as a legally and culturally delimited unit to be preserved. This grid of perception is a lot more complex than that of the people who defend the Vaz Lobo movie theater preservation as an expressive heritage of the neighborhood. This is the difference between those who actually live in the neighborhood and those who, although they may live there, perceive it from a distanced perspective as a target of

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cultural preservation, identifying themselves with the Cine Vaz Lobo Movement. For the latter, the Vaz Lobo movie theater is more than part of their everyday life, it is the place that symbolically synthetizes a certain way of telling the history of the movie theater and the neighborhood. 31 If we explore the suggestion to think of heritage as a "native category," that social situation can be understood in different ways. Moreover, the understanding presupposes distinct modalities of perceiving the local sociocultural world. From the point of view of many inhabitants, the Vaz Lobo movie theater is not an independent material and cultural element. It is perceived as part of a problematic and differently occupied physical and social environment. In this context, the very idea of "heritage" loses its abstract and unified character and becomes part of the inhabitants' complex and diverse everyday life experience. All things considered, heritage is not necessarily for them a set of material objects and architectural structures to be preserved, but strategies for living within the spatial limits of their neighborhood. Less than a heritage to be preserved, it is a heritage to be lived as part of their everyday life. Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, these people could well say: "Why preserve the Vaz Lobo movie theater, if it is divorced from our experience?"

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TAMASO, Izabela; LIMA FILHO, Manuel Ferreira. 2012. Antropologia e patrimônio cultural: trajetórias e conceitos.Brasília: ABA Publicações.

NOTES

1. For some recent work see Nelson; Olin 2003; Assman 2011; Olick; Vinitzky;-Seroussi; Levy 2011. 2. See Arantes 1984; 2000; Gouveia; Miceli 1985; Gonçalves 2004; 2005; 2007; 2012; Chuva 2009; Abreu; Chagas 2010 [2003]; Rubino 1991; Santos 1992; Fonseca 1997; Lima Filho, M.F.; Eckert, C.; Beltrão, J. 2007; Santos 1992; Tamaso; Lima Filho 2012. 3. See Gonçalves 2008; 2008a; 2012. 4. See Gonçalves 2005; 2007; 2012. 5. In Portuguese: "bens tombados". 6. Mauss 2003: 401-424. 7. See http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransCarioca Access 08/03/2012.

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8. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ44BVhQAkY Access 08/03/2012. 9. The data presented here is the result of a research project I have been working on in the last two years with members of LAARES (The Laboratory for the Anthropology of Architecture and Places) in the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology /IFCS /UFRJ (www.laares- ufrj.com), with the support of CNPq, CAPES and FAPERJ. Our studies have focused on the concepts of "place," "architecture" and "urbanism" in various social segments in the context of large cities, exploring these notions in the discourses of professionals of engineering, architecture, urbanism and historical preservation as well as in the discourses of residents and agents of local social movements. Currently, the empirical focus of our observation and analysis has been the effects of the big projects for urban intervention in the city of Rio de Janeiro given the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Fieldwork, participant observation and interviews have been concentrated in the neighborhoods of Vaz Lobo, Madureira and Irajá. 10. Information found on the website Bairros Cariocas of the Rio de Janeiro city government:http://portalgeo.rio.rj.gov.br/bairroscariocas/index_bairro.htm Accessed on March 8, 2012. 11. For pictures of the Vaz Lobo movie theater see https://www.google.com/search? q=cine+vaz+lobo&tbm=isch. Accessed on March14, 2013. 12. See http://vejario.abril.com.br/blog/as-ruas-do-rio/bairro-a-bairro/o-largo-de-vaz-lobo- estava-na-mira-da-transcarioca Access 08.03.2012. 13. In Portuguese: "Secretaria de Obras". 14. In Portuguese: "Secretaria de Patrimônio Cultural". 15. See http://escrevendo1.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/movimento-pela-reativacao-dos- cinemas.html Access 08.03.2012. 16. See http://www.joaodorio.com/site/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=659&Itemid=127. Access 08.03.2012. 17. See http://www.mercadaodemadureira.com/e-book-mercadao-de-madureira.pdf . Access 04.13.2013. 18. See Oliveira, Marcio Piñon de; Fernandes, Nelson da Nóbrega (2010). 19. See Pollak 1993. 20. See Pollak 1993:30. 21. See Gonçalves 2005. 22. A point of view that is expressed by Rio de Janeiro government employees who conducted an aborted project of classifying the Vaz Lobo movie theater as heritage in 2006. 23. See Gonçalves 2004. 24. "For what is the value of all our culture if it is divorced from experience" (Benjamin, 1996 [1933]: 732).

ABSTRACTS

In this paper the author focuses on the various ways people from an outlying area of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, understand the concepts of heritage, memory and place. Facing a radical transformation of their neighborhood conducted by the city government, they discuss the destiny of an old movie theater that is threatened with demolition. Some of them understand it as a heritage site to be protected and preserved because it supposedly expresses the memory of

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the neighborhood. Others affirm that the best way to deal with the problem is to demolish the old building and construct a new public square. The point made by the author is that we are facing two quite distinct ways of understanding the concept of heritage: one of them is based on an abstract and legal perspective; the other based on the everyday life experience of local residents.

Neste artigo o autor focaliza os diferentes pontos de vista da população de um determinado subúrbio do Rio de Janeiro sobre os conceitos de patrimônio, memória e espaço. Diante de um processo de transformação urbana radical conduzido pela prefeitura da cidade sobre o espaço do seu bairro, eles discutem o destino de um velho cinema ameaçado de demolição. Alguns o entendem como um patrimônio a ser protegido e preservado porque supostamente expressa a memória do bairro. Outros defendem a tese de que o velho prédio deveria ser demolido e em seu lugar construída uma nova praça pública. Para o autor, estamos diante de dois modos distintos de entender o conceito de patrimônio: um deles baseado numa perspectiva abstrata e jurídica; um outro baseado na experiência de vida cotidiana dos moradores.

INDEX

Keywords: heritage, memory, urban space. Palavras-chave: herança, memória, espaço urbano

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Black heritage and the revitalization of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone Urban interventions, memories and conflicts

Roberta Sampaio Guimarães Translation : Louise Dreier

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on March 5, 2013

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This article was developed from fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2009 and published in the doctoral thesis A Utopia da Pequena África. Os espaços do patrimônio na Zona Portuária carioca ("The Utopia of Little Africa: Heritage assets in Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone"). An earlier version was presented at the symposium "The Anthropology of Objects: objectification, subjectification, and preservation" at the 54th International Congress of Americanists (Vienna, 2012). I would like to thank the coordinators of the seminar, José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves and Els Lagrou, for their input, as well as that of João Paulo Castro, Alberto Goyena, Renata Menezes and the peer reviewers at Vibrant for contributions to this version.

1 Until the turn of the 21st century, Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone was predominantly classified by the city's moral geography as a region of prostitution, drug traffic and favelas. This notion, however, was transformed when the city government announced and implemented a comprehensive redevelopment plan1 for the area in an attempt to combat supposed "blight." With improvements to the streetscape, a surge of bars and venues geared towards a middle class clientele, the renovation of townhouses to attract higher income residents, upgrades to the cruise ship terminal for the landing of international and domestic tourists, as well as the establishment of new cultural

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facilities, news began to emerge regarding some of the region's sites, residents and "cultural heritage assets."

2 Despite the local nature of these transformations, researchers such as Saskia Sassen (1991) have pointed out that such rapid interventions in supposedly "blighted" urban areas are linked to an international race to attract capital, skilled labor, and large-scale events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics. In addition, these policies focus on central and port areas of cities, justified by the appreciation of what would be their unique historical and architectural character, although they also lead to commodified tourism, real estate speculation and gentrification2 (Smith 1987; McDonogh 2003). 3 In Brazil, the combination of large-scale urban redevelopment and the appreciation of "cultural heritage assets" has been the subject of several studies (Arantes 2000; Magnani 2002; Guimarães 2004; Frúgoli, Andrade e Peixoto 2006; Leite 2007; Gonçalves 2007; Eckert 2010). These affirm that the creation of "revitalized" spaces generates local interventions and counter-discourses, sometimes sparking social movements that claim or rethink so-called "cultural," "ethnic" or "minority" heritage sites. In addition to affirming the culturally diverse nature of Brazil, these movements tend to emphasize the conflicts that heritage assets materialize. 4 This paper reflects on an arena of political and moral recognition ignited by debate over a cultural heritage asset: the landmarking of Pedra do Sal as an "Afro-Brazilian historic and religious monument" by residents opposed to the "revitalization" of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone. These residents, claiming the site is the symbolic landmark of a "remnant quilombo community"3 filed a legal claim to ownership of several properties which they affirmed constituted an "ethnic territory." The Quilombo of Pedra do Sal became one of the most controversial battles for ethnic recognition in Brazil, , because it explored possibilities for broadening the constitutional concept of a quilombo. These possibilities would include, the plea for recognition of an ethnic territory in an urban context; the construction of a history of territorial occupation based on a mythological narrative; and territorial demarcation based on a cultural heritage conceived as the remnant symbol of a generic "black city" and, therefore, one without presumed heirs.

The creation, certification and dispute of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal

5 Pedra do Sal (Salt Stone) is located on Conceição Hill, a geographical elevation of modest dimensions with about two thousand residents that is wedged between the neighborhoods of Saúde and Centro. Architecturally, single and two-story colonial houses dominate the area, with the exception of the foot of the hill, where mixed-use or commercial activities, such as bars, restaurants, office supply, beverage storage, and body shops can be found.

6 The rocky outcrop that connects Pedra do Sal's upper and lower levels consists of a smooth and slippery surface, where a sculpted staircase facilitates pedestrian circulation. On the lower level is the small square known as Largo João da Baiana. In the daytime, it is frequented by residents and users of different origins, occupations, religions, and social status. Some park their cars, others lunch at an inexpensive restaurant and schoolchildren play there. On some evenings, the square also attracts samba circles and local festivities. On weekends, tourists are not an uncommon sight.

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Pedra do Sal and Largo João da Biana

Photo by Roberta Guimarães

7 Despite its diversity of uses and users, the hill, the square and dozens of surrounding properties were claimed by an entity known as the Community of Quilombo Remnants of Pedra do Sal in December 2005. The Community was created in 2001 after the Catholic Venerable Third Order of St. Francis of Penance, owner of several properties at the foot of the hill, began an eviction process against its current residents, seeking to expand its educational and welfare projects in the area. In the following four years, more than 30 families of renters and squatters (who had been living there with the organization's consent) were either evicted or relocated from these properties. However, some residents resisted, and the Venerable Third Order accused them of being "invaders" or that they had defaulted on their rent, to justify a call for the use of police force to evict them.

8 Among the families cited for eviction, two were active in social movements involved in political activism and the appreciation of Afro-Brazilian culture. Although they had only lived in their residences since the 1990s, they had been living in the Port Zone for a longer period. With longstanding emotional ties to the neighborhood, they then spearheaded the establishment of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, and mobilized three other families around the ethnic claim. The five families were practitioners of Candomblé, and had interpreted the eviction notice as a severance of traditional social ties with the Catholic organization, which in the past they considered to be supportive. Thus, in an attempt to halt the eviction process, the families requested that the federal government4 recognize the region as an ethnic territory. 9 Shorty after the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal was certified by the state government, a media campaign was initiated by the families that made the request with support from

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non-governmental pro-housing and ethnic affirmation organizations. The first article - based on a letter written by the families - was published on the website Observatório Quilombola. It accused the Catholic organization of evicting residents due to a supposed increase in property value after the city government announced the "redevelopment" of the Port Zone. To defend the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, a legal heritage claim was made, which affirmed that the site rightfully belonged to the plaintiffs because it sat on an embankment built by "slaves" and "paid workers" during the construction of the port in the early 19th century. That is, through a symbolic transfer of inheritance, their patrimonial rights preceded those of the Venerable Third Order. Sitting on an embankment built by slaves and paid workers during the construction of the port, Sacadura Cabral Street is lined with 19th century buildings. Royal decrees dating from November 18 and December 20, 1816 ensure ownership of all buildings on the site to the workers who built the embankment and their descendants. Based on these documents and the support of organizations such as the Movimento Negro Unificado (Unified Black Movement), the Community Board is taking the issue to court. It is a grand fight. The Third Order also has old documents, albeit not as old (a copy of the license signed by Regent Prince Dom Pedro I, donating the site to the religious order). With nowhere to go, the residents have taken to the streets. Plans include demonstrations during Sunday mass in the neighborhood. (Koinonia, Observatório Quilombola, 02.12.2005) 10 Other short articles followed. However, the conflict only received national attention a year later, when the federal government announced that it was assembling a work group to write an anthropological report on the historic, economic and sociocultural characteristics of the quilombola territory. An article on the website Boletim Quilombola revealed a change in discourse. Instead of emphasizing the legal heritage aspects of the claim, the focus was on religion and identity, based on a narrative about "Little Africa." Located at the foot of Conceição Hill, in the neighborhood of Saúde, close to Mauá Square, the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal is comprised of descendants of black slaves from Bahia and Africa. Saúde was the site of all the slave trade infrastructure during the 18th and 19th centuries. After slavery was abolished, blacks continued to live around Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone, and the area was appropriated as a social space for rituals, religious cults, drumming and capoeira. Popular culture flourished around Pedra do Sal and traditional samba artists drew inspiration from the community. Donga, Pixinguinha, João da Baiana and the writer Machado de Assis lived in the neighborhood. The land was located by the sea and received its name because it was where the salt sold in the capital market was unloaded. In the same port zone, "Brazil's Little Africa" was established, a refuge for blacks escaping Pereira Passos'5 "bota abaixo" (tear it down), an urban renewal project in the first decades of the 20th century. 11 The Third Venerable Order reacted to what it believed was an attack on its estate by mobilizing the Brazilian media to denounce the quilombola community. In response to a report by the Globo television network contesting the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, the federal government published an article on its website (Fundação Cultural Palmares, Zulu Araújo, 24.05.2007), stressing that the plaintiffs were "in fact" descendants of a quilombo community. The government argued that the landmarking of Pedra do Sal as an Afro-Brazilian historical and religious monument was their first certification of ethnicity.

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12 Four days later, the Globo network broadcast a story stating that the real estate in question was the property of the Catholic organization, and part of the "national artistic and historic heritage" of the São Francisco da Prainha Church. Its counter- argument consisted of another official heritage designation, issued to the Third Venerable Order in 1938, before the landmarking of Pedra do Sal. Furthermore, it disqualified the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal based on a historian's archival research, which concluded that there were no "records of a quilombo in the area" (Jornal Nacional, Milton Teixeira, 28.05.2007). The historian challenged the lawsuit by resorting to the colonial definition of the term quilombo (a group of runaway slaves), disregarding the political definition established by the Constitution. 13 More stories followed, both in favor and against the claim of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal. The height of media exposure, however, was reached with the publicatuib of the article "Urban Quilombos" in two national newspapers. The writer stated there had been a "proliferation of quilombo residents" following the promulgation of the Constitution of 1988, attributing this to a "purely legal gimmick" and to the political bias of those generating anthropological reports. As a case in point, he mentioned the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, describing the plaintiffs as "squatters" trying to obtain real estate. At the root of the case, five people who invaded a house and claimed for themselves 70 properties, each worth an average of R$ 250 thousand. None of them were even born in the neighborhood. They have already obtained reports (I wonder what this could mean) entitling them to the real estate. The ideologists of social justice must be very pleased with this (real) attack against the justice of children and adults of every color whose lives are being harmed. The drug traffickers in the area leave the community alone, but the vigilantes of social causes do not. (O Globo/O Estado de São Paulo newspapers, Denis Lerrer Rosenfield, 29/10/2007) 14 Subsequently, no other articles obtained national repercussion; only short updates on the ongoing case for ethnic recognition were posted on the federal government's website. From the stories, articles and letters published in the first two years of the certification of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, an authenticity6 system was put in place that both legitimized and questioned the cultural merit of the quilombola claim and the social motivations of the Catholic organization. Legal, political, identity and religious aspects were juxtaposed to define each of the disputed assets, be it those that are Afro- Brazilian Candomblé or those connected to Catholic Franciscans.

15 After the media dispute and the political exhaustion of both parties involved, the families of the Pedra do Sal Quilombo, along with government agencies and some of their intellectuals, reformulated the legal claim. This time, they claimed about 15 properties around Pedra do Sal instead of dozens of properties at the foot of the hill. In the meantime, residents of Conceição Hill were granted provisional compensation - the federal government filed lawsuits that halted the eviction process of all residents, including those who had not participated in the ethnic claim, until the historical and anthropological report on the characterization of the quilombola territory was complete.

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Little Africa elicited in the process of land tenure regularization

16 The Historical and Anthropological Report on the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal,7 created a narrative for the conflict between the plaintiffs and the Catholic organization that presented the site as a contemporary version of Little Africa. The report drew from filmmaker Roberto Moura's book, Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro [Aunt Ciata and Little Africa in Rio de Janeiro] (1983), recreating protagonists and antagonists, and describing the site as it would have been when occupied by the "ancestors" of the quilombola group.

17 In the book, Moura presented a specific group of genealogies, sacred ancestors and gods linked to the idea of Little Africa to prevent the loss of the city's "subaltern and black" memory, so that society could reflect on racial and social inequalities resulting from slave-. His theory was that, because of its history, racial prejudice had become an ominous Brazilian legacy, passed down from generation to generation, manifesting itself in the exclusion of "colored people" from the labor market and the access to consumer goods. According to Moura, there had been racial opposition between "blacks" and "whites" before slavery was abolished. Later, it was paired with the opposition between three social classes: "the masses," "the agrarian oligarchy," and "the urban middle class." This juxtaposition was the result of the introduction of a capitalist work ethic into the country, and led to the unification of the black, immigrant and northeastern classes, which the author identified generically as "the masses." 18 To highlight the singularities of blacks in this new historic context, Moura showcased the cultural practices of "Afro-descendants" who lived in Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia, according to their Bantu, Yoruba and Islamic origins decades before slavery was abolished. To each of these origins he attributed a characteristic of what he called "carioca urban culture": Carnival groups would be a result of Bantu festivities; Orisha worship, a heritage of the Yoruba religion; and urban riots, a heritage of Islamic bellicosity. The author identified "whites of the Portuguese elite and Catholic church" as the narrative antagonists to this "African culture," thus equating both practices to define the Afro-descendants' identity boundaries, portraying them as a singular sociocultural entity. 19 In his version of the history of Little Africa's, the author selected a series of events to describe the times, spaces and lifestyles of Rio's Port Zone related to black cultural identity. He described the trading of slaves from boats that docked at the Valongo pier, and the burial of those who had not survived the ocean journey in an 18thcentury cemetery in the Gamboa neighborhood; the occupation of houses in the Saúde neighborhood (including Pedra do Sal) by migrants from Bahia and Africans in the mid- nineteenth century; and, because of the urban renewal projects of Mayor Pereira Passos at the turn of the 20th century, the relocation of these migrants to the Praça Onze area, in the city center, and to favelas and suburbs. 20 His narrative focused primarily on the first two decades of the 20th century, when Moura claims a unique way of life was established by those who frequented samba circles at the house of Ciata and the house of Candomblé João Alabá, which he called a "Bahian diaspora" in Little Africa. For the author, this diaspora was part of Little Africa,

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although they were not synonymous, as the latter was also comprised of "the masses" of several other backgrounds and religions. Members of the diaspora were characterized as slum dwellers, those who instigated riots against the city's sanitation movement, organizers of port unions, percussion groups and Carnival festivities, and practitioners of Candomblé. 21 In the dramatic synthesis of his mythical narrative, the author proposed that there was historical continuity between members of the Bahian diaspora and those he identified as their "heirs" in the 1980s - Ciata's blood and religious relatives. He also emphasized what, in his opinion, were a series of negative changes in their forms of sociability: the shift from traditional craftsmanship to industrial activities; the weakening of religious and recreational ties following the death of "tias" from Bahia, who were elderly women of prestigious social standing, and the demise of Carnival groups; conflicts in the burgeoning music industry; romantic frustrations; the constant housing relocations; and increased government restrictions against Candomblé practices in popular Catholic festivities. He concluded, therefore, that these negative changes were related to the exclusion of blacks from the labor market and their lack of access to consumer goods, and expressed the racial prejudice in Brazilian society. 22 As recounted in the Historical and Anthropological Report on the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal, Moura's narrative - in addition to presenting images of tenements, samba, municipal sanitation campaigns, work at the port and Candomblé practices - was used to identify contemporary characters. The dramatic roles of the "white Portuguese elite" was likened to the residents of Conceição Hill, bearers of Portuguese tradition;8 the "Catholics," to the leaders of the Venerable Third Order; and the "urban planners," to those behind the current Port Zone revitalization plans. The residents of Pedra do Sal became the "heirs to the memory location," i.e. those who embody the cultural values of Little Africa's ancestors. 23 However, because the families who claimed ethnic recognition had different housing histories, the report argued that the group's "historical trajectory" (one of the requirements established by the Constitution for identifying quilombola communities) should be anchored in the notion of "historical atonement." According to the authors, these families were emblematic of a cultural and political "resistance" against what they considered a string of historical oppression that would have prevented Afro- descendants from living in the Port Zone and in the city center over the years. 24 Although Moura's book was used as an important historical reference in the land regularization process, a variation on its narrative was employed in the elicitation of Little Africa. In addition to the Afro-descendants listed by Moura, the report included a deceased port worker9 who had been born in the state of Rio de Janeiro and, therefore, was not classifiable as "Bahian" or "African." He did, however, establish a connection between the Port Zone's past and the sociocultural characteristics of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal since its members defined themselves as Afro-descendants and practitioners of Candomblé, but not from Bahia or Africa, and indeed as descendants of families from Rio de Janeiro state.

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The landmarking of Pedra do Sal in the demarcation of ethnic territory

25 However, the legal and social viability of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal depended on more than a mythical narrative about Little Africa; it required territorial demarcation. And the space that channeled the memory of Afro-Brazilian occupation in the Port Zone was Pedra do Sal, officially acknowledged as a monument of the "black city" by preservation policies.

26 Both Roberto Moura's book and the process of declaring the Pedra do Sal a heritage site took place in the same social and political context: the gradual demise of the military dictatorship, political openness, and the rise of ethnic and minority movements. During this period, preservation policies also became a wedge issue, with new ideas about heritage and national culture debated and consolidated in the elaboration of the Federal Constitution of 1988. The resulting widespread opinion was that landmarked sites could challenge monophonic "white," "elite" and "Catholic" national representations and leverage the autonomous development of the country, combating the cultural standardization associated with the consumption of foreign industrial products. 27 These reflections encouraged Brazilian society to represent itself as a mosaic of cultures and traditions, with the expansion of preservation policies to encompass "popular culture" and the "daily lives of communities" (Gonçalves 1996). This pluralistic concept of culture was also accompanied by decentralization policies, which encouraged local governments and even non-governmental organizations to propose the landmarking of significant sites (Fonseca 2005). 28 At the time, racial and preservation policies also merged. Legislators, intellectuals and social movements were particularly interested in discussing the centennial of Brazilian abolition and including articles that valued and affirmed Afro-Brazilian memory and culture in the Federal Constitution, emphasizing preservation practices. Considered socially effective in the production of collective symbols, these practices began producing images that perpetuated, diffused and exposed this culture and memory. Two iconic images were then created by Brazilian heritage authorities: in 1984, the Casa Branca do Engenho Velho (the White House of the Old Mill), an important Candomblé temple in Salvador, was declared a heritage site; and, in 1985, the historic region of Serra da Barriga, the site of the slave resistance movement Quilombo dos Palmares10, in Alagoas, also received this declaration. 29 In addition to the production of these national icons, the decentralization of preservation practices created other symbols linked to Afro-Brazilian culture and memory in regional contexts. Some symbols that evoked the "black city" were produced in Rio de Janeiro, including the landmarking of Pedra do Sal by the state government in 1984. According to one of the proponents, Pedra do Sal was selected to be a landmark because it symbolized not only an "elite" heritage asset, but also that of the "common folk." Pedra do Sal was considered to have two important characteristics: it was a "religious heritage site," capable of representing the Orisha tradition and popular Catholicism; and a "historic heritage site," capable of representing the migration from Bahia, and the rise of Carnival groups (Batucadas Brasileira, Joel Rufino,

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15.09.2008). The landmarking, therefore, intended to simultaneously encompass both sacred and identity aspects. 30 According to the landmark proposal (Instituto Estadual do Patrimônio Estadual, E-18/300048/84), Catholic and military assets on Conceição Hill had been landmarked by the national heritage institute since 1934. Therefore, a new "hierarchy of values" had to be implemented, acknowledging the "black and popular monument" of Pedra do Sal. According to the proponents, the heritage claim's main goal was the construction not only of memory, but of a "memory site." They argued that successive urban transformations had led to a process of "decharacterization," threatening the "evidence of the city's black past." Thus, although the Catholic Church was portrayed as a symbolic antagonist, urban projects were presented as the physical antagonists that transformed real estate and streets. 31 The request for the declaration as a heritage site also used Roberto Moura's book as an important historical reference to the time span that the preservation policy sought to highlight: the turn of the 20th century, when the "Bahian diaspora" took place, according to the author. The preservation specialists' concepts of "Little Africa" and "Bahian diaspora," however, were more nuanced than Moura's. For them, the Saúde neighborhood was a "Little Bahia" and Bahia was a "Little Africa," thus articulating an authenticity system around Afro-Brazilian origins that considered Bahia a purer heir to black traditions than the state of Rio de Janeiro. Similarly, the term "Bahian diaspora" was redefined. A distinction was made between people from Bahia and Africans, classifying people who frequented Pedra do Sal into two black groups with specific territorial and identity ties: those from Bahia who had lived near Praça Onze and the port and participated in João Alabá's Candomblé festivities; and Africans who lived at the top of Pedra do Sal and participated in the Muslim cults of Assumano Mina. 32 Unlike Moura, the preservation experts chose not to mention the social relationships between Africans and Bahians with other groups, whether they were combative or harmonious. They also avoided the interpretation of their cultural continuity and transformation over the years or the appointment of possible heritage heirs. No information that highlighted the social exchanges of these Afro-descendants was provided, idealizing and supposedly establishing Pedra do Sal's heritage as a symbol of the history black city. 33 However, despite this attempt at stabilization, the landmarking of Pedra do Sal twenty years later became, along with the eliciting of the myth of Little Africa, a symbolic mechanism in the creation of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal. Moreover, the plaintiffs used it as a means for creating an identity differentiated from other Port Zone users and society at large. Temporal markers were also created through a ritual calendar that provisionally suspended the region's polyphonic uses and enhanced its perception as an ethnic territory. 34 The families of Pedra do Sal began celebrating São Jorge Day (April 23rd), Black Awareness Day (November 20th) and Samba Day (December 2nd), symbolizing, respectively, the cult to Orishas, popular Catholicism and the political resistance and recreational practices of Afro-descendants. The celebrations involved not only friends and neighbors. They were promoted to members of social movements in support of affordable housing, black awareness, intellectuals, government workers and journalists - all considered important actors in the legitimization of the ethnic claim. However, the festivities not only affirmed the legal and political aspects of heritage preservation;

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their effectiveness was mainly based on identity and religious concepts, considering the plaintiffs "povo do santo" (people of the saint), the term for practitioners of Candomblé. 35 The celebrations entailed specific rituals, such as the "washing" of Pedra do Sal - the sacralization of space through prayer by sprinkling water; the offering of food to the eguns, dead samba artists, port workers and "filhos de santo" (children of the saints) who had passed through Pedra do Sal; guests were served dishes associated with slaves, such as feijoada or chicken with okra; and percussion-based musical groups performed. These events operated, therefore, as calendar rites (Van Gennep 1960). Through the progressive suspension of everyday activities, they stirred a period of intense social circulation and gift exchanges with Orishas, the dead, the human and the nonhuman. 36 Thus, amidst the housing conflict, the Pedra do Sal heritage site spearheaded the symbolic repositioning of those making the claim in relation to mediating agents, public authorities and other users of the Port Zone. From "squatters" and "defaulters," the five families that formed the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal positioned themselves as "heirs to Little Africa" in the public arena.

On the imponderable courses of cultural heritage

37 In recent decades, increased migration has led to the intensification of cultural contacts that do not always play out harmoniously. Often times they spur claims for recognition of identity-related differences, be they ethnic, religious, gender-based or of other forms of belonging that fall under the broad umbrella "minority". And, as noted by Adam Kuper (2002), there is a contemporary tendency to strive to be different, with political struggles appropriating the anthropological notion of culture, and the assumption that identity affirmation is necessary and even desirable.

38 However, because urban contexts are rife with meaning, social standings and uses, certain symbolic mechanisms must be employed to produce the perception of identity differences. By analyzing the formation process of the Quilombo of Pedra do Sal I sought to reflect on how heritage policies, regardless of their original intentions, can currently be used as catalysts for political struggle, converting everyday polyphonic spaces into symbolically monophonic ones. 39 However, from the standpoint of its cultural biography (Kopytoff 2008), the contemporary use of its landmark status in the ethnic claim has not terminated Pedra do Sal's social life as a marker of quilombola territory. The Quilombo of Pedra do Sal continues to be a highly controversial claim among journalists, government workers, intellectuals, social activists and residents of the Port Zone. By late 2009, its territory and the winner of the dispute between the plaintiff families and the Venerable Third Order had still not been defined. 40 Regardless of the outcome, the conflict shed light on the fact that the recognition and stabilization of heritage assets in the Port Zone - both Afro-Brazilian and Catholic - depend not only on their political and legal strategies, but on the resonance of their identity narratives and religious practices with society at large. That is, the recognition depends on their capacity to evoke cultural experiences regarded as "authentic," despite the permanent social tension due to the space's other uses and practices. And

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so Pedra do Sal's intangible biographical trajectory continues, with the permanent possibility of a social renaissance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ARRUTI, José Maurício. 2006 Mocambo: antropologia e história do processo de formação quilombola. São Paulo: EDUSC.

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CASTRO, João Paulo. 1998. Não tem doutores na favela, mas na favela tem doutores: padrões de interação em uma favela do subúrbio do Rio de Janeiro. Dissertação de mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social/UFRJ - Rio de Janeiro.

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FRÚGOLI, Heitor; ANDRADE, Luciana Teixeira; PEIXOTO, Fernanda Arêas. 2006. As cidades e seus agentes: práticas e representações. Belo Horizonte: PUC Minas/Edusp.

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GUIMARÃES, Roberta. 2004. A moradia como patrimônio cultural: discursos oficiais e reapropriações locais.Dissertação de mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Antropologia/UFRJ - Rio de Janeiro.

GUIMARÃES, Roberta. 2009. "Representações, apresentações e presentificações do Morro da Conceição: uma reflexão sobre cinema, patrimônio e projetos urbanísticos". In: M. A. Gonçalves; S. Head (orgs.), Devires Imagéticos: a etnografia, o outro e suas imagens. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 7Letras. pp. 254-280.

GUIMARÃES, Roberta. 2011. A utopia da Pequena África. Os espaços do patrimônios na Zona Portuária carioca.Tese de doutorado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Antropologia/UFRJ - Rio de Janeiro.

HANDLER, Richard. 1985. "On having a culture". In: G. Stocking (org.), Objects and others: essays on museums and material culture. Madison: The Winconsin University Press. pp. 192-217.

KOPYTOFF, Igor. 2008. "A biografia cultural das coisas: a mercantilização como processo". In: A. Appadurai (org.), A vida social das coisas: as mercadorias sob uma perspective cultural. Niterói: EDUFF. pp. 89-121.

KUPER, Adam. 2002. Cultura, a visão dos antropólogos. São Paulo: EDUSC.

LAMARÃO, Sergio. 1991. Dos trapiches ao porto. Um estudo sobre a Zona Portuária do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, Turismo e Esportes/Biblioteca Carioca.

LEITE, Rogério Proença. 2007. Usos e contra-usos da cidade: lugares e espaço público na experiência urbana contemporânea. Campinas: Unicamp/UFS.

MACCANNEL, Dean. 1976. "Staged Authenticity". In: The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class. Nova Iorque: Scocken Paperbacks. pp. 91-108.

MAGNANI, José Guilherme. 2002. "De perto e de dentro: notas para uma etnografia urbana". Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, vol. 17, n.49: 11-29.

MARCONDES, Marcos Antônio (Ed.). 1977. Enciclopédia da música brasileira - erudita, folclórica e popular. São Paulo: Arte Editora/Itaú Cultural.

MCDONOGH, Gary Wray. 2003. "Myth, Space and Virtue: Bars Gender and Change in Bacelona's Barrio Chino". In: S. M. Low; D. L. Zúñiga, The Anthropology of Space and Place. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 264-283.

MOURA, Roberto. 1995. Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura.

SASSEN, Saskia. 1991. The global cities. New Jersey: Princeton.

SEVCENKO, Nicolau. 2010. A Revolta da Vacina. São Paulo: Cosac Naify.

SILVA, Marília; OLIVEIRA, Arthur. 1981. Silas de Oliveira. Do jongo ao samba-enredo. Rio de Janeiro: Editora MEC/Funarte.

SMITH, Neil. 1987. "Gentrification, the frontier, and the restructuring of urban space". In: N. Smith; P. Williams (orgs.), Gentrification of the city. London: Allen, and Unwin. pp. 15-35.

VAN GENNEP, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

VELHO, Gilberto. 2007. "Patrimônio, negociação e conflito". In: C. Eckert; M. Lima Filho; J. Beltrão (orgs.),Antropologia e patrimônio cultural: diálogos e desafios contemporâneos. Blumenau: ABA/Nova Letra. pp. 249-261.

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Other sources

COHRE. "Despejos e luta pela permanência no centro do Rio de Janeiro", Boletim Quilombol@, fevereiro de 2007.

FCP. "Quilombo da Pedra do Sal é área remanescente de quilombo, afirma presidente da FCP a Rede Globo", 24 de maio de 2007.

IBB. "Entrevista com Joel Rufino", Batucadas Brasileiras, 15 de setembro de 2008.

INCRA. 2007. Relatório Histórico e Antropológico sobre o Quilombo da Pedra do Sal. Rio de Janeiro: INCRA/UFF.

INEPAC. 1984. Proposta de Tombamento da Pedra do Sal. Rio de Janeiro: INEPAC.

JORNAL O GLOBO/O ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO. "Quilombos urbanos", 29 de outubro de 2007.

KOINONIA. "Igreja desaloja moradores da Zona Portuária", Observatório Quilombola, 02 de dezembro de 2005.

REDE GLOBO. "É ou não é quilombo?", Jornal Nacional, 28 de maio de 2007.

NOTES

1. The redevelopment plan encompassed the port neighborhoods of Saúde, Gamboa and Santo Cristo, and in 2001 was named Port of Rio: Recovery and Revitalization Plan for the Port Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Since 2009, it has been reformulated and renamed The Marvelous Port: - an Urban Operation through Consortium for the Special Planning Interest Area of Rio de Janeiro's Port Region. 2. First used in 1963 by Ruth Glass in her study on working-class or low-income neighborhoods in central London, the term gentrification has since defined the process of investment, rehabilitation and housing appropriation of these neighborhoods by the middle class (Bidou-Zachariasen 2006). 3. The political trajectory of the term "remnant quilombo community" evokes the Brazilian context of racial debates of the 1980s, when the Federal Constitution included an article that created differentiated political subjects who would be entitled to the permanent ownership of the land they occupied through deeds for State "ethnic recognition" (Article 68, ADCT). Before this constitutional definition, a quilombo was widely considered the place where runaway slaves lived during the colonial era, and whose main icons were the Quilombo of Palmares and its leader, Zumbi. After the legal definition was established, two different concepts were merged to redefine the category. The "remnant" concept was proposed to liken the black and indigenous situations, with the rhetorical belief of "the right to memory" at its core, aiming to preserve the site where "historical processes of dispossession" had taken place. The concept of "common land use" defined rural areas where basic resources were controlled by family groups and regulated by their own legal universes. And the concept of "ethnicity" defined a "quilombola community" as a group who considered themselves as such, had a referenced identity in shared experiences and values, and considered themselves different from other identities in the event of land conflicts. This definition was later expanded to include new categories: "quilombola communities" must also have "a unique historical trajectory," "specific territorial relationships" and "black ancestry" (Arruti 2006). 4. The Palmares Cultural Foundation, a federal government entity, was responsible for issuing certificates that grant formal recognition to remnant quilombo communities. The land regularization process was managed by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).

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5. The civil engineer Pereira Passos was mayor of Rio de Janeiro between 1903 and 1906. He led several redevelopment works in the port and central neighborhoods, known as the Reforma Pereira Passos ("The Pereira Passos Renovation"). His views had been directly influenced by Baron Haussmann, Parisian mayor from 1853 to 1870, whose plans and policies were self-declared "modernization", "beautification" and "sanitation" measures. In order to attain this model of urbanity, Passos demolished countless tenements, built a "modern port" and compulsorily vaccinated the population. Several authors have called these efforts an attempt to both physically and morally sanitize places and their inhabitants (Abreu 2006; Lamarão 1991; Carvalho 2001; Sevcenko 2010). 6. Much has been written about the current use of the term "authenticity," discussing the ideas of truth, genuineness and intimacy that it evokes (Benjamim 1994, MacCannel 1976, Handler 1985, Gonçalves 1988, Clifford 1994). Whether referring to works of art, tourist destinations or the cultural goods that comprise so-called national heritage assets, many scholars question the use of "authenticity" as something inherent to the object itself. 7. I analyze the version of the report that was made available by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform in January 2007, and completed in partnership with the Universidade Federal Fluminense, by anthropologist Eliane Cantarino and historians Martha Abreu and Hebe Mattos. 8. On the uses and consequences of the symbolic association between Conceição Hill and the "Portuguese tradition" of its residents during the disclosure of the Port Zone redevelopment plans, see Guimarães (2009). 9. The port resident Mano Eloi is regarded by historic literature as an important leader of the longshoremen's union and one of the samba artists who founded the Império Serrano and Jongo da Serrinha samba schools. For more information on Mano Eloi, see Marcondes (1977), Silva; Oliveira (1981) and Castro (1998). 10. Several interpretations of the appreciation and affirmation of Afro-Brazilian culture and memory can be found in articles and books, such as in Velho (2007) and Garcia (2008).

ABSTRACTS

This paper discusses the creation of an arena for political and moral recognition stirred by the "revitalization" of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone: the landmarking of Pedra do Sal as a "historic and religious Afro-Brazilian monument" by residents who claimed legal ownership of several properties in the area, affirming that it is an "ethnic territory" and the site is "a remnant quilombo community." The Quilombo of Pedra do Sal became one of the most controversial battles for ethnic recognition in Brazil, because it explored possibilities for broadening the constitutional concept of a quilombo. These possibilities would include, the plea for recognition of an ethnic territory in an urban context; the construction of a history of territorial occupation based on mythological narrative; and a territorial demarcation based on a cultural heritage conceived as the remnant symbol of a generic "black city" and, therefore, without presumed heirs.

Este artigo aborda a formação de uma arena de reconhecimento político e moral movimentada durante a "revitalização" da Zona Portuária do Rio de Janeiro: o uso do tombamento da Pedra do Sal como "monumento histórico e religioso afro-brasileiro" por moradores que, reivindicando ser

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esse patrimônio o marco simbólico de uma "comunidade de remanescentes de quilombo", pleitearam juridicamente a titulação de diversos imóveis da região como "território étnico". No entanto, o Quilombo da Pedra do Sal se tornou um dos processos de reconhecimento étnico mais polêmicos da sociedade brasileira por explorar as possibilidades de flexibilização do conceito constitucional de "quilombo". Entre essas possibilidades, a de pleito de um território étnico em contexto urbano; a de construção de uma trajetória de ocupação do território baseada em narrativa mítica; e a de delimitação desse território a partir de um patrimônio cultural concebido como símbolo do passado de uma "cidade negra" genérica e, portanto, sem herdeiros presumidos.

INDEX

Keywords: cultural heritage, Afro-Brazilian memory, urban interventions, Pedra do Sal, Little Africa, port zone of Rio de Janeiro Palavras-chave: patrimônio cultural, memória afro-brasileira, projetos urbanísticos, Pedra do Sal, Pequena África, zona portuária do Rio de Janeiro

AUTHORS

ROBERTA SAMPAIO GUIMARÃES

UERJ

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Anthropology between heritage and museums

José Guilherme Cantor Magnani Translation : Diana Paola Gómez Mateus

EDITOR'S NOTE

Revised by Craig William Schuetze Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013.

Introduction: An art cinema

1 In March 2010, the HSBC bank formally discontinued its sponsorship of the Cine Belas Artes movie theater complex located at the corner of Rua da Consolação and Avenida Paulista. It was regarded as an art theater that featured independent films outside of mainstream moviemaking where each of the theater had suggestive names such as Villa-Lobos, Candido Portinari, Oscar Niemeyer, Aleijadinho and Carmen Miranda.

2 This decision mobilized various sectors of São Paulo's cultural scene, and in July 2010 the Movimento pelo Cine Belas Artes (MBA) (Movement for the Cine Belas Artes) launched a campaign to assure that the movie theater complex would survive. As a further precaution, the MBA solicited preservation status from the Council for the Preservation of Historic and Environmental Heritage of the City of São Paulo (CONPRESP) in January 2011. The owner reacted by demanding either an increase in rent or that the movie complex abandon the building dispossession of the building. In March 17, 2011, the cinema closed its doors, which led to an intense mobilization: public demonstrations, articles in newspapers and blogs, complaints about cultural and artistic neglect, and debates about history and heritage in the city. After all since 1943 the movie theater complex had existed previously under the name of Trianon.

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3 The commotion over the Cine Belas Artes continued as the CONPRESP refused the request. What, CONPRESP asked, would be there to preserve? According to its protocol, only a building itself can be considered, and it did not have any architectural value that would justify the measure. The public retaliated with cultural arguments and the state attorney general filed a lawsuit that led the 13th Jurisdiction of the Public Treasury court to order the theater be reopened. Then, a state entity, the Council for the Defense of Historic, Artistic and Touristic Heritage (CONDEPHAAT) , accepted a new preservation appeal, and even the city council joined the struggle, creating an Investigatory Committee and summoning the CONPRESP director to testify. 4 The commotion of all these actors over this issue is remarkable, but even more interesting is how this controversy involved almost all of the familiar aspects of heritage: architecture, art, history, and even the most recent: the immaterial. Just a few months earlier something similar had occurred with Parque da Água Branca (Água Branca Park), which is protected by CONDEPHAAT and which, through the initiative of a wife of a São Paulo mayor during her brief stay in government, began to conduct "improvements" and reforms without any of the customary measures, even legal ones. As a result, an association called Friends of Parque da Água Branca alerted the media, and contacted several government offices; the situation is still unresolved.1 5 I use these anecdotes to begin my discussion about "New Subjects, New Technologies, and New Uses of Museology and Preservation," the theme proposed in this edition of Vibrant, because they illustrate the internal incongruities of several concepts of heritage. The limits of legal measures supposedly designed to protect public heritage, and the repercussions of these debates beyond the circle of the relevant technical institutions, provides a good opportunity to place the issue in another analytical framework. 6 The case of the Cine Belas Artes is particularly interesting for this reflection to the degree that it is located inside a specific patch2 that was described and analyzed in 1991 by the Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana (NAU) (Urban Anthropology Nucleus).3 At that time, the movie theater, along with the Riviera Bar, was one of the central structural elements of the social dynamics at the corner of Rua da Consolação Street and Avenida Paulista. 7 It is worth describing the Riviera Bar because of the complimentary role it played within this patch, serving as a kind of partner of the Cine Belas Artes. Given the name Riviera in 1949, it was a place frequented by families, judges and doctors that served sandwiches, tea, and ice cream. In the late 1950s it became popular among students from the São Francisco Law School and Mackenzie University. During the 60s, it was a meeting point for many activists of various political tendencies (and therefore suffered frequent police raids), and for a public connected to the art scene: theatre, movies and music. It served as the setting of the movie "Besame Mucho" (which depicted the period of the dictatorship), and inspired a song by Sá and Guarabira ("We were like that at the time of Riviera blue"), as well as the cartoonist Angeli and his characters "Rê Bordosa", "Meia Oito," and "Juvenal." The latter was a waiter who worked at the bar for more than thirty years (Torres, 2008: 75). 8 The Baguette Grill and Pasta House, the Chamego bar, Nostromondo gay club, the Belas Artes bookstore, the Metrópolis bar, the Kairós bookstore and many street stands selling books - among other features - completed this patch of gatherings, culture, and leisure, traversed by the various routes4 used by passers-by in their various choices and

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preferences. This scenario, however, has changed: the Riviera Bar closed in 2006, along with most of the establishments that contributed to that particular ambiance and attracted the flux of people to that space. 9 The regulars headed off in the direction of Augusta Street, around the Espaço Unibanco (now called Espaço Itaú de Cinema), and the Frei Caneca Shopping Center and its movie theaters. That segment of the street, known as the Baixa (or lower) Augusta leads downtown - in opposition to the segment that leads towards Jardins, an elite neighborhood. - It has recently displayed a new vitality. Previously known as an erotic leisure space, home to mixed saunas, call girls and transvestites waiting at corners, the range of use and enjoyment of the space has expanded. New bars aimed at college students have opened, as well as coffee shops, music and bookstores, and indie rock houses. As a consequence, new actors began to circulate, this includes a "straight edge" scene and a more sophisticated gay public, for example, besides the already mentioned moviegoers. 10 The old patch anchored at the corner of Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação, once effervescent in terms of cultural consumption, is now a place of passage: bus stops and exclusive bus lanes, an intense flow of cars, and right next to the old cinema, the entrance to a new subway line. If it was once a place where people paused in search of leisure and comfort, it is now a place marked by the speed of the daily commute. 11 The discussion concerning the permanence (or not) of the Cine Belas Artes is directly linked to the transformations of the place , which leads me to consider the role of cultural goods and their value as heritage in both the context of the cityscape and the web of routes of passersby. In this case, the anthropological perspective - and especially the perspective of urban anthropology, and the research theories and methodologies developed at the NAU - can lend clarity to the debate.

Parque do Povo (People's Park)

12 The Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana has a history linked to questions concerning heritage and museums. Among its various encounters and achievements, one should be highlighted: the restoration of the Parque do Povo (People's Park) by the CONDEPHAAT in São Paulo in 1994. The development of this restoration process relied not only on the aid of historical and environmental foundations, but also on a research report based on fieldwork conducted by NAU that examined a specific practice that took place there: amateur soccer.

13 An article published by the Revista do Patrimônio (Magnani & Morgado, 1996) emphasized the novelty of the case. The article begins by recalling that the preservation of spaces such as candomblé terreiros, the sites of former quilombos, factory villages, buildings where migrant communities live, and other similar spaces - spaces linked to the lifestyles (in terms of housing, work, religion) of socially and/or ethnically marked groups - hardly surprised anyone. Although it is uncommon, the inclusion of these items on the official cultural heritage list shows the presence of values that broaden the traditional criteria that reign at preservation and restoration institutions. 14 The preservation of the Parque do Povo was somehow different from the places cited above: it was an area of 150.000m2, located in an elite neighborhood, in fact, one of the

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most expensive regions of São Paulo.5 The area was divided into soccer fields that were used by "amateur" teams: the Marítimo Futebol Clube, Grêmio Esportivo Canto do Rio, Tintas Cirota, Sociedade Esportiva Flor do Itaim, and others that organized noisy and frequent contests in the form of daily "tournaments" and "festivals," attracting visitors from the most diverse and distant neighborhoods of São Paulo. The Park also hosted a circus and a theater where dances where held on weekends. 15 If what initially justified the demand for preservation was the need to maintain a green space, considering the city's environmental quality, it was the continuous presence of amateur soccer teams at the site, at least since the 1930s, which became the main reason for preserving the park. The region had been the site of one of the many riverside meadows in the city - in this case along the Pinheiros River - that were traditionally used for leisure activities on weekends, and which have gradually been incorporated into the city through the urbanization process. 16 The of the Parque do Povo, however, persisted, and not just as a mere testament or vestige of an old mode of use, but actively thrived. Yet there was an increasing dissonance between it and the sophisticated environs that came to surround it. And here began the saga of a process quite different than those that normally occur at preservation and restoration institutions. 17 In the first place, the question involved a space related to a leisure activity - note that at that time the discourse about "Immaterial Heritage" did not exist. Activities of home, work, or religion were the aspects usually invoked to justify the preservation of places of worship, work settings and facilities, or examples of unique construction types. Besides the fields and grounds marked with lime and the usual park improvements, the park did not exhibit any architectonic or artistic quality. 18 Secondly, despite the proven historical link of the present practice with the original use of the land, it was a popular kind of leisure that had nothing to do with the image of the picnics of old along the whimsical rivers that meander through São Paulo offering delightful settings for family recreation. Currently the bodies, colors, odors, uniforms, verbal expressions, and dust from the fields all blend into a repertoire that clash with the aesthetics of the surrounding buildings, the behavior of the passersby and residents and the various models of cars, all of which belong to the upper classes. 19 For some, the Parque do Povo - beginning with the name - would be better off at the outskirts of the city. Of course, the regions for the elite can cohabit with "those people" at the expected hours, as long as they wear work uniforms and use the appropriate speech. But, for their recreation? The game of inversions and contrasts however, goes farther. Everyone knows that weekends are for leisure, but at the there were soccer games on weekdays. Just who was using the park? Honest, hard-working people? Where di they come from? The research challenged the suspicion that they were "good-for- nothings" playing on a Monday, a workday. We discovered that they were workers (and union members at that) from the restaurants, hotels and other establishments whose day off is Monday. 20 The proposal was to remove that "wound," as some people came to call the park, and replace it with alternatives that would better suit the surroundings: a glamorous shopping center, a beautifully landscaped park or even an apartment complex, something in a postmodern style, much more in keeping with the style of the recent occupation along the Pinheiros highway in front. Everything, of course, within the parameters of a suitable landscape. Meanwhile, some users of the fields organized

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themselves, an association emerged, and support was sought in the media, the city council, and the university. Finally, after many unpredictable changes, the Parque do Povo was granted cultural heritage status, ensuring the right to leisure, and a form of leisure with popular characteristics, in a space that had been used as such for many years. 21 Unfortunately, twelve years have gone by and nothing remains from the original proposal for declaring the park a heritage site, as the city government's current website shows: The Park is set within an area that belongs to the Caixa Econômica Federal6 and to the Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social7. For over 20 years, about 11 sport clubs have used the site. The city council put an end to this use of the space in 2006. The educational and environmental plan for the Park includes seven self-guided paths, with plants that compose the botanical collection of the park. Among them, there is the aromatic and medicinal plant collection that composes the Sensitive Garden. The species found in the garden awaken touch, smell, and taste. People can touch, smell, and even bite the leaves of the plants and trees to get to know them."8 22 Well, these "illegal occupants" (who had been there for over 20 years!) were exactly the social actors whose practice had motivated the preservation of the Park, a bit of history that is not even mentioned in the website. But now that the unwanted visitors are kept away, it is possible to touch, smell, and bite the leaves of the aromatic plants.

23 As you can see, preservation is not always the best mechanism for promoting -both promptly and with positive results - the defense of any specific property (recall the case of Cine Belas Artes). Nor can it guarantee their appropriate protection (Parque da Água Branca and Parque do Povo). Goods without material and or tangible, lasting support (like the soccer fields traced into the land with lime) are more vulnerable, as are spaces related to the practices of social agents with limited powers to negotiate. This is what happened at the Parque do Povo when not even the prestigious institutions involved in the dispute were able to guarantee the preservation of the popular soccer fields. 24 If ethnographic research manages to bring forth new elements to justify the establishment of protection measures, it is necessary to realize that the strategy cannot be valued for its technical merits alone, since the context is always political and depends on the powers of negotiation of those involved. In this regard, it is worth remembering another demonstration of that power by the residents of Itaim-Bibi, who had already managed to stop the original Parque do Povo project. In 2011, they were able, by means of their association (SOS Itaim Bibi), to veto the sale of the so-called "quarteirão da cultura" (culture block) - a 22 thousand m2 site with a daycare, health center, theatre (Teatro Décio de Almeida Prado), library (Biblioteca pública Anne Frank) and the Associação dos Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais (APAE)9 (The Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional)- that the municipal government was offering to a construction company in exchange for the construction of a daycare center. 25 The concept of immaterial goods is currently used to consider the specificity of those cases; yet when the goods in dispute involve interests other than the "merely" cultural, it is difficult to assure proper protection. This leads to the need to appeal to other instruments to characterize a good as worthy of protection, and to implement measures beyond those currently included in the legislation. One of those measures, for example, is a municipal law from 2004 known as the Neigborhood Plan, which was

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intended to create solutions to neigborhood problems through the residents' participation in forums and assemblies. 26 The law had its first important application in 2008 at the neighborhood of Perus in São Paulo's Zona Norte. The inhabitants of the Vila Madalena neighborhood later invoked the Nieghborhood Plan when threatened by the construction of a shopping center in 2012. Initially the "Movimento pela Vila" (The Vila Movement) saw preservation as a way of avoiding the gentrification of the traditional neighborhood: which is a cradle of counterculture, independent filmmaking, and related manifestations of art and culture.

Santana de Parnaíba

27 Going back in time a bit further in this attempt to recall experiences in the field of anthropology and heritage, it is worth mentioning the project Santana de Parnaíba: memória e cotidiano (Santana de Parnaíba: memory and everyday life). This was a project that I coordinated in 1984 as part of an advisory service performed for CONDEPHAAT. Santana de Parnaíba is a city located in São Paulo's metropolitan region that has a group of buildings that have federal and state protection because of their architectural importance. But it was also the site of disagreements between residents and technicians from official institutions, which created difficulties in the implementation of some of the measures called for by preservation policies. To diagnose these problems, the president of the council at the time, Antônio Augusto Arantes, appealed to the Documentation and Research Centre for Communitarian Action, presided over at the time by professor Ruth Cardoso, who in turn appointed me to do the job. The report we drafted began as follows: So-called historical cities are not only the sites where past events are preserved in architectural details and housing. It is necessary to recognize that life continues its course in these places. But the relations of present actors with these sites are not always accounted for by preservation institutions. This omission can be perceived in some of the premises that guide the preservationist practice. The first one is the presupposition that the criteria by which cultural goods are chosen and classified are universal and shared unanimously by all users. The other premise is considering users as mere obstacles to preservation because all too often the relationship between users and preservationist institutions is conflicting, whether it concerns selection criteria, or whether it concerns preservation by state intervention. (Magnani, (1984) 2007b: 283) 28 Santana de Parnaíba arose in 1580 during the first century of settlement. By 1620, this colonial village was one of the main points of departure for the bandeiras10 thanks to its strategic location on the banks of the Tietê River and along the old indigenous road that led to the backlands of Mato Grosso and Goiás. In the year of our research, it was still a small city with 15,995 habitants and many restored houses and buildings, among them the famous Anhanguera's house from the 2nd half of the 17th century. The daily activities seemed to drift calmly along the three streets of the historic downtown.

29 The research followed three stages: an initial exploratory stage with our contacts and informal interviews primarily conducted with elderly people, who were always willing to talk about their families and traditions. Afterwards, the data collected during this first stage was organized in a classificatory grid that divided the dwellers in two categories: "insiders" and "outsiders" and further divided the latter category into "foreigners," "artists," and "employees."

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30 Each one of these people had a personal narrative and each had a different understanding of what was this "historical" city's important heritage. However, they all referred to one issue where the differences converged: celebrations. These celebrations were therefore chosen as the object of focus during the last stage of our fieldwork observation, with special attention given to the Corpus Christi commemoration and the procession through streets ornamented like carpets. If we were to account for the whole cycle, we would include the celebration of Saint Ana, the city's patron saint, the Saint Sebastian and Saint Benedict celebrations, the Saint Anthony pilgrimage in the rural district of Surú, and the carnival with its traditional bloco dos fantasmas (ghosts' parade). 31 Thus, by means of the ethnographic method, it was possible to: 1) describe and analyze the city's everyday life and the changes it suffered during days of celebration, 2) identify the many actors and their relationship with public and private space, 3) track the emergence of conflicts, and 4) trace the impact of this entire scheme upon the understanding of heritage, the central objective of our research. 32 This was not a peaceful seventeenth-century city; it was embedded in São Paulo's metropolitan region, close to highways and became encompassed within the immense urban periphery. During the research our attention was drawn to the fact that some "foreigners" (Brazilians who have recently arrived from other location and who are supposedly more sensible to the heritage issues) claimed to have "restored" their vacation homes in the historical downtown at the cost of demolishing homes in the suburbs to get "authentic" construction material. 33 Hence, notions about heritage vary, making it necessary to address actors and consider their diversity of interests and ideas. On the other hand, the recurrence, shown by the ethnographic research, of discussions of celebrations - the place and time of encounter not only of the many categories of visitors but also of visitors from afar - clearly showed their central importance to the city. The issue was a good place to begin thinking about heritage and its value beyond the everyday life of residents.

Urban Anthropology and Museums

34 Another topic of debate is the relationship between museums and anthropology, and one of the first issues that emerges is the notion of representation: what are the criteria used to justify if this or that object, image, fact, etc. could, or should, be included in a catalog? In the specific case of museums dedicated to specific cities, what elements of the multifaceted urban landscape, systems of infrastructure, demographic composition, historical formation, etc. ought to be used to "represent" the diversity and singularity of a city in a museum?

35 It is helpful to begin the discussion from a common-sense definition of representation. According to the conventional perspective, representation presupposes the existence of a fixed entity in the world that can be apprehended in its totality and afterwards expressed in an immediately recognizable form (in agreement with the rules of a given code, be it verbal, written, pictorial, or otherwise, and maintaining a kind of relationship among them: mimetic, metonymic or metaphorical). 36 This concept has been discussed by many disciplines, including anthropology. In this particular case, the so-called "crisis of representation," as we already know, was

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unleashed by virtue of critiques developed inside the movement that came to be known as "Postmodern Anthropology," during the 1960s and 1970s, which discussed the means the discipline used to obtain data and to expose it in the form of classical monographs. 37 The critiques' main question was whether those monographs, written according to the rules of a "realist" style, reliably or legitimately represented the social organization, lifeways, cosmology and rituals, etc. of the people with whom the anthropologist works. These works did not mention the researcher-native relations and the power of each in these relationships, difficulties in language comprehension, the conditions of the anthropologist's rapport with the subjects and environment during fieldwork, and many other factors. These monographs were questioned in their very goal of "representing" the complex and changing reality of a people by means of a fixed and frozen report in the final text, a document that presented research results from the privileged point of view of the researcher. 38 Without entering into the distinctions of the controversies and developments that this movement produced within the field of anthropology, it is helpful to recall the main issue that was raised and apply it to the central dilemma posed by City Museums11. Can the city - principally in its contemporary dimensions, shapes, and dynamics - be "represented" according to the resources, tools, and notions used in traditional museology? Does this not presuppose exactly the same notion of "representation" as was defined above? 39 The problem becomes more complex when one is looking at the cities known in the literature as "mega-cities," "world cities," and "global cities." According to Mobgin, (2009) these cities share multiple centralities, different ways of life of their inhabitants and the infinity of marks printed on the landscape by institutions and urban equipment. 40 Looking at an urban situation that had not yet reached such global proportions, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in his article "Modern and Postmodern Architecture" ([1983] 1985), already wondered if it is still possible to talk about the city - the one whose prototype was the late Medieval hamlet described by Max Weber (1999), since for Weber urban life was increasingly mediated by "systemic relations, which cannot be given concrete form" while, "the urban agglomerations have outgrown the old concept of the city...." (op. cit.: passim, 327). 41 Have these cities thus "passed the point," of cities, overgrown in such an exaggerated and disorganized manner as to lead to their defacement in the view of the paradigm of reference. Or, on the contrary, would it not be the case that these cities are inaugurating new arrangements (from common structural forms) by virtue of their scales, functions and the practices of their inhabitants? And, once again, how can we "represent" this diversity? 42 I believe that the categories developed by urban anthropology can contribute towards thinking about these new configurations, and consequently create a space to rethink the relationship between cities and museums in a broader perspective. This would allow a collaboration that gives the same importance to both aspects of this relation both in their complexity and their possibilities for interaction. Some concrete experiences presented in the following section will help in elucidating the question.

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Museu do Imaginário do Povo Brasileiro (The Museum of the Brazilian People's Imaginary)

43 One such experience was my participation on the Board of Curators of the Museu do Imaginário do Povo Brasileiro in 2002 to define the basic concept for the various modules of the exposition. In this case, my participation was limited to the conceptual dimension, contributing to the discussion by emphasizing the need to distinguish between "the imaginary of" and "the imaginary about" the Brazilian people. It was necessary to establish this distinction to avoid confusing conflicting orientations, since choosing one or the other would have a traditional museological proposition as a consequence. If the "Brazilian people's imaginary" was chosen, we would run the risk of taking the direction of a folklore museum. If, on the contrary, we chose the "imaginary about the Brazilian people," there was the danger of privileging the elite's vision of the masses. Despite having already opted, in the title, for one of the alternatives, the debate alerted us to the differences between the two, differences that were considered in the details of specific propositions.

44 The debate about this distinction led to another antinomy - product versus process - which had consequences for the establishment of the relationship between the permanent expositions and temporary expositions. Typically, museums present their products - oeuvres, objects, and images - to the public with a greater or lesser degree of information about them, but they rarely offer the opportunity to know and discuss the process of their production. Such information is normally the responsibility of more intellectual reflection conducted by specialists restricted to the academic, scholarly fields. All that is left to the public, is a more or less passive contemplation of the products. 45 The novelty that the Museu do Imaginário do Povo Brasileiro presented was to offer the two angles: the product- mainly in the form of temporary expositions - and the opportunity to access the process of its production, meaning the public was provided access to facts that in given (historic, politic, socioeconomic, aesthetic, etc.) conjunctures were responsible for the particular shape the product assumed in the exposition. The nucleus formed by the permanent expositions would create these opportunities while an Integrated Reference Center would give continuity to that reflection, forming a unique and original museological strategy.

Museu da Cidade de São Paulo (The Museum of the City of São Paulo)

46 The second experience in which I participated - this time, accompanied by other members of the NAU - was the attempt to found the Museu da Cidade de São Paulo. For several months in 2003 and 2004, a multidisciplinary team met to discuss concepts and creative processes (research and pedagogic activities, among others) for another innovative proposal for which the design and organization had been approved. It would be installed at the Palácio das Indústrias building at the Parque d. Pedro II, in the central region of the city.

47 Nevertheless, what I want to highlight is not so much the process as the experience that supported the Expedição São Paulo - 450 anos ("The São Paulo Expedition - 450

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years). The project was financed by Petrobrás, sponsored by the newspaper Estado de São Paulo, and had logistic support from the Municipal Cultural Secretariat, the Institute Florestan Fernandes, the EXPOMUS12 team and the NAU. The experience combined thirty professionals from various areas for a "voyage inside the metropolis," for the anniversary of São Paulo's state capital in January 2004. 48 Our goal was to come into contact with the diversity of forms of sociability, leisure, religiosity, popular exchange systems, and the functionality of complex systems (such as the subway) that are constitutive of many residents' modes of life in the city of twelve million people. Obviously, this was not an ethnographic research in the technical sense of the word, nor did it pretend to make an exhaustive record. But, a week after professionals from the various areas of knowledge - human sciences, architecture, psychiatry, ethnomusicology, museology, archaeology, arts, and education - traveled through the city along two axles (north-south and east-west), they were able to appreciate and reflect upon the heterogeneity, diversity, and richness of the residents' households that they visited. This diversity emerged not to "survive" the renowned "urban chaos," but to establish their creative and surprising relationships with the city. 49 The premise that orientated our approach was that despite a recurrent discourse about the violence, inequalities, hardship, and related maladies that are constantly attributed to the metropolis, it would be possible - by means of a "closer and insider" perspective, such as ethnographic examination proposes - to contact the regularities of everyday life and the social networks that support it. 50 The researchers were accompanied by a team of students - most of them NAU members - who were assigned with collecting the data found and produced during the trip: pictures, interviews, information, addresses, image-usage rights, and even some objects that would enter the future collection of the Museum of the City of São Paulo. They proposed to repeat the trip from time to time to apply the same methodology towards systematically accompanying the dynamics of the city and the necessary renovation of the museological space fated to interact with the city. But...13 51 Two more recent experiences close the series: The Museu do Futebol (The Football Museum) and the Museu da Imigração (Immigration Museum). I will not go into details about the former since there is a thorough account of it in this edition. It is enough to say that in 2010 this Museum - thanks to the initiative of a director and a coordinator, both researchers who were members of NAU - presented a project to FINEP, an organ of the Ministry of Science and Technology, which was given the job of establishing the Documentation Center on Brazilian Soccer. Initiated in 2012, the goal of the Center was to organize a a research council and a team of researchers to conduct a broad survey of the practices related to soccer in São Paulo, from professional to amateur. All this information would contribute to the museum's database, which would link to the public (mainly, to the social actors involved) in innovative ways: networks, circuits, and routes. 52 The proposal supposes the elaboration of instruments for research, recording and analysis that link the museological practice to ethnography, to broaden the scopes of storage, cataloging, and exposition. Therefore, multidisciplinary training courses are planned for the Museum researchers as well in the form om continuing education courses, in one way or another, for those who are interested and those who may be carriers of the items, memories, and cultural riches linked to the soccer practice in

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their neighborhoods and everyday contexts of sociability. The process was accompanied by the NAU along its timeline of collecting and interpreting information from the field. 53 The participation of NAU at the Museu da Imigração was possible through the invitation of EXPOMUS, which had won the bid for the revitalization project of these traditional facilities. I was responsible for developing the concept for module VI for the exposition that would open the Museum entitled: "Contemporary Migrations." With that concept as a base, the Bom Retiro neighborhood was chosen to exemplify the many nuances and realities of the migration process in São Paulo, going beyond the common treatment of the subject that emphasizes groups of immigrants in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Moreover, through one of its research teams -NAU Migration - NAU conducted research to evaluate the reception, documentation, and representations of the demands of the population living near the Museum in the Mooca neighborhood.

Immaterial Heritage: a street in Londrina

54 It has become common to assign each one of the facets of heritage - whether architectural, historical, artistic, archaeological or immaterial - to a specialist in the field who is in charge of defining the criteria, setting the norms, and establishing the proper delimitations. The last to enter into the conversation was the anthropologist, always attentive to the knowledge, festivals, celebrations, practices, and other aspects of traditional folk culture. As is widely known, each one of those facets has a history and form of legitimacy: the first, also known as "brick and mortar," is the most consolidated in heritage practices, whose paradigm promotes emblematic Luso- Brazilian baroque edifications.

55 There are, as is also known, political and ideological reasons for this choice: the same can be said about the temporal depth, expressed in the "historical," which also delimitates the reach and limitations of heritage. The more conservative vision of these facets often excludes more recent cities with their pioneers, settlers, migrants and wooden buildings, as is seen in the following case. 56 On the other hand, there is an approach that seeks to comprise the diversity of all these aspects, temporalities, and emphases, thus overcoming the difficulties that stem the multiple criteria for defining heritage: it is known by the consecrated expression "cultural heritage." Even if this reference to "culture" points to a broader idea, when it is analyzed carefully, one notices more of a rhetorical, expedient nature than a conceptual one. The debates about culture - and not just within anthropology - are never-ending, which makes it necessary to constantly distinguish theoretical trends and conceptual distinctions to avoid recourse to common sense. Certainly, there is a positive aspect in this regard: while this approach may not easily resolve the multiple issues involved, it points to the need for a wider approach as well as the search for new means to deal with heritage. 57 Nevertheless, it is necessary to go beyond this theoretical shortcut, which ends up generalizing and dissolving differences, to move forward in the pursuit of characterizing what constitutes heritage, at a more detailed level, as something worth registering and in need of protection. It is necessary to look for innovative criteria and

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wider frameworks. Once more, I suggest that anthropology can contribute to the debate. 58 I will now discuss a concrete case to illustrate this issue. I was recently invited to write the presentation text for a compilation entitled, Rua Sergipe: patrimônio cultural Londrinense (Magalhães, 2012), with contributions from many of the members of the IPAC/Londrina (PR).14 Each of the authors - architects, historians, and social scientists - focused on the aspect of heritage of their interest. I would like to call attention to one of these aspects. 59 In this case we were dealing with recuperating the present dynamics of the street Rua Sergipe by showing its vitality and diversity by using the categories of turf, circuit, patch, route and gateway to detect regularities and patterns. There is, certainly, a continuity between the "old" Rua Sergipe, from the glorious times of the founding of the city and the buildings and activities of that era - which for this reason are a source of representations - and the current use. 60 In the book in which she describes the everyday life of a U.S. city in opposition to the artificiality of modernist urbanism (1992), Jane Jacobs uses the interesting expression the "sidewalk ballet" to refer to the vitality of the multiple uses that a street offers to urban dynamics. In terms of heritage, this aspect corresponds, in a way, with a more recent description: immaterial heritage. In the specific case of this street, it embraces a wide range of practices and attributes; meeting places, behaviors, gestures, expressions, bar recipes, games, celebrations. Some are ephemeral, others lack durable material support, and others are somehow the result of a multiplicity of constitutive elements. 61 These categories allow us to identify, among the presumed chaos, some regularities that grant a particular shape to that street. Moreover, the fieldwork performed and identified new categories, native ones - the "place of pause", among others - that enriched and brought meaningful nuances to the set of categories that already existed. 62 This initiative attests to the need to transcend the consecrated classifications and face the issue of heritage not just in its contemporaneity, but also to submit it to innovative research projects, using new instruments and perspectives, such as the one this book documents, about a normal, recently established city.

Conclusion

63 To finish I will now turn to a text by Ulpiano B. de Menezes, A cidade como um bem cultural (The City as a Cultural Good). It was published in a compilation by the 9º SR/ IPHAN, and followed by guest commentaries from Antonio Augusto Arantes, Edgar Assis Carvalho, Paulo Ormindo de Azevedo and myself (MORI, Victor Hugo; SOUZA, Marise Campos et alii (org.): 2006). I will profit from an observation Menezes made about my commentary (a kind of rebuttal), about the category of circuit, to return to the elements I developed throughout this work: 1) anthropology and its relationships with heritage and 2) the city and questions about the forms of museological representations.

64 In that article, Ulpiano presents the concept of city as a cultural good, in contrast to the more typical idea of "cultural goods in the city" or even the idea of "cultural use," with

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the latter promoted through a strategy of allocating heritage goods for a supposedly nobler purpose, that of becoming cultural spaces. 65 To consider the city as a cultural good is a posture that broadens the reach of preservation policies: the idea would be to move beyond cataloging a limited series of elements worthy of protection. In fact, it is the city (as artifact, as a result of a field of forces, and as representation, according to the author) that supports the complex game of meanings created through social processes and that can be condensed and identified, in more specific ways, in this or that place, building, or object. 66 But it is not the presence of a monument that makes the city worthy of contemplation, realization, or knowledge; it is the presence of a web of meanings that makes this or that "good" noteworthy, and, therefore, worthy of protection. To place the city in the forefront, as a cultural good (as opposed to fragmenting it into the "cultural goods" that compose it), creates space for preservationist practices. We are talking here about a position that offers an alternative to the celebrated analyses of "urban problems." 67 This argument reminds me of a passage in Tristes Tropiques where Lévi-Strauss qualifies the city as the "supremely human achievement": So it is not in any metaphorical sense that we are justified in comparing - as has so often been done - a town with a symphony or a poem; they are objects of a similar nature. The town is perhaps even more precious than a work of art in that it stands at the meeting point of nature and artifice. Consisting, as it does, of a community of animals who enclose their biological history within its boundaries and at the same time mold it according to their every intention as thinking beings, the town, in both its development and its form, belongs simultaneously to biological procreation, organic evolution, and aesthetic creation. It is at one and the same time an object of nature and subject of culture; an individual and a group; reality and dream; the supremely human achievement ([1955] 2012: 124). 68 This sentence may seem extemporaneous when faced with the scale and the problems of contemporary megacities. We must keep in mind the context in which it appears: Lévi-Strauss was talking of the Brazilian cities that he saw in the 1930s (São Paulo, the cities in northern Paraná and Goiânia) but also Karachi and Calcutta in India, and the archeological sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, from 5,000 years ago. Beyond the historical and typological differences, what interests me is to identify the structural principles, perceptible in the longue durée.It is in this sense that the city, in the words of the author, "represents civilization in its most complex and exquisite form" (ibid: 126).

69 Yet, even if this perspective offers a good antecedent for the idea of the city as an artifact, conceived as a totality, one question remains: how to represent this city? What to choose? I think that the category of circuitrecuperates that idea of unity or totality, but It is obviously neither the kind of totality that evokes an organic, functional, whole, free of conflicts, nor a totality that corresponds, in the case of the city, to its political-administrative boundaries. (...). Nevertheless, to renounce that kind of totality does not mean to assume the extreme opposite position, say, to dive deeply into fragmentation. If we cannot delimit a unique order, it does not mean that there is none; there are particular, segmented orders and there are ordinances, regularities (Magnani, 2002: 16). 70 If, on one hand, the idea of circuit, points to the idea of totality, it is not a reification. The example I used in my comments to Ulpiano's article - which happens to be about cinema - helps clarify the question of how to represent the apparent paradox of an

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urban singularity-diversity in a museological space. What interests me, more than an isolated good in itself, is the circuit within which it acquires meaning.

71 This category (Magnani, 2007)15 emerged from the need to name a modality of relationship with the city that did not fit into forms of co-presence between actors and space. If within the limits of a turf and of the patch, it is possible to identify a particular slice in the landscape along with its users, the circuit presents another dynamic of interaction between the two. Take for example a kind of cultural practice that presupposes given facilities in its very use, and establishes lasting links between its enthusiasts, creating a community of interests: that of the cinephiles. 72 It is not about individual consumers: the nature of the activity that brings them together and characterizes them supposes a network based on an exchange of information, critiques and controversies, in short, the search for and exhibition of knowledge. The territorial basis of their practice can shape a contiguous patch, but can also establish a network: it is scattered throughout the city - and not only in the so- called art cinemas that constitute it - but also in libraries, debates, special exhibitions at public institutions and private foundations and at events such as showings, festivals, releases, etc.. 73 The circuit articulates these two dimensions. If this category is applied to other practices - paying attention to the passages and links between them - what you find is less the image of something fragmented and isolated within the cityscape, and more a kind of articulated (but not necessarily contiguous) whole that has specific participants, rules, consumer guidelines, patterns of sociability, schedules, etc.. Notice, a propros, the consequence that this kind of reading would have on protection measures that are truly committed to meaningful cultural practices and based on a living and active network of actors. It would be meaningless, for example, to declare the protection of a specific isolated cinema without taking into account the circuit or the patch in which it is located. 74 Returning to cinema, we need to consider not only the space involved, but the history: in the case of São Paulo there is no way to ignore the importance of the boca do lixo, a quadrangle in the Luz neighborhood and a center of the film industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Its production was characterized first by low cost films and later by the pornochanchada of the 1970s. Yet we must consider much more: the old and imposing movie theatres downtown, in the so-called cinelândia of the 1940s and 1950s - most of them still in activity exhibiting porn films; the Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz, the most important Brazilian film studio in the 1950s; Amácio Mazzaropi's filmography, filled with one blockbuster after another until the 1970s; the Cinemateca Brasileira with its fine catalog; the art cinemas; the screening rooms in shopping centers, and finally the role of the The São Paulo International Film Festival, already in its 35th edition. An isolated good - this or that theater, listing, or facility - acquires meaning when it is incorporated into a circuit or is at the interior of a patch, which in this case may be considered to be its "surroundings" in the technical jargon. 75 At the boca do lixo region, you have a consistent circuit, one in which each point contributes with its specificity to a practice whose common denominator - the fruition of cinema - is fostered by the limitless number of services constituted over time and distributed through the cityspace. The same logic can be applied to the patch, as is found at the corner between Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação when the Cine Belas Artes and the Riviera bar were its main points - and which have now moved to

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the Baixa Augusta region and Rua Frei Caneca. In these cases, the clearly recognizable routes of the visitors appear at the level of walking, which is different from what happens with the circuit because the latter does not depend upon a spatial continuity. 76 In this way, whether as a question of heritage to be identified, protected, and preserved - as we saw in the cases of the Cine Belas Artes, the Parque do Povo, Santana de Parnaíba, and Rua Sergipe in Londrina, or with the challenges of museology put forth by the dynamics and diversity of the cities in the cases of the Museu da Cidade de São Paulo, the Museu do futebol, and the Museu do Imaginário do Povo Brasileiro, anthropology, and specially urban anthropology, with its distinct method of ethnography, categories of analyses, and research strategies, may open a fruitful dialog with the disciplines traditionally engaged with the different dimensions of heritage and museology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CESÁRIO, Ana Cleide C. et alli. 2012. "Sergipe, a rua de todas a compras". In: Leandro Henrique Magalhães (org.),Rua Sergipe: patrimônio cultural londrinense. Londrina: UniFil. pp. 75-101.

HABERMAS, Jürgen. 1985 "Modern and postmodern architecture". Helena Tsoskounoglou (trad.). In: John Forester (ed.). Critical theory and public life. Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 317-329

Jacobs, Jane. 1992. The death and life of great american cities. Nova York: Vintage.

LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. 2012 [1955]. Tristes tropiques. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (trads.). New York: Penguin Classics. Reprint edition.

MAGALHÃES, Leandro Henrique. 2012. Rua Sergipe: patrimônio cultural londrinense. Londrina: UniFil.

MAGNANI, J. Guilherme C. & MORGADO, Naira. 1996. "Tombamento do Parque do Povo: futebol de várzea também é patrimônio". Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, 24: 175-184.

MAGNANI, J. Guilherme C. (org.). 2004. Expedição São Paulo 450 anos - uma viagem por dentro da metrópole.São Paulo: Secretaria de Cultura do Município de São Paulo/Instituto Florestan Fernandes.

MAGNANI, J. Guilherme C. 2007. "Introdução: circuito de jovens". In: J. Guilherme C. Magnani & Bruna Mantese (orgs.), Jovens na metrópole: etnografias de circuitos de lazer, encontro e sociabilidade. São Paulo: Terceiro Nome (Col. Antropologia Hoje). pp.15-22.

MAGNANI, J. Guilherme C. 2007b. "Santana de Parnaíba: memória e cotidiano". In: Regina Abreu; Mário de S. Chagas & Myrian S. Santos (orgs.), Museus, coleções e patrimônios: narrativas polifônicas. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond Universitária/MINC. pp. 283-323.

MENEZES, Ulpiano Bezerra. 2006. "A cidade como bem cultural: áreas envoltórias e outros dilemas, equívocos e alcance da preservação do patrimônio ambiental urbano". In: Victor Hugo Mori; Marise Campos Souza et alli(org.), Patrimônio: atualizando o debate. São Paulo: 9ª SR/IPHAN. pp.33-76.

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MONGIN, Olivier. 2009. A condição urbana: a cidade na era da globalização. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade.

TORRES, Lilian de Lucca. 2008. "Programa de paulista: lazer no Bixiga e na avenida Paulista com a rua da Consolação". In: J. Guilherme C. Magnani & Lilian Torres. Na metrópole: textos de antropologia urbana. 3ª ed. São Paulo: Edusp/Fapesp. pp. 54-87.

WEBER, Max. 1999. Economia e sociedade. Brasília: Editora da UNB. vol. 2.

NOTES

1. In the article "Two Years Without the Cine Belas Artes: there is something to commemorate!" published in national magazine Carta Capital on March 21st 2013, Nabil Bonduki, Professor "livre- docente" of city planning at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU) from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), who is also a city councilman in São Paulo and responsible for drafting the new master plan for the city, commemorates the reversal of the closing after the mobilization by the Movimento Pelo Cine Belas Arte (MBA) - which received over 100,000 signatures via the internet in defense of the movie theater complex. "CONDEPHAAT granted heritage status to the building's façade and the memory of the cinema was registered. Any other work or physical alteration can only be performed with authorization of the institution. It is expected that with the city's new administrative council, the CONPRESP - which two years earlier began the process of seeking heritage status - will be able to resume the issue which had come to appear positive in the technical area". 2. "Patches" is a term we use to describe contiguous areas within the urban space endowed with infrastructure that marks their limits and facilitates a predominant activity or practice - each one specific, always competing and complementing. The category was proposed to describe a specific established spatial arrangement within the urban landscape. It is distinct from the category of turf, which is related to the dynamics of the group that identifies it. At any moment the users of a turf can choose another space as a point of reference and meeting place. The patch, on the other hand, results from the inherent relation between various components of the urban infrastructure which serves as the appeal to the flux of visitors. A patch is more anchored to the landscape than to the passing populations that frequent it. Thus the way users identify with a patch is different than the way users identify with their turf. The patch is more open, receives more, and more diverse, people, and offers them not a sense of welcome or belonging through any given service or good, but the possibility of encounter. Thepatch beckons to the unexpected, more than to the expected: it is not possible to know for sure what or who we are going to meet in a patch - even if we have an idea of the type of goods or services that are offered there and of the taste, or the general consumption pattern, of its visitors" (Magnani, 2007:20). 3. The Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana is a research group coordinated by Professor José Guilherme Cantor Magnani since 1990 at the University of São Paulo. See more information: www.n-a-u.org. TN 4. A description of one of those routes: people arrived with a certain anticipation, bought their tickets, and enjoyed the wait before the film started by drinking coffee or having a bite across the street. When the session ended, everyone headed to the Rivera bar (the more intellectual types) or to the Metrópolis (for the more flirtatious). Whether before or after, everyone strolled by the bookstores, while hours later, the enthusiasts wandered to the nightclubs. 5. It is located in the Itaim Bibi neighborhood, and is bordered by the Juscelino Kubistchek, Cidade Jardim, Brigadeiro Haroldo Veloso avenues and the Pinheiros highway. 6. According to its official website [www.caixa.gov.co], the Caixa Econômica Federal bank is owned completely by the federal government. It plays a fundamental role in the promotion of

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urban development and social justice in the country. The Caixa is dedicated to helping low- income people to improve their lifestyle. (Accessed on 12-04-2013, 11:50). 7. The Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social (INSS) [www.mpas.gov.br] is the entity responsible for the country's Social Security system. Its main function is to guarantee workers' and their families portection and welfare. (Accessed on 12-04-2013, 12:57).. 8. http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/meio_ambiente/parques/ regiao_centrooeste/index.php?p=22396 (Accessed on 06-09-2012, 08:34) 9. APAE (Associação dos Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais) [www.apaebrasil.org.br] is a network constituted by parents and friends of people with disabilities. APAE supports their social inclusion process. (Accessed on 12-04-2013, 13:10). TN. 10. Here Bandeiras refers to the expeditions taken by pioneers during the 16th century in quest of riches, indigenous and to explore the territory. 11. City Museums or, in portuguese "Museu de cidade" refers to a museum that is dedicated entirely to the city and its inhabitants. A City Museum may document and divulge the city's history as well as its present state. TN. 12. "The Expomuns [coordinated by museologist Maria Ignez Mantovani] is a company that since 1981 performs museological projects within social, scientific, technological and environment fields (...). National and international museums and cultural institutions, private and corporate collectors and municipal, state and federal public entities are among our main partners and clients." For more information visit: http://www.expomus.com.br/ (Accessed on 09/08/2012, 08:30) 13. Another initiative that could not be accomplished for political reasons. The expedition nonetheless had four outcomes: an exposition at Galeria Olido, a book Expedição São Paulo, 450 anos: uma vigem por dentro da metrópole, a video under the same title, and a CD with the photos. 14. The continuous education project Inventário e Proteção do Acervo Cultural de Londrina - IPAC/LDA (Inventory and Protection of the cultural heritage of Londrina - IPAC/LDA) was born in 1986 at the Universidad Estadual de Londrina - UEL - as a response to advice offered by José Guilherme Cantor Magnani - who at the time was the Cultural Heritage Coordinator at the State Cultural Secretariat of Paraná. The proposal was to develop a policy to study and intervene in the material and immaterial heritage of Parana's northern region. By selecting Londrina as the starting point for work under the state's cultural heritage policy, Magnani made an instigating choice, because the city and the region are part of a new colonization, and this would demand an updated and broader theoretical and methodological approach towards the concepts and practices in use at the time." (http://www.uel.br/projetos/ipaclda/) 15. "It has to do with a category that describes the exercise of a practice or the availability of a specific service through establishments, facilities, and spaces that do not maintain in themselves a relation of spatial continuity, but which are recognized as a whole by its customary users. The notion of circuit also points to a use of the space and of urban facilities - therefore enabling the exercise of sociability through encounters, communication and code switching - yet in a form more independent in relationship to the space, without regard to continuity, as usually occurs with a patch and a turf. But like them, it has an objective and perceptible existence: it can be recorded, described, and located" (Magnani, 2007:20)

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ABSTRACTS

By analyzing some cases this article exposes the contribution of Anthropology, and specially, Urban Anthropology to the characterization of what may or may not be a cultural good and its value as Heritage in the context of the urban landscape. As a matter of fact, here it is shown the application of the ethnographic method, with its "inside and close-by" regard and with the categories of turf, patch, route and circuit, developed along researches performed at the Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana (NAU/USP) [Urban Anthropology Nucleus]. Thus, our aim is to argument that this work brings forth new elements for a better definition of the many heritage modalities - be it Architectonic, Archeological, Historical, and mainly the so-called Immaterial or Intangible. Thereby a fecund dialogue is opened between Anthropology and the disciplines traditionally engaged with the fields of Heritage and Museology.

Este artigo apresenta, a partir da análise de alguns casos, a contribuição da Antropologia, e em especial da Antropologia Urbana, para a caracterização do que seja um bem cultural e de seu valor de patrimônio no contexto da paisagem urbana. Mais concretamente, é mostrada a aplicação do método etnográfico, com seu olhar de "perto e de dentro", e das categorias pedaço, mancha, trajeto e circuito, desenvolvidos em pesquisas do Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana (NAU/ USP). Pretende-se, desta forma, argumentar que esta contribuição pode aportar novos elementos para uma melhor definição das várias modalidades de patrimônio - arquitetônico, arqueológico, histórico, e principalmente do chamado imaterial ou intangível. Abre-se, assim, assim um fecundo diálogo com as disciplinas tradicionalmente comprometidas com os campos do patrimônio e da museologia.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: antropologia urbana, patrimonio cultural, mancha, trajeto , museu da cidade, paisagem urbana Keywords: urban anthropology, cultural heritage, patch, route , city museum, urban landscape

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The city museum of São Paulo: a new design for city museums in the era of the megacity

Maria Ignez Mantovani Franco Translation : Luiz Alberto P.N. Franco

EDITOR'S NOTE

Revised by Ian Jones. Accepted for publication on March 22, 2013.

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1 The City is a tomography of the present, pointing to the future and looking back to the past. 2 Today, city growth averages one million people every week. In 1950 there were 86 cities with more than one million inhabitants, today they are some 400 across the world. However the most significant effect of the urban process is, without doubt, the explosion of megacities. It took one century for the urban population - around 3.4 billion - to surpass the world's rural population, but United Nations projections indicate that by 2025 the urban population will reach 61 per cent of the total.

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3 In the case of São Paulo, creating a new city museum requires, at the outset, that one should consider some 1,500 square kilometres, corresponding to the administrative area, as the geographic area of study. That is, the area of the Municipality, politically divided into 96 districts where 11 million people live. However, approximately 20 million people live in the wider metropolitan area. During the last decades, studies confirmed by satellite images have indicated that two conurbation1 axes are clearly distinguished and expanding: one extends towards Rio de Janeiro, 400 kilometres from São Paulo, and another is in the direction of Campinas, 100 kilometers away. Travelling along either axis one cannot help concluding that it is difficult to talk about São Paulo as a subject for a museum and, at the same time, ignore Greater São Paulo with its vast conurbation which is continually expanding and changing. 4 This theoretical model - a territorial museum - is nourished by the clear and evident notion that the city is something which undergoes mutations, a permanently pulsating being. The City Museum of São Paulo has as its artefact that very metropolis, and it requires dynamic structures capable of undertaking real time mutations, in order to cope with the oscillations of social life in the big city. 5 The gigantic urban area which comprises the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo and the Metropolitan Region of Campinas is the first macrometropolis of the southern hemisphere, inhabited by 22 million people, approximately 12 percent of the Brazilian population. Its factories form the richest industrial complex in Brazil. They are responsible for 65.3 per cent of the gross product of the State of São Paulo or 21.1 per cent of the Brazilian GNP (gross national product). 6 Though there is no one universal definition of an urban area, it is safe to assume that the Brazilian macrometropolis2 is surpassed only by a few urban agglomerations, such as Tokyo-Yokohama, Shanghai or Mexico City. This suggests that the emerging countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will, in the next decades, be the biggest generators of megacities.

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7 Although this analysis tries to focus on the municipality of São Paulo as the museum artefact, one cannot deny or ignore the fact that a huge crowd moves daily along the axes that, as tentacles, connect São Paulo to its peripheral regions. Migratory fluxes have intensified along both directions in such a way that today there is social contact in São Paulo between city natives and the inhabitants of the wider urban region. The economic wealth of the State of São Paulo when considered in the general Brazilian context raises serious concerns related to this macroaxis. Besides its natural potentialities, it becomes the target of important political and economical dispute. 8 Modern urban planning requires multifaceted knowledge involving analysis by architects and urbanists, but it is also a fertile soil for other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, education and museology. All the different professional standpoints converge in the study of the way of life and organisation of the populations in the megacity. 9 In the outer edge of the megalopolis, one can identify new social arrangements that articulate and make possible a collectively organised life that goes beyond city government initiatives. Considering the concept of multiple centralities around the core of the megalopolis itself, we see that those outer populations gravitate around other urban landmarks, new social references, new expanded centres, other forms of circulation, communication and social interaction. The word "periphery" is ambiguous since one can always ask: peripheral in relationship to what? 10 When we look at the global urban scenario it seems correct to state that the need to create museums about the city has never before presented itself with such intensity, especially so in the megalopolises of emerging countries. We need to consider the sheer scale of these cities and adopt a more diversified format, multicentered, able to articulate social forces in a more encompassing way. Possibly we can make evident the fact that museums of cities, within this theoretical model, consider public interest as their priority and that they take actions that give priority to democratic access and enjoyment of the population, involving knowledge about the city where they live and work. 11 The City Museum of São Paulo project recommended, through exploratory interactions with young people, the adoption of the idea that São Paulo is an "Educating City". Thus, it should consider itself as an active institution able to translate the feelings and ambitions of its population into a concrete programme for the museum. 12 Cities are the natural ground for multiculturalism, territories where diversities co- exist, where differences are confronted. Furthermore in Latin America and especially in Brazil, where São Paulo is doubtless its greatest expression, large cities have received multiple migratory fluxes through both immigration and emigration for most of the twentieth century. The consequences are that cities like Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Mexico City, Medellin, and so many others, are hybrid spaces, contradictory and multicultural. 13 Therefore in a large Brazilian city there is a pattern whereby newcomers rapidly find their most closely related ethnic group to which they can attach themselves, a first exercise in getting involved, in belonging; from this first welcome gesture, the newcomer will feel part of the group, but not confined to a ghetto. Members of different groups do not tend to exclude each other - on the contrary, they establish multicultural relationships, they socialise and absorb each other's traditions and contradictions.

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14 Considering the global scenario of intolerance between people, the multiculturalism that characterises Latin American metropolises may be one of their most powerful distinguishing features and strengths. It is possible that Latin American cities have the potential to develop new hybrid models, revealing an aptitude to adapt, possibly in a more ingenious form, to new global challenges. 15 In 2003, as part of the 450th anniversary of São Paulo's foundation, the Culture Secretary of the city proposed the creation of a City Museum of São Paulo that would value former initiatives in recording city history, but would also aim at broadening more traditional views in acknowledgement of the territorial complexity of São Paulo. The model of a city museum developed during that period is the subject of an in depth investigation and analysis in my doctorate thesis in Museology, which was presented to the "Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias", in Lisbon. In my thesis, first conceived in 2003, the process of making sense of the urban space as a museum artefact took into account the following: a. the underlying philosophy of the museum should be established from questions, problems and concerns addressed to the museum by city people and should not follow a dynamic from top down, as is frequently the case; b. the present should become the main component of the museum's philosophy and actions;

a. The museum should accept the challenge of real time interaction with different populations, looking for references representative of the present time and aiming at a collective construction of the future city; b. The exact point when the city was founded would be no longer chosen and revered as the central starting point for the museum - on the contrary, other points of reference and other starting points would be considered through a wider notion of where city boundaries lie; c. Other forces in different areas of the wider city would be considered as legitimate and equally symbolic and important;

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d. Interaction would proceed with an increasing number of citizens, becoming part of networks that constitute the new logic of living - why not say surviving - in the large urban centers like São Paulo; e. Other means of communication should be explored, using modern technology, but shaping them to the intentions of each museum programme; f. A new more humane form of discourse should be adopted that admits and digests different types of knowledge, logic and discourses, favouring a multidisciplinary architecture.

16 Among the various experiments carried through in association with the development of the City Museum of São Paulo, one of them became widely known: the "Expedição São Paulo: 450 anos" ("São Paulo Journey: 450 years").

17 The idea was to obtain a contemporary tomography of the city of São Paulo. An urban journey was undertaken with an interdisciplinary character and two different routes were followed during one week. If we could attach unique values to the "Expedição São Paulo: 450 anos", they would be the method and the intentionality of the programme. It surely was not a picturesque or naïve trip, nor was it a group of academic people looking to confirm their theses. There was detailed planning and we could count on community leaders linked to the municipal government, who indicated points to be considered in the definition of the routes to be followed by the travellers. 18 Suggestions on the points of interest to be included in the programme totalled 700. The co-ordination group analysed the suggestions and decided on two final routes: North- South and East-West. Two groups of travellers, of a multidisciplinary nature, were made up of anthropologists, architects, educators, psychoanalysts, archeologists, artists, photographers, filmmakers, museologists, sociologists, geographers, environmentalists, historians, planners and organisers. The travellers were assisted by a group of young students, mostly with a graduate degree in history, with specialization in museology or following the master degree in anthropology. They were responsible for approaching people to be interviewed, for distributing at the various places to be visited printed material concerning the City Museum and the journey itself. They were also responsible for obtaining authorisations for image use. Their most important task, however, was to take notes on forms specially conceived for that purpose, concerning items identified as being of interest for the future museum. Initially the idea was to make a record only and no collection had been foreseen. However, growing enthusiasm led many of the travellers to start on the direct collection of items and it became necessary to arrange for a daily reception of those items in predetermined points in the city. Items thus collected have been deposited at the Iconography and Museums Division of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture of São Paulo. 19 The dynamics of the "Expedição" included travelling along each route during the day and evening meetings in order to evaluate what had been accomplished and to plan what should be done along the next stretch. Every night each of the groups received a visit from a social actor specifically chosen. While one group heard the intense account of a homeless girl, the other received a deaf and blind woman; both tried to explain how to orient yourself in São Paulo faced with your own limitations. The two groups went by different visiting points: slums, rap and hip hop groups, neighbourhood football clubs, samba clubs, different religious gathering places, telecentres, co- operatives, indigenous villages, social assistance, health, education and cultural centres. The city was seen from an elevated heliport at Avenida Paulista as well as from

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the bottom of an urban crater created by the impact of a large meteorite at Vargem Grande - at the southern extreme edge of the city - some 400,000 years ago.

20 The two groups went through the tunnels of the Metro, streets and bowels of the historic centre of the city, narrow passages of slums, internal alleys of low income housing projects, and even cemeteries and maximum security prison cells. Those dynamics allowed them to observe how the city subverts the use of its spaces: a football club that shelters a school, the samba club that takes care of milk distribution, a religious space where the rapper learns how to read a musical score, schools where families find adequate space for their leisure, local clubs where the elders find a suitable space for meeting their equals, the street that stages cultural events and last, but not least, the concrete slab (the "laje")3 covering some of the houses: the most important social meeting place in the destitute areas visited. 21 The journey was not a comfortable promenade: violence and insecurity accompanied the travellers on both routes, though both violence and insecurity are part of everyday life in the city. The precarious conditions in which people have to live and lack of suitable public services result in a permanent deprivation. Social and environmental imbalances do not provide for a serene landscape; on the contrary, they create a scenario of conflict, and it became evident that these were territories devastated by insecurity. Contrary to those sensations that were both latent and present, the "Expedição São Paulo" was, without question, an opportunity to demolish so many stereotypes about São Paulo. Discovery was much more intense than apprehension and everyone had the strong feeling that the mission of the City Museum would be to reveal to the public - more than the needs, conflicts and inconsistencies - the hard day to day life of the people of São Paulo; the fraternal generosity between equals; the social networks that assure life and survival in the city; the counterpoint between apparent chaos and the unbelievable capacity for organisation developed by the associations we

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visited; the environmental issues and the alternative solutions that prevent a complete disintegration of the system. 22 Discretely a few journalists from "O Estado de São Paulo" - one of the most important large circulation newspapers in Brazil - joined the "Expedição São Paulo". The day São Paulo commemorated its 450th anniversary, the newspaper published a supplementary section devoted to this interdisciplinary experience, reaching 300,000 readers all over the country. 23 The last day of the "Expedição São Paulo" was taken by a final evaluation. Both groups met in a city centre hotel and recalled their routes, faces they met, oral statements that were recorded, photographs yet to be developed and items collected. It was a final effort towards an interdisciplinary synthesis, towards the definition of a logic that might give sense to the next phases. It was an intense working day and finally as a result of systematic observations the three founding bases were selected: territory / sociability /imaginarium4. 24 These orienting concepts formed the structural basis for the editorial organisation of all the other products connected to the "Expedição" such as: a book, an exhibition at the Olido Cultural Centre (seat of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture), a video documentary, and the creation of a database in multimedia format that consolidated all the documentation related to contemporary items collected during the journey, in view of the effective creation of the City Museum of São Paulo in 2004. 25 After a change of government in 2005, the project for the new City Museum was discontinued, with only a group of some small historic houses remaining in the scenario; they met neither the contemporary demands of a city museum, nor the scale of a megalopolis like São Paulo. Some of the questions related to the setting up and running of the City Museum are still awaiting answers. First of all, one should revisit the sequence of studies and negotiations undertaken during the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, aiming at the realisation of the project. This would allow us to produce some fundamental questions: a. What threat to those who take decisions at a political or institutional level, is represented by creating a museum that is based on the collection of contemporary items? Why is it that collecting items produced today by society is seen, in museological terms, as more threatening than the traditional collection of cultural items that legitimate and sanctify the historical path of an object? b. Would the model of a historical museum that reveres the past be safer, therefore? Would ancient objects ask less questions than their contemporary counterparts? Would the extraction of objects pertaining to everyday activities, in real time, introduce irreparable voids in our society? Or should we just allow objects, that irrevocably would fall into oblivion, to be discarded by the passing of time and then, as a consequence, we would naturally preserve those with a "vocation" to become museum artefacts? c. Or should our selection be based on other values and criteria? Could it be the aesthetic value of the object, its social representativeness, its age, the profile of its owner, its monetary value or its intrinsic value? Those values which were adhered to in the past had been great reference points across the centuries, do they apply today to our trans territorial, globalized world? If our society struggles against its own aging, by reverting to the past, why don't we feel an identity with the present? d. Could it be that a city museum that articulates itself upon contemporary collections is a threatening museological model by means of a simple inversion of the symbolic weight of

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the objects, or maybe this discourse provides an inversion of more encompassing social senses? e. Assuming that the selection of an object presupposes a logic of discarding it, are we afraid of the power of museological manipulation of our own lives, of our path, of our memory, that a choice of a contemporary object could determine? Are we more afraid of making a selection or of discarding? Are we less happy by living with what is retained or by abandoning what is discarded? f. How does the museum fit into this contemporary equation? What history is it intended to legitimate? What do we want to recall, what are we allowed to forget? This new museum, shall it be a territory for new senses, new expectations? If traditional museums had the power to revere and nominate what should not be forgotten, why can't we consider that the city museum has the power of reflecting, of modifying, of restating, of heightening the present, and thus redesign, in real time, our own future? Would there be time to wait for the natural aging of objects? Wouldn't that process be much more contaminated today than it was in the past?

a. Why does our society applaud, consume and "musealise" contemporary art, building "cathedral museums" to keep it, all over the world? Could it be that art speaks about life without presenting so many threats as objects do? b. Why is an increasing number of science and technology museums being created, making evident to the public the great themes that concern our planet's survival? Wouldn't human extinction be a greater fear than that imposed by the collection of contemporary objects? c. Why are initiatives focused on making us aware of our common humanity across different cultures supported and implemented without hesitation in different countries? Why are museums of contemporary history so few in Brazil and why are they considered to be threatening? What in our life today is unbearable to the point that we don't want to remember it, to select it, to elect it and place it in a museum? d. Why should we revere the myth of the founding fathers of the city? That wider area standing outside the city centre, outside the city walls as it were, is it a desirable and

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commendable object of study? Why is it that fear surfaces whenever we pierce the symbolic surrounding walls and face those vast peripheral areas where most city people actually live? Could it be that a medieval atavism prevents us from going outside the centre, fooling those walls and delving into the complex surrounding urban mesh, nobody's land, as people refer to it? e. Would it be possible to substitute an imitation for the object? Why not use available technology to express unforgettable feelings, gestures, tastes, odours and images? Would the fascination of motion be more stimulating than the object at rest? Does the object rest, talk or ask questions? Should we give up original items and assume a definitive adoption of virtual interaction? Following the paths of collaborative networks, would it be possible to create virtual collections and even virtual museums, rejecting the imperative logic of generating and maintaining patrimonial institutions? Why should we maintain the original when we already have frozen their images for the future? Are we not even able to modify, edit and recreate them? In the age of human clones, when the logic of ancestral relationships and heredity is openly defied, why not think of the obsolescence of the original object? Why not clone the object, reproduce it and discard it? f. Could it be that the most important concern is related to "who" chooses the object instead of "what" is chosen? In this new model, would there be many people entitled to choose? Would the History to be told reference people so far unknown? Would silent crowds start to be given a voice? As it speaks, would that crowd use a syntax that we would not follow or understand? If that is a different syntax, many will recognise themselves. What about us? Would we remain with no connection, therefore voiceless?

26 The City Museum of São Paulo as subject of study and museological challenge tries explicitly to present a multidisciplinary methodology - already tested in 2003 and 2004 - that enunciates the conception of a new model of city museum, whose objective is the analysis of the great metropolis - São Paulo - maintaining a dialogue with the proper logic of a globalised world, but canonically erected over the founding precepts of socio- museology. Focusing on city museums, that model tries to stimulate an alternative new path that observes and interacts with the reality that is inherent to contemporaneity, to Latin American megacities, as it endeavors to understand the dynamics, as well as the problems that characterise human life in those vast and complex territories.

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NOTES

1. Conurbation - a large urban area formed by cities, towns and villages that developed side by side until they merged into one urban area. (Houaiss, 2001, 826). 2. In his studies to define urban planning for the northwestern part of the United States, Scot Patrick Geddes, at the beginning of the twentieth century, defined the concept of macrometropolis as a widespread urban area, multipolarised by metropolises made up of vast conurbations. The apocalyptic term "necropolis" was also used during that period, assuming that megalopolises were doomed From: Zanchetta, D. A primeira Macrometrópole do Hemisfério Sul. In: Revista Megacidades - Grandes Reportagens. São Paulo: O Estado de São Paulo, August, 2008: 64. 3. Houses built in the "favelas" or in peripheral urban areas may have a concrete slab as their top floor or roof; it is normally used as a space for socialising, leisure and community activities. 4. Imaginarium refers to things, real and fantasy, that recurrently occupy our minds. It may include a football team, a film star, folklore items etc.

ABSTRACTS

The City Museum of São Paulo as subject of study and museological challenge tries explicitly to present a multidisciplinary methodology - already tested in 2003 and 2004 - that enunciates the conception of a new model of city museum, whose objective is the analysis of the great metropolis São Paulo, articulated upon the collection of contemporary items to be pursued by methods of social mobilization, maintaining a dialogue with the proper logic of a globalised world, but canonically erected over the founding precepts of sociomuseology. Focusing on territory museums, that model tries to stimulate an alternative new path that observes and interacts with the reality that is inherent to contemporaneity, to Latin American megacities, as it endeavors to understand the dynamics, as well as the problems that characterise human life in those vast and complex territories.

O Museu da Cidade de São Paulo, como objeto de estudo e de problematização museológica, busca explicitar uma metodologia interdisciplinar - já posta em teste em 2003 e 2004 - que enuncia a concepção de um novo modelo de museu de cidade, que tem como objeto de análise a grande metrópole São Paulo, que se articula sobre as premissas de coleta contemporânea de acervo, empreendida por meio de métodos de mobilização social, em interlocução com as lógicas próprias do mundo globalizado, porém canonicamente erigida sobre os preceitos fundadores da Sociomuseologia. Com foco no cenário dos museus de território, este modelo busca fomentar um caminho novo e alternativo, que observa e interage em relação a uma realidade inerente à contemporaneidade, às megacidades latino-americanas, na medida em que busca problematizar e compreender as dinâmicas próprias da vida humana nestes imensos e complexos territórios.

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INDEX

Keywords: City Museum, Sociomuseology, Territory Museum, Contemporary Collection, São Paulo Palavras-chave: Museu de Cidade, Sociomuseologia, Museu de Território, Coleta Contemporânea, São Paulo

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Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

Part 3: Otherness

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Magic and power in ethnographic collections Sorcery objects under institutional tutelage

Ulisses N. Rafael and Yvonne Maggie Translation : Izabel Murat Burbridge

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013

The authors wish to acknowledge editor, friend and former advisor Peter Fry for his suggestions and in particular for his patience in the final edition of this paper. Objects express a physical bond between us and the missing other, they have a potential for evocation (Dominique Poulot) 1 This essay returns to a discussion of two collections of objects taken from two terreiros (places of worship) for Afro-Brazilian cults, one in Rio de Janeiro, and the other in Maceió.

2 In previous studies of the Magia Negra (Black Magic) collection at the Museu da Polícia do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Police Museum) (Maggie et. al., 1979; Maggie, 1992) and the ColeçãoPerseverança (Perseverança Collection) at the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Alagoas - IHGAL (Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute) in Maceió (Rafael, 2012) we looked at relations between the Brazilian state and magic, and, more specifically, how members of Brazil's elite were related to Afro-Brazilian religious temples (terreiros). We showed that members of these elite were willing to avail themselves of the efficacy of these practices, despite denying their legitimacy. Their ambiguous relationship with belief is analogous to the resigned attitude of those who collected the objects that compose these collections.

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3 The collection at the Rio de Janeiro Police Museum consists of objects seized in the early 20th century by the police charged with persecuting what was called baixo espiritismo (literally "low spiritism"). The very institution charged with suppressing and controlling Afro-Brazilian cults preserved these objects. On May 5, 1938, just a year after Brazil's Artistic and Historical Heritage Service (past acronym SPHAN, renamed IPHAN) was founded, the collection was listed as cultural heritage to be protected (Case 0035-T-38), and registered as No. 001 in the book of Archaeological, Ethnographic and Landscape Heritage.1 For many years, the museum's collection remained in the "Black Magic" museum of the police precinct that sequestered the objects, but was then transferred to Rio de Janeiro's Police Museum in 1945. Correspondence dated November 1945, between the head of SPHAN and the modernist poet Dante Milano, the then director of the Police Museum, included this statement: "... the museum was created as an 'extra-scholastic' body for the study of criminology. Due to certain peculiarities of specimens in its collections, the museum has become an institution in which its learned character predominates, but it also has something of the nature of a museum of folk art to it."2 Dante Milano headed this "scientific" museum for eleven years, from 1945 to 1956. The pieces kept for so long were exhibited in the Police Academy building until 1999. 4 The Alagoas collection originated from the 1912 riots3 led by the Liga dos Republicanos Combatentes (League of Republican Combatants), who attacked Xangô4 terreiros accused of being associated with state governor Euclides Malta. Members of this paramilitary group were the first to sort through the objects and decide which to destroy or burn in the houses where they were found. The rest were carried through the city and publicly displayed to the scorn of locals in buildings occupied by groups opposing the state government - the same pieces, perhaps, that were then cataloged and exhibited at the League's headquarters before going to the museum collection of the now-extinct Maceió store clerks mutual society (Sociedade Perseverança e Auxílio dos Empregados no Comércio de Maceió, hereinafter Perseverança), where they were virtually forgotten for about 40 years. The collection was finally recovered by members of the Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute, which has been its home to the present day.5 The process of listing the Perseverança collection as heritage started a hundred years after the notorious 1912 riots. 5 This essay returns to the subject of the collections in the context of recent changes arising from heritage-listing policies in Brazil that have decisively affected relations between these objects and institutions charged with protecting and preserving cultural heritage. An important point to bear in mind is that it was not until 2003 that we saw a new stance on the subject of heritage and preservation policies in the form of a convention on safeguarding intangible heritage (Cf. Arantes, 2009). 6 That said, there are some questions that stand out; some of them posed at the time of the corresponding specific investigations, but which may be useful to summarize here. What was the context in which these objects were collected and taken from their traditional place of origin to become museum specimen? How can we explain the paradoxical contrast between search and seizure by violent means and careful conservation in the institutional homes found for them? Which agents or actors were involved in the processes of gathering, cataloging and maintaining these collections and what were their underlying motivations? May this preservationist démarche point

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to broader aspects of relations between the State and Afro-Brazilian religious practices, and with heritage-listing policies in Brazil? 7 Objects have a life of their own. Their actions in the world derive not so much from their intrinsic qualities but from the meanings attributed to them. In this new condition, their meaning attributed from outside, objects become factors in social action, as Victor Turner (2005) was to say of the Ndembu symbols. To examine them is to give an account of their journeys, from their enthronement as objects of worship in the sanctuaries from which they were appropriated, through to their transformation into cultural objects based on various processes of identification, collection, preservation and restoration (Gonçalves, 1996). 8 In doing so, we hope to contribute to our understanding of nation-building processes. Specifically, the aim is to reflect on the paths that led the state-government bureaucracy to establish intimate relations with magic and how this ambiguous relationship - between fascination and fear - may be reified in museum or ethnographic collections. 9 That said, we shall proceed to look at the political and administrative situation in Brazil in the early years of the republican period, paying special attention to practices for regulating religious activities thought to be of African origin. This contextualization is needed to understand the meaning behind the decision - often taken by the persecutors themselves - to catalogue and conserve objects that had been obtained through repression, the issue that we shall now proceed to address.

Repression of sorcery in Brazil's "First Republic" period

10 Since the colonial period, Brazil had developed regulatory mechanisms for dealing with accusations directed at witches or sorcerers in terreiros and other places of worship. Unlike many other societies with a strong belief in sorcery, practitioners in Brazil were not usually punished with death. However, the advent of the First Republic saw a decree of October 11, 1890 move the State onto the path of regulatory mechanisms to combat sorcerers through a new Penal Code,6 which included three articles referring to the illegal practice of medicine, the practice of magic, and banning faith healing. The introduction of these articles by the framers showed their fear of evil doing and the need to create institutions and means for combating those who gave rise to evil. Thus they wrote: Article 156 - Exercising medicine in any of its branches, or dentistry or pharmacy: practicing homeopathy, dosimetry, hypnotism, or animal magnetism, without being qualified to do so under the laws and regulations. Penalties - one to six months prison and a fine of 100 to 500$000. - for abuses committed in the illegal practice of medicine in general, in addition to the penalties thus established, perpetrators shall suffer those applicable to the crimes to which they have given rise. Section 157 - Practicing spiritism, magic and its spells, use of talismans and fortune- teller cards to stir feelings of hatred or love, inculcate cure of curable or incurable diseases, in short to fascinate and subjugate public credulity. Penalties - one to six months prison and a fine of 100 to 500$000. § 1. If through the influence thereof, or as a consequence of any of these means there results in the patient being deprived of physical faculties, or their temporary or permanent alteration. Penalties - one to six months prison and a fine of 200 to 500$000.

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§ 2. The same penalty, and being barred from practicing the profession for the same time as the sentence will be incurred by any doctor directly practicing the above- mentioned arts or assuming responsibility for them. Article 158 - Ministering, or simply prescribing as a means of cure for internal or external use in any prepared form, a substance from any of the kingdoms of nature, thus acting as a faith healer. Penalties - one to six months prison and a fine of 100 to 500$000. - if the use of any substance leads to a person losing, or suffering temporary or permanently alteration of physical or physiological functions, deformity, or inability to exercise an organ or organ system, or, in short any illness: Penalties - one to six months prison and a fine of 200 to 500$000. If it results in death: Penalty - six to twenty-four years prison. 11 Based on this republican code, the State began to intervene in matters of magic in the name of the law, energetically combatting witchcraft and suppressing terreiros. Special courts were set up and staff trained to identify and distinguish those guilty of wrongdoing or evil. There was no argument over the reality of spirits, spirit possession, divination, or magic itself. Rather, the law made it necessary to distinguish between good and bad magic, or between black magic and white magic to use the words of the terreiros themselves. Over the years, policing institutions were set up to regulate, combat, and punish evildoers. The State was heavily involved in this role in the 20th century, even after the Penal Code was substantially altered in 1940.

12 How different is this system that recognizes the reality of witchcraft and sorcery from those that deny its existence! The decline of belief in witchcraft in England from the 16th century onwards, documented by Keith Thomas (1973), finally resulted in the British Empire forcing this disbelief on the peoples it colonized, punishing not the alleged healers, but those who denounced others for witchcraft or sorcery. Under this system, only the accusers could be brought to justice on account of their manipulation of what were considered spurious beliefs. This can be seen quite clearly in Crawford's (1967) book on sorcery and witchcraft in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where the 1890 Witchcraft Suppression Act7 stipulated punishment for those convicted of accusing witches. After independence in 1980, the law remained in place until 2006, when it was repealed by the dictator Robert Mugabe, once again showing there has to be belief in the supernatural power of producing evil if there are to be regulations on accusations and punishment for wrongdoers. For the people of Zimbabwe, witchcraft was as real as summer rain. British law meant nothing to the subject peoples of the Empire. In republican Brazil on the other hand, judiciary, police and the people in general all shared the same beliefs and thought the State had a duty to punish persons accused of doing evil through witchcraft or sorcery. 13 Brazil's legislation was impregnated with [belief in] magic and it was incumbent on the State to intervene and separate true "priests" and "priestesses" (pais-de-santo and mães- de-santo) from false ones; to separate those doing good from those using their supernatural powers for wrongdoing or evil. As the great British anthropologist Sir Edward E. Evans-Pritchard wrote in his classic Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande (2004), belief in witchcraft, magic or supernatural powers of doing evil is a system of knowledge used to interpret misfortune, imponderable events, or that which cannot be explained by science; chance. The same belief in magic reigned in 20th- century Brazil in the minds of everyone, rich and poor, black and white, women and men, young and old alike.

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14 Although the State was charged with suppression, the process always started with a neighbor or a client making accusations.8 Most criminal cases in Rio de Janeiro began with an accusation posed more or less in these terms: I have the honor of addressing you even though I have never had the honor of meeting you. Because we know that your Excellency is a champion of morality and of justice, I appeal to your Excellency in writing that you may bring to an end this abuse [illegible] sorcery and fortune telling that infest this city; the victims are many, We shall report a fact that will allow your Excellency to understand the full shamelessness of these people. There is a certain Rocha or Costa on Rua Senador Pompeu, a black man from the Mina Coast who lives off ignorant victims. On the advice of others, a woman came to find the black man to consult him about her missing husband, whom she wanted back. The sorcerer (feiticeiro) told her he could make the husband come home through an advance payment of 300$000. Then the woman began to cry and said she could not [pay him] because she did not have money, and that if he would make her husband come home she would get the money from him. The black man said that was not necessary because she could pay with her body. He pointed to the woman. She left in desperation, and came and told us about it. I was indignant and promised to send a letter to your Excellency denouncing him. There are others in worse conditions, too many to describe. However, I give your Excellency the number and the house so that you can catch them for the immoral acts practiced there in flagrante delicto. It is a disgrace. There is one on Monqueiras across from number 49 (...)these men are sorcerers (feiticeiros) who say that they could do away with the Republic if they wanted to; certain women use the place for indulgent activities and deflowerings. That one on Monqueiras calls himself Cipriano and is known as Bedé and there is another known as Diogo Mina. These are terrible killers; they give tips on the bicho [numbers racket] for a certain percentage. On behalf of the poor ignorant victims of such nonsense, we ask you to look into these matters. In time I shall supply your Excellency with lists of these people and of numbers runners and fortune-tellers.9 15 There is a morality to witchcraft or sorcery too. "Azande say that hatred, jealousy, envy, backbiting, slander, and so forth go ahead and witchcraft follows after." (Evans- Pritchard, 2004: 75). In Brazil, the phrase most often heard is - big eye [jealousy or envy] is worse than a spell - envy is worse than witchcraft (Maggie, 2001: 42). Witchcraft morality disapproves of antisocial vices and approves of virtue. People only try to identify a sorcerer producing evil when a disease or misfortune is severe. There are several methods of finding the name of the real culprit. Among the Azande there was the "poison oracle" as the most important technique for investigating. The diviner ministered a chicken a special potion that might kill it: if the fowl died, the name queried was guilty, if the chicken survived, he was innocent.

16 Many techniques were used in terreiros to find out a sorcerer, but it was in the Republic that the State devised a method that became popular in the form of proceedings brought under articles 156, 157 and 158 of the Penal Code. The oracle was an expert who specialized in analyzing objects seized by the police when they invaded aterreiro, place of worship or home of one so accused. Experts analyzed objects to develop techniques identifying those used for evil-doing or false objects belonging to charlatans or fraudsters (mistificadores). 17 From the early days of the Republic, terreiros were subjected to a continuous process of regulation through police investigations and criminal proceedings brought under the abovementioned articles of the Penal Code that governed and hierarchized these practices.

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18 Soon after the proclamation of the Republic, the authorities were eager to regulate the activities of religious associations. Law 173 of September 10, 1893, regulated the "organization of associations founded for religious purposes ..." under Article 72, §3 of the Constitution. Article 1 also states that associations founded for religious purposes "... may acquire legal personality by registering their bylaws or articles at the civil registry of deeds in the district in which their headquarters were established." Article 13 reads: "Associations promoting unlawful purposes or used for illegal or immoral purposes will be wound up by a court ruling upon complaint brought by any person or the public prosecutor's office." 19 In 1917, before the reorganization of the National Public Health Service, a new law set up a body called Inspection of Exercise of Medicine and Pharmacy. Its Article 35 regulated the use of these public establishments and religious corporations and allowed them to have a pharmacy if licensed by the General Directorate of Public Health. The Service also foreshadowed the changes that came about in the 1920s, when the city's administrators felt they had to carry out another energetic sanitary campaign. Decree 3987 of January 2, 1920, for example, set up the National Public Health Department, reorganized the National Public Health Service, and restructured the supervision of medicine. The decree also set up a health or sanitary police force, enabled by legal formalities freely to enter any public building or private house. Along with the civil police, they controlled rules for hygiene and public health. The 1920s were particularly rich in attacks against spiritist centers and teams were set up specializing in matters relating to practices deemed harmful for public health. 20 The final part of this history clearly shows which of the persons thus accused were most dangerous when the Penal Code was promulgated in 1942. In the late 1930s, shortly after the 1937 coup10, a section was set up to pursue drug traffic and fraud (Tóxicos e Mistificações). A controversy arose over altering regulatory procedures for accusations against sorcerers or witches. Lawyers and doctors debated the three articles of the Code in closed meetings or in the press. When the new code was voted in 1942, Article 157 was amended to classify the crime of "inculcating or announcing healing by secret or infallible means" as "charlatanism". After heated debates, the category of spiritism was removed from the letter of the law but the doctrine established by this article defined charlatans and described Candomblé and Macumba as dangerous and criminal. These articles remained unchanged until the most recent code. After 1942, persons accused under this article were designated "macumbeiros"11. 21 Since the turn of the century, then, legal, public-health and police institutions had been organized to combat these practices considered harmful to public health and morals. The institutions that waged heavy-handed repression against terreiros and places of worship, or mediums whose leaders were accused of using spiritual powers for evil doing in Rio de Janeiro, seized ritual objects and kept in the fine collection of the Rio de Janeiro Police Museum, which we shall proceed to describe.

The Black Magic collection of objects in Rio de Janeiro

22 In 1938, the Rio de Janeiro Police Museum's Black Magic collection was housed in the section covering drugs, narcotics, and fraud of Auxiliary Police Precinct 1, whose

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mission was suppressing "low spiritism and faith healing". It was not until some years later, in 1945, for reasons not precisely known, that it was moved to the Rio de Janeiro Police Museum, where it has remained until the present day, although it has not been exhibited since 1999.

23 According to the current director, senior officer Cyro Advincula da Silva, the items have been kept in storage since the museum was transferred from the police academy to a building (Palácio da Polícia) on Rua da Relação. The museum is currently closed for repair and restoration work12. 24 The best description of the role of this museum found in official documents is in a 1946 report of the Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs of the Federal Public Safety Department, pages 196-197: The Police Museum is divided into two sections: History and Technique. The former assembles all material once it has been prepared and classified or modeled as applicable. The latter compiles the history of each piece and divides them by room. The museum aims to be a wellspring of studies and research for specialists, professors and authorities, and a living palpable document to be used as the basis for education of students and the public. 25 According to the report, the museum's file index comprised the following record cards: obstetrics, 32, narcotics, 36; fortune-telling, 8; evidence, 5; palmistry, 4; false identity cards - foreign, 31; false identity cards - Brazilian, 17; pharmaceutical material, 48; gambling, 91; historical documents, 3; black magic 254.

26 Items comprising this incredible museum collection are listed in a document that assistant precinct officer Demócrito de Almeida forwarded to the heritage service (SPHAN) in 1940, shown below as originally composed by the anonymous writer: List of objects comprising the Black Magic Museum, Toxics, Narcotics and Fraud Section, Auxiliary Precinct 1, Federal District Police Force. Four bass drums (tabaques), one ochossi (sic), one exu, one inhassã and one ogum; One statue of Mephistopheles (eixu), the highest entity in the bloodline of the Malei; A clay statue of ossanha (forest spirit) protector of medicinal trees; Three plumes and two helmets worn bymacumbeiroscavalos, [i.e., 'horses' ridden by spirits, or mediums] and cambonos [assistants to mediums in trance] for spells or ceremonies in the terreiro; Three glasses containing snakes (spells or ceremonies); A cushion with a skull and two tibia bones with drawings of umulu (sic) (king of cemeteries) the most respected entity of all laws; An oil painting of a caboclo [backwoodsman or Indian]; A drawing of a root, representing eixu-tiriri; One full ogum warrior outfit with two spears, a sword and a shield; An embalmed chicken (for spells or ceremonies); Three aoxum (sic) stones; a inhassã stone; Two bound candles filled with pins (spell); Two bound figures used to honor an entity; Four candles (festive embers) A stone (ita iemanjá); Seven rings worn by macumbeiros (when they are on the terreiro); Three bowls (cuité) for liquor; aluá (mandioca-puba [cassava], maize and fruits) or malafa, also known as cutimbá (cachaça), 19 pipes (pito catimbau) for "smoking" [incense type]; Three cigars (Pancho) also used for smoking; Three images of Saint Anthony bound with ribbons, bound to make a marriage match; A metal cone (cassiri [fermented cassava]) for chants; Three black pembas [chalk with magical properties] (eixu pembas); six colored pembas (ochossi pembas); Three white pembas (orisha pembas); A black stick of guiné (used to free the body of evil); Nine talismans; One roll of tobacco and a pipe (catimba) bound with ribbon; A snuff pouch (used to bring the spirit near to materiality); A brass fan (inhassã fan); "Saint Mary Magdalen", used to ward off persecution; A bottle of Paraty (cutimbá or malafa) used as holy water; Two daggers (obê ouobelê); loose, used to hold chants; Two images of Saint George on horseback (ogum warrior fighting warrior satan) Two lead shoes (shoes offered by a believer to the orisha oxum) Two

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images representing Crispin and Chrispiniano; A white metal star (guiding star) A metal fan (oxum fan), "Our Lady of Conception", used to ward off persecution; A small image of umulu (Saint Lazarus), Four amulets ou talismans used by mussulmis; An image of Saint Jerome (pai xangô ogodô), the axe lightning and thunder man; An image of Saint John the Baptist (pai xangô locô); A cutlas (dress sword, obelê) costume for terreiro festive events; A star fish (calunga) of white magic; A dress sword (obê or obelê), offering to ogum engraved on the blade; A small image of Saint Onofre (omulu);A bottle with gunpowder (fundanga or tuia), used to ward off an evil entity; An image of Saint Barbara (abodojô), protector against storms; 30 (ifá ou aburi), used by macumbeiros for chanting, or communicate with a superior entity; Seven Umbanda cruzeiros (entity below umulu, or obaloaê in Nago); quibandu, used in eixu (sic) chant in order to punish a terreiro member not following rules: An image representing the entity vume (queen of efu), which means death by lightning; Beads (guiame) of oxum and inhassã; Beads (guiame) of oxum with oxala; Beads (guiame) of eixu warrior; Beads (guiame) of zambi-japombo (meaning supreme god known as babá); Beads (guiame) of ogum with warrior eixu; Master beads (guiame); Beads (guiame) of inhassã or Mary Magdalene; Beads (guiame)nana-buruquê (Saint Anne).

27 Due to the ambiguous and intricate relationships between accusers and accused, and between the elite and theterreiros, the same police precinct that seized the objects during investigations took them for safekeeping in the Black Magic Museum and then at the Police Museum. 28 When contacted for the first study made by one of the authors of this essay in 1979, the director of the Rio de Janeiro Police Museum said that the objects were seized "in the period of repression" and that he had organized the collection as a whole in the mid-1960s based on the ritual significance of its components. In doing so, he often resorted to explanations given by the "people of the terreiros", to use his own words, and information gathered from books by researchers of Afro-Brazilian religions, such as Edison Carneiro, Roger Bastide and Artur Ramos. There seems to be unanimity in

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relation to the meanings of objects, but disagreement over the cultural and geographical origins of pieces. 29 A list of objects comprising the Black Magic Museum, made by the head of the Auxiliary Police Precinct and forwarded to the heritage body (SPHAN) in 1940, gives the impression of having been compiled by someone with intimate knowledge of Afro- Brazilian religious practice and belief. 30 Along with the ritual objects and belongings of mediums and their leaders (pais-de-santo and mães-de-santo) assembled at the Police Museum were other items seized such as artifacts used by counterfeiters for fraud, toxic substances, or operators of the illegal numbers racket (jogo do bicho). In addition, there were objects taken from "angel makers" (this terms appears to have been used, depending on the region, for women informally involved in abortions, or in assisting childbirth, or in caring for the newly born in precarious conditions) as well as photographs of victims of notorious criminals in Rio in the 1950s, such as Luz del Fuego and Dana de Tefé. In 1979, the Black Magic collection was arranged next to flags of the Integralistas (neo-fascist movement of the 1930s) and objects belonging to famous communists, such as Luis Carlos Prestes' typewriter. 31 Interestingly, the Police Museum's Black Magic collection was arranged in the layout of a terreiro, where the spirits of light are kept carefully segregated from the spirits of darkness, Images of exus were separated from those of other orisha deities, drums from images, and artifacts used in favorable spells or interventions were placed on a separate shelf to those used against adversaries (Cf. Lody, 2005). 32 The history of this collection and how it was first organized demonstrates the wealth of detail and complexity of a repressive activity within the field of beliefs that included members of all social classes. The fact that SPHAN listed it as heritage in 1938 shows the significance of these beliefs for the policemen who investigated theterreiros and impounded their ritual objects, the judges and prosecutors, who tried the cases, as well as the intellectuals who founded the heritage preservation institutions, a point we shall return to below.

The Perseverança collection at the Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute and memory of the 1912 riots

33 This collection was assembled, as noted above, after a mob led by the League of Republican Combatants took to the streets in Maceió on the night of the February 1, 1912 and pursued members of the main Xangô terreiros in one of the most violent episodes ever in the history of these cults in the state of Alagoas, or perhaps anywhere in Brazil.

34 The origin of the episode lay in opposition to the oligarchic group headed by Euclides Malta, whose political maneuvering helped keep him in power for a period of nearly twelve years often called the "age of the Maltas", including an interim mandate (1903/1906) for his brother Joaquim Vieira Malta. 35 During the election campaign of 1912, Euclides Malta was accused of close relations with the followers of Xangô, being referred to as "leba" and other "derogatory" terms.

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Leba is a variant of legbá that, according to Verger's analysis of the meanings of African orishas, was part of the pantheon of the exus whom ancient travelers associated with the god of fornication, due to format shown as a mound earth in the shape of a man squatting, adorned with an exaggerated phallus. According to Verger, "this erect phallus is nothing more than the assertion of his truculent, bold and shameless character and desire to shock decorum." (Cf. Verger, 1981). According to Bastide, this Dahomean legba should not be confused with the exu of the Yoruba; in their country his phallic character is seen on the staff of the Nagô exu, but not the legba priests' dramatized coitus in public ceremonies with a large wooden phallus. (Cf. Bastide, 1971: pp. 348/349). This would be an initial first association between the xangôs of Alagoas and the Dahomean influence. Unfortunately, among the objects seized that are now in thePerseverança collection, there is no ritual sculpture of exu that might show the origin of the entity worshiped in Alagoas, based on the characteristics described above. Coincidentally or not, this was one of the few objects seized that was totally destroyed after being displayed and mocked by onlookers. I shall return to this issue below 36 According to local reports, people could not sleep in peace in certain streets of Maceió at the height of the political crisis confronting Euclides Malta. The noise of drums and zabumbas from Xangô houses was apparently taken as provocation by many of the state capital's inhabitants, who were dismayed by Malta's administrative excesses. It was widely reported that he assiduously sought the help of sorcerers to obtain more protection and stay in power. Now religious practices of this type had always enjoyed much acceptance in the state, not only among the populace as a whole, but also among the established authorities. Afro-Brazilian practices rarely featured in police reports. This was all to change when certain temples were accused of defending and supporting the "tribal chief of the big forest" (Soba de Mata Grande), another of Euclides Malta's nicknames. These terreiroswere accused of straying from their role of resolving affliction to sponsor evil doing, a kind of "cheap witchcraft." But the wrecking Xangô houses was part and parcel of the struggle against the political authority of the Malta family and their oligarchy; putting an end to an abominable practice, without ever doubting its efficacy. Failing to punish those who use their powers for evil purposes would be inadmissible.

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37 In June 1915, a few years after the party headed by Euclides Malta was soundly defeated in the 1912 elections, his portrait was slashed symbolically to eliminate any trace from memory of the evil he represented. This assault took place during a ceremony held at the Alagoas Historical Institute to mark another anniversary of the government of his successor, Clodoaldo da Fonseca. Much later, in the 1950s, the pieces that were to comprise the Perseverança collection were finally moved from the basement of the Maceió Commerce Employees Perseverance and Aid Society and taken into the possession of the Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute. Among them were no images or sculptures associated with former-governor Malta, if only because they had been destroyed when the terreiros were wrecked immediately after his forced removal from power. 38 This selective destruction points to a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, it was the expression of a revolt against a political representative who, in those circumstances, was the personification of evil. On the other hand, they were remnants of services performed in those magical-religious places, of all they retained of sacred and ceremonial in opposition to evil-doing magic. A decision was taken to conserve some of these sculptures, namely oxalá, oxum-ekum, oyá, omolu, iemanjá, obabá, ogum-taió, xangô-dadá, xangô-bomim and xangô-nilé,13 instead of those representing entities such as the "horned idol" leba, as "the spirit of evil", or "ali-baba, the saint in the form of a boy who presided over lively activities and pleasures,"14 which were burned in the many fires started during those nights of 1912. The preservation of African pieces, to the detriment of others such as those the leba, with whom the Governor was associated not only stood for the victory of good over evil but also sought to remove them from their original locus, where they might continue to be manipulated for witchcraft. By placing these objects in a neutral environment, their efficacy would kept be under control.

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39 Note that most of the pieces found in the former Xangô terreiros in Maceió retained many links with African tradition. As Abelardo Duarte stated, many of them came from interchange between these houses and Candomblé houses in Bahia and Africa instigated by the famous leader (pai-de-santo) Tio Salu, who had traveled in Africa and brought back to Alagoas many of the pieces now in the Perseverança collection (Duarte, 1985: 6).

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40 In the aftermath of the 1912 riots, a veil of silence was drawn over Afro-Brazilian religious practices in Alagoas. As a legacy from those dark times, a quieter or more reserved ceremonial format was introduced, omitting drums or any instrument that would be noted in the neighborhood. On a visit to Alagoas several years after the events, Gonçalves Fernandes witnessed this type of worship which he called "Candomblé in silence" (among other terms), and chapter 1 of his book on religious syncretism in Brazil O Sincretismo Religioso no Brasil was entirely on the subject of "A New Afro-Brazilian Sect - whispered Xangô," after seeing some houses of worship in Maceió in June 1939, almost thirty years after the fateful "Operation Xangô" (1941: 09-28).

Two collections, two experiences of persecution

41 A first point to note on comparing the two collections, has to do with the context in which persecution of Afro-Brazilian religious practices developed. In the early part of this article, we looked at the general context of the regulatory system for repression of witchcraft in the First Republic period, recalling that it was this period that saw institutionalized repression of magical practices by an entire legal apparatus, based on Article 157 of the Penal Code. However, we must not forget that although the model stipulated regulation of all magical practices everywhere in Brazil, in practice the system had a more direct effect on groups and communities who bore some kind of proximity to the seat of power, at least geographically, as in the case of the terreiros in Rio de Janeiro and other major state capitals such as Recife and Salvador.

42 The very idea of the republic as a federal system did not appear to have extended much beyond these major cities, especially Rio de Janeiro, the center of administrative power. It was as if the rest of the nation had remained under the control of more traditional power structures. An example of this was the fragility of the Alagoas republican leaders when they tried to oppose the old politicians surviving from the imperial past. In the more remote states of the federation, such as Alagoas, members of the elite who had emerged from the cadres of the Monarchy to set up the institutional basis of the First Republic, were not guided by the scientificist discourse and technical competence that marked the generation of Republican positivists in Rio de Janeiro (Cf. Sevcenko, 1988). 43 As we have already observed, during the early years of the Republic, most of the judiciary, police, and the general public shared a common belief in spirits, spirit possession and the powers of magic. They therefore had no interest in eradicating the temples, but to punish those who were thought to use their spiritual powers for evil ends. But in the early years of the Republic there were considerable regional differences, as the distinct paths taken in Rio de Janeiro and Maceió suggest. In Medo do feitiço Maggie argued that terreiros in Rio were systematically persecuted by police under the aegis of the State, through initiatives against specific individuals accused of practicing magic, faith healing, or "low spiritism" at varying intervals of time. Many terreiros were legally persecuted by the police, as seen in the Diário de Notícias headline: "Seventy 'terreiros' searched and eighty 'macumbeiros' arrested."15 In Alagoas, however, things were different. The unique aspect of the Alagoas case, lies in the fact that the usurpation of the terreiros and the capture of their ritual objects resulted not from police repression, but by members of society at large.

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44 The League of Republican Combatants was chiefly responsible for the attacks on Afro- Brazilian places of worship named "Operation Xangô". Unlike the events in Rio de Janeiro, where the persecutory campaign was developed under the complacent eyes and the aegis of the State, which intervened in the affairs of magic in order to regulate the process of accusation, witchcraft-related accusations and revenge developed with the consent of broader society in Alagoas, absent the State and official organs of justice that were totally disorganized in those circumstances. The process of persecution was unleashed by the League with the consent of the population, who swarmed into civic centers to support the candidate opposing Euclides Malta, and it took place in a completely arbitrary manner. 45 This aspect also helps clarify another point of convergence that enables us to compare the two collections in terms of their constitution and organization. Although both resulted from repressive procedures and seizures, in the case of the Black Magic museum collection, it had at all times developed on institutional levels, whereas the Alagoas collection came into being through the initiative of the League of Republican Combatants. In Rio, the objects were brought in by the police, and stored in a space created specifically for this purpose, where they remained available to public for visits until 1999 when the Police Museum was transferred (to Palácio da Polícia, as mentioned above) and never again exhibited, awaiting the end of restoration work on the century- old building. In 2008, part of the collection was seen in an exhibition of photographs at the José Bonifácio municipal cultural center in Gamboa. The photographs were taken by Wilson da Costa with Roberto Conduru as curator16.

46 The Perseverança collection evolved differently. After the riots led by the League had attacked terreiros in Alagoas, items that survived the initial destruction were carried around the city to be mocked or exposed to derision in buildings occupied by the state government's opponents, such as the image of a leba displayed at theJornal de Alagoas newspaper offices. The rest of the pieces reached the League's headquarters intact and

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were put on public display. There are no reports as to how long these objects remained there on Rua do Sopapo, but this collection was later transferred to feature in the museum of the Maceió store clerks mutual aid society (known as the Perseverança), and remained somewhat abandoned in the basements there until the 1950s, when it was recovered by two members of the Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute, which has still holds the collection. 47 In the course of this trajectory, the Perseverança collection's objects were submitted to at least two types of classification, not to mention the fact that the destruction of religious artifacts already reflected a kind of morality-based selection of the pieces more directly bearing some kind of relationship with the "Alagoas tribal chief" (leba) as his opponents called Euclides Malta. Reports filed by a journalist who covered the riots in a series of articles on witchcraft helped to reconstruct part of the process that led to the destruction of the leading Xangô houses of Maceió and the surrounding area. He wrote that the material collected during the riots against the Xangôs, was initially displayed at the headquarters of the League of Republican Combatants, with the collaboration of one of the many Afro-Brazilian practitioners (filhos de santo) who went to see the "precious spoils," certainly a member of one of those terreiros that had been destroyed. The latter "explained everything and the League jotted down on paper the various mysteries of that flood of bric-a-brac."17 The second approach to classifying came when the collection was taken to the Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute under the auspices of two well-known local intellectuals, Theo Brandão and Abelardo Duarte, the latter producing an illustrated catalog of the Perseverança collection. 48 It could be said, then, that when the exhibition was first assembled at the League's headquarters, the selection of objects was designed to exhibit the malevolent relationship between the ruling political elite and the Xangôterreiros. Later on, however, when the objects arrived at the Historical Institute, they were classified according to the scholarly criteria in the tradition of the new host institution. In this second phase, in particular, classification was based on the provenance of the pieces, in particular their remote African origin. Perhaps it was nostalgia for the past that guided the classification of pieces by Historical Institute scholars as the "mythical celebration" that Beatriz Góis Dantas saw in the regionalist discourse of writers such as Gilberto Freyre, (Dantas, 1988:160). 49 Interestingly, except for Duarte's catalog, there are no known writings that deal more systematically with the Afro-Brazilian cults of Alagoas. This lacuna is even more surprising given scholars from Alagoas, such as Manoel Diegues Junior and Arthur Ramos, whose renown and research on Afro-Brazilian religion extended beyond the borders of the state yet did not write about Alagoas in general, let alone the 1912 riots. Maybe this is why the Xangôs of Alagoas were so vulnerable to repression during the long period after the overthrow of Euclides Malta. 50 On the Police Museum collection, mention must also be made of the important role of the modernist intellectual Dante Milano as director, a position he held from 1945 to 1956. Milano shared the antiracist approach characteristic of part of the intelligentsia of the period, so he rid the museum's Black Magic Collection of the pernicious amalgam between evil and satanic cults with expressions of black culture of African origin. As a writer, poet and director of the Afro-Brazilian Magic collection - thus renamed due to his influence in 1945 -, he contributed decisively to lend the collection its significance

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as Brazilian cultural heritage, together with other expressions of culture of African origin.18 51 A different way of classifying objects in the Black Magic collection was subsequently identified by Maggie et al.(1979), in the form of intervention of the Museum's director, who had decorated altars for Umbanda centers andterreiros. His religious experience was put to use as to classify these objects in 1964, using references from specialized literature on the subject. 52 Thus, the criterion that determined conservation seem to be directly associated with the pieces' mystical aspects and a widespread belief in magic. 53 The "witchcraft objects" shown at these museums are living proof of sorcery and show that witchcraft is not imaginary but a reality.

By way of conclusion: disputed meaning of objects and their history.

54 In the early history of these collections, meanings were attributed to objects from the standpoint of repression. In Rio de Janeiro, the objects entered into the custody of the police who were responsible for suppressingterreiros accused of practicing wrongdoing. The objects testified to the existence of black magic and served as trophies standing for the victory of the police force over "macumbeiros" who practiced "low spiritism." In the 1930s, especially after the SPHAN heritage institution was founded, they took on the meaning of assets representing the African past, Afro-Brazilian culture and Brazilian culture tout court. The founders of SPHAN shared a project for the nation that was first posed by Mario de Andrade and Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade, who fought to preserve what stood for Brazilianness in the version of the author of Macunaíma (Andrade 2000). The SPHAN project, according to Rodrigo himself, was based on the first of its kind previously conceived by Gilberto Freyre for Pernambuco, which also influenced the state of Bahia's institution for preservation set up by Anísio Teixeira (Cf. Guimaraens, 2002).

55 In Alagoas, the objects asserted the power the Afro-Brazilian religions to lend power to the governor/candidate. The Perseverança collection was initially kept at the headquarters of the same League that had led the riots, as a trophy and symbol of the wrongdoing of the oligarch Euclides Malta. For a long time it was held by thePerseverança mutual aid society and stored in a museum finally, in 1950, it gained the status of art to be preserved as heritage of cults of African origin, by the most prominent anthropologists of the period in Alagoas. 56 This ambiguous relationship between the elite and Afro-Brazilian cults is not new. In his 1906 book As religiões do Rio, João do Rio had formulated a terse metaphor: "We live in dependence on sorcery... it is us who ensure its existence with the affection of a businessman for an actress lover ..." (Rio, 2006:35). 57 But the collections were also generated by widespread belief in witchcraft and here let us quote Raimundo Nina Rodrigues in his O animismo fetichista dos negros baianos of 1897: 58 ... all classes in Bahia, even the so-called higher classes, are apt to become black. The number of whites, mulattoes, and persons of all colors and hues who consult black sorcerers for their afflictions and woes, who publicly believe in the supernatural power

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of talismans and spells, who in much greater numbers mock them in public but secretly listen to them, consult them, this number would be incalculable if were not simpler to say that generally it is the population en masse, except for a minority of superior enlightened spirits who have the true notion of the exact value of these psychological expressions. (Rodrigues, [1897] 2006, p. 116) 59 The process that led to these two collections was based on fear of sorcery and therefore a belief in the efficacy of magic. As we write, a new interpretation of the collections arises from the perspective of identity politics. It is now argued that the objects preserved there are symbols or representatives of Africanness, the origins of a people, or a "segment of the Brazilian people." As the collections joined the ranks of the institutions that represent Africanness in Brazil, so the intellectuals were joined by the social movements in promoting them.

Rio de Janeiro Police Museum Collection

60 This rich collection is no longer on display and some items were lost in a fire in the 1990s. During restoration of the century-old police building on Rua da Relação, where the museum was eventually relocated, the objects were put into store.

61 Photo captions were composed by one of the museum directors, a member of an Umbanda community who specialized in decorating altars for terreiros in the 1960s. The museum director often quotes from books by renowned anthropologists who have studied these beliefs. 62 Photos taken by Luiz Alphonsus in 1978, during the first research project with Marcia Contins and Patricia Monte-Mór conducted at Museu da Polícia Civil do Rio de Janeiro [Rio de Janeiro Police Museum] with support from the National Foundation for the Arts (Funarte).

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Photos by Luiz Alphonsus, 1978

Photos by Luiz Alphonsus, 1978

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Photos by Luiz Alphonsus, 1978

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDRADE, Mario. 2000 [1928]. Macunaíma: o herói sem nenhum caráter. Belo Horizonte: Ed. Itatiaia.

ARANTES, A. A. 2009. "Patrimônio cultural e cidade". In: Carlos Fortuna & Rogerio Proença Leite (orgs.), Plural de cidade: novos léxicos urbanos. Coimbra: Almedina. pp. 11-24.

BASTIDE, Roger. 1971. As religiões africanas no Brasil. São Paulo: Pioneira/EdUSP.

CONDURU, Roberto (org.). 2008. Relicário multicor. A coleção de cultos afro-brasileiros do Museu da Polícia Civil do estado do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Centro Cultural Municipal José Bonifácio/ Museu da Polícia Civil do RJ/Instituto de Artes da UERJ.

CORRÊA, Alexandre Fernandes. 2009. O Museu Mefistofélico e a distabuzação da magia: análise do tombamento do primeiro patrimônio etnográfico do Brasil. São Luis: EDUFMA.

CRAWFORD, J. R. 1967. Witchcraft and sorcery in Rodhesia. London: International African Institute/ Oxford University Press.

DANTAS, Beatriz Góis. 1988. Vovó nagô e papai branco: usos e abusos da África no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Graal.

DUARTE, Abelardo. 1974. Catálogo ilustrado da Coleção Perseverança. Maceió: IHGAL.

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DUARTE, Abelardo. 1985. "Histórico da coleção perseverança". In: Raul Lody (org.), Coleção Perseverança: um documento do Xangô alagoano. Maceió: UFAL/Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE; Instituto Nacional do Folclore. pp. 5-6.

EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 2004. Bruxaria, oráculos e magia entre os Azande. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.

FERNANDES, Gonçalves. 1941. Sincretismo religioso no Brasil. São Paulo: Guaíra.

GONÇALVES, José Reginaldo Santos. 1996. A retórica da perda: os discursos do patrimônio cultural no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ/IPHAN.

GUIMARAENS, Cêça. 2002. Paradoxos entrelaçados: as torres para o futuro e a tradição nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ.

LODY, Raul. 1985. Coleção Perseverança: um documento do Xangô alagoano. Maceió: UFAL/Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE; Instituto Nacional do Folclore.

LODY, Raul. 2005. O negro no museu brasileiro:construindo identidades. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand do Brasil.

MAGGIE, Yvonne. 2001. Guerra de orixá: um estudo de ritual e conflito. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.

MAGGIE, Yvonne. 1992. Medo do feitiço: relações entre magia e poder no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional.

MAGGIE, Yvonne; MONTE-MÓR, Patrícia; CONTINS, Marcia. 1979. Arte ou magia negra? Rio de Janeiro: Funarte (Mimeo.).

POULOT, Dominique. 2003. "Museu, nação, acervo". In: José Neves Bittencourt, Vera Tostes & Sara Benchetrit (orgs.), História representada: o dilema dos museus. Rio de Janeiro: Museu Histórico Nacional. pp.25-62.

RAFAEL, Ulisses N. 2012. Xangô rezado baixo: política e religião na Primeira República. São Cristóvão: EDUFS/Maceió: EDUFAL.

RIO, João do. 2006. As religiões do Rio. Rio de Janeiro: José Olímpio.

RODRIGUES, Raimundo Nina. 2006. O animismo fetichista dos negros baianos. Apresentação e notas Yvonne Maggie & Peter Fry. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional/Editora UFRJ. [fac- simile edition of the Revista Brazileira 1896 e 1897].

SEVCENKO, Nicolau. 2003. Literatura como missão: tensões sociais e criação cultural na Primeira República. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

THOMAS, Keith.1973. Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

TURNER, Victor. 2005. Floresta de símbolos: aspectos do ritual Ndembu. Niterói: EdUFF.

VERGER, Pierre Fatumbi. 1981. Orixás: deuses na África e no Novo Mundo. São Paulo: Corrupio/ Círculo do livro.

VERGER, Pierre Fatumbi. 2000. Notas sobre o culto aos orixás e voduns. São Paulo: Edusp.

APPENDIXES

Carta à autoridade policial. Caixa 6, C 21 do Arquivo Nacional.

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Código Penal de 1890. Decreto de 11 de outubro de 1890, Rio de Janeiro, Imprensa Nacional. Decreto 3.987, de 2 de janeiro de 1920. Departamento Nacional de Saúde Pública. Decreto-Lei 2.848, de 7 de dezembro de 1940. Diário Oficial de 31-12-1940. Diário de Notícias. Rio de Janeiro. 1º de abril. Coleção Biblioteca Nacional. "Documento de 1940 enviado pelo delegado auxiliar Demócrito de Almeida ao SPHAN", anexado ao Processo n. 0035-T-38, Livro do Tombo Arqueológico, Etnográfico e Paisagístico/ Inscrição nº. 001, de 5 de maio. IPHAN. "Bruxaria". Jornal de Alagoas. Maceió, 07/02/1912. Lei 173, de 10 de setembro de 1893. Museu da Polícia Civil do Rio de Janeiro. http://museupoliciacivil.hdfree.com.br/Acesso em 26 de julho de 2012. Processo n. 0035-T-38, Livro do Tombo Arqueológico, Etnográfico e Paisagístico/Inscrição nº. 001, de 5 de maio. IPHAN http://portal.iphan.gov.br/portal/baixaFcdAnexo.do?id=1356 p. 207, retrieved July 26, 2012. Relatório da Polícia do Distrito Federal apresentado ao Exmo. Sr. Augusto de Vianna do Castilho, Ministro de Justiça e Negócios Interiores, pelo Dr. Coreoloano de Araújo Góes Filho, Chefe de Polícia do DF, 81-4-35, Arquivo da Cidade. 1927.

NOTES

1. The Museum's official website states that heritage listing was requested by senior police officer Silvio Terra.http://museupoliciacivil.hdfree.com.br/retrieved June 24, 2012. 2. Letter from director Dante Milano to the head of SPHAN, as in case no. 0035-T-38 in the Book of Archaeological, Ethnographic and Landscape Heritage Listing /Registration no. 001 of May 5, 1938. 3. "Quebra de Xangô" (The Breaking of Xangô) is the expression by which the episode became known in the state of Alagoas. 4. In Maceió the Afro-Brazilian terreiros are termed Xangô, pronounced shan-goh. 5. Xangô is the term for Afro-Brazilian cults in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas, although, as Yvonne Maggie points out, these categories do not reflect the dynamics of the classifications provided by the informants themselves. In one interview, we often saw the use of all these expressions by an informant referring to the same set of ritual practices. Even the use of "Afro- Brazilian" here should be hedged with precautions, as Beatriz Góis Dantas warns, due to the ideological charge associated with it. However we have all continued to use these terms for the lack of anything more satisfactory (Cf. Maggie, 2001 e Dantas, 1988). 6. Penal Code of 1890. Decree of October 11 1890, Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. 7. The Witchcraft Suppression Act-1897 made it a crime to accuse someone of witchcraft. "Whoever imputes to any other person the use of non-natural means in causing any disease in any person or animal or in causing any injury to any person or property, that is to say, whoever names or indicates any other person as being a wizard or a witch shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding two hundred dollars or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years, or to a whipping not exceeding twenty lashes or to any two or more of such punishments." (Apud Crawford, 1967).

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8. Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (2004) noted that Azande sorcerers or witches are always among the enemies and these are people close to the accused. 9. Case 6, C 21 National Archives. Letter kindly provided by Marcos Bretas. 10. In Brazil, the Coup of 1937 launched the historical period known as Estado Novo - a totalitarian regime headed by President Getúlio Vargas, who had been in power since the so- called 1930 Revolution. This regime ended with Vargas' death by suicide in 1945. 11. Decree-Law 2,848 of December 7, 1940 was published in the Official Gazette on 12/31/1940, but only became effective in 1942 when the Law of Criminal Misdemeanor was enacted. Articles 282, 283 and 284, in the chapter on Crimes Against Public Health , remained until today, read as following: Illegal practice of medicine, dentistry or pharmacy - Article 282 - exercise, albeit for free of charge, of the profession of doctor, dentist or pharmacist, without legal authorization or exceeding its limits: Penalty - imprisonment from six months to two years. Paragraph One of One: if the crime is committed in order to profit, a penalty of one to five contos de réis shall also be applied. Charlatanism - Art. 283 - inculcate or announce healing through secret or infallible means: Penalty - imprisonment from three months to one year and a fine of one to five contos de réis. Faith healing - Article 284 - practicing faith healing: I - habitually prescribing, administering or applying any substance II - using gestures, words or other means; III - making diagnoses: Penalty - imprisonment from six months to two years. Paragraph One of One - if the crime is committed for remuneration, the agent is also subject to a fine of one to five contos. Qualified form - Article 285 - the provisions of art. 258 are applicable crimes under this chapter except as defined in art. 267. Meaningful forms of crime common danger - Article 258 - if the felony of common danger resulting in severe bodily injury, the penalty of imprisonment shall be increased by half; if leading to death, doubled. In case of blame, if there is bodily injury, the penalty increases by half; if it leads to death, the penalty applied is for manslaughter, increased by one third. Illegal practice of medicine, dentistry or pharmacy - Article 282 - exercise, albeit for free of charge, of the profession of doctor, dentist, or pharmacist, without legal authorization or exceeding its limits. Charlatanism - Art. 283 - inculcate or announce healing through secret or infallible means. Faith healing - Article 284 - practicing faith healing: I - habitually prescribing, administering, or applying any substance II - using gestures, words, or other means; III - making diagnoses. Paragraph One of One - if the crime is committed for remuneration, the agent is also subject to a fine of two to ten thousand cruzeiros. 12. Thanks are due to senior police officer Cyro Advincula da Silva for kindly meeting us for an insightful interview (2012) covering the recent history of the Police Museum and its Black Magic collection. 13. According to Raul Lody (1985), xangô nilê, the name of an entity that in Alagoas was syncretized with Saint Anthony, who is also associated with the orisha Ogun in other Brazilian states, comes from a Nigerian title known as Onin Irê, from which the terms Onirê and Nire came as corrupted forms. In relation to the syncretism of Santo Antônio [Saint Anthony] with ogum nilê or ogum onirê, one of seven names given to this orisha in Brazil, see Verger (2000: 157/158). 14. Jornal de Alagoas. "Bruxaria". Maceió, 07/02/1912, p. 1. 15. Diário de Notícias, April 1, 1941, p. 1. 16. See the catalog of the collection titled Multicolor Reliquary - The collection of Afro-Brazilian cults of the State of Rio de Janeiro Police Museum. Curatorial design by Roberto Conduru, head of the José Bonifácio municipal cultural center, Carlos Feijó; photography Wilson da Costa;

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exhibition design Carlos Feijó, supported by the Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro, 2008. 17. Jornal de Alagoas. "Bruxaria" [newspaper article on witchcraft], Maceió, 07/02/1912, p. 1. 18. For an analysis of the relationship between the modernist poet and the Black Magic collection, see Correa (2009).

ABSTRACTS

This essay returns to a discussion of two collections of objects taken from two terreiros (places of worship) for Afro-Brazilian cults, namely the Magia Negra (Black Magic) collection at the Museu da Polícia do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Police Museum) and the Perseverança collection at the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Alagoas - IHGAL (Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute), in Maceió. In both cases we looked at how members of Brazil's elite are involved in sorcery and how members of this elite circulate in candomblé, xangô, umbanda and other terreiros. In this essay, in particular, we examine the subject of the collections in the context of recent changes arising from heritage-listing policies in Brazil that have decisively affected relations between these objects and institutions charged with protecting and preserving cultural heritage.

Nosso objetivo aqui é retomar uma discussão iniciada em trabalhos anteriores acerca de duas coleções de objetos apreendidos nos terreiros de cultos afro-brasileiros, mais especificamente da Coleção de Magia Negra no Museu da Polícia Civil do Rio de Janeiro e a Coleção Perseverança do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Alagoas, em Maceió, quando o interesse esteve voltado, nos dois casos, para uma reflexão acerca do modo como no Brasil o Estado se imiscui nos assuntos da magia, bem como sobre a circularidade da elite brasileira pelos terreiros de candomblé, xangô, umbanda, entre outros. Neste ensaio, em particular, retomamos o tema das coleções no contexto do conjunto de transformações recentes decorrentes das políticas de patrimonialização no Brasil e que afetam decisivamente a relação das instituições de proteção e de preservação do patrimônio cultural com tais objetos.

INDEX

Keywords: Afro-Brazilian cults, collections, heritage, sorcery, state, elites Palavras-chave: Cultos afro-brasileiros, coleções, patrimônio, magia, estado, elites

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Heritage.org /digital museum of african and Afro-Brazilian memory Challenges to digital patrimonialization

Livio Sansone Translation : John A. Mundell

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013

1 Over the last decade new communication technologies seem to have changed and broadened the horizon for museum exhibits as well as for heritage preservation more generally. A process that began in the more technologically developed nations has begun to make inroads into the Global South too, and the purpose of this short text is to introduce the Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Memory. The Digital Museum is a concrete intervention in the geopolitics of knowledge, an attempt to reverse the tradition of dividing the world into places where research is performed and popular culture is produced, and places where information and artefacts are kept, archived, and "secured," which tend to be where "Art" (with a capital A) is created and enshrined. The Digital Museum initiative is important to the knowledge and memory of African art and culture more generally, and in two ways: on the one hand, it concerns the rediscovery or perhaps the reinvention of Africa in its own diaspora; on the other hand, through a number of collaborative projects with African institutions (Mozambique Historical Archive, INEP-Guinea Bissau, IFAN-Dakar, University of Cape Verde) it relates to the establishment of a digital heritage for Africa and the rest of the Global South - emphasizing a critical and yet positive perspective on digitization itself and its preservation and circulation on the web. Our project has emerged from the currently contradictory cultural and multicultural politics of Brazil, where a new configuration is beginning to define itself by interaction between new communication technologies, state intervention within the sphere of the production of culture and identity, and new demands by historically subaltern groups that they be recognized.

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Background: Brazilian Cultural Politics

2 In Brazil, at least since its independence, the State and elites have defined certain national characteristics and celebrated them by recourse to use of the term "the people." Since the 1930s the categories of "people" and "popular" have been settled through the production of a list of artefacts with the prospect of patrimonialization, by the National Foundation of the Arts (Funarte), the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN), and museums.1 Although the people were in fact kept at a distance from power, in a complex process part of popular culture became an essential component of the ideals of the nation. Within that process, "the African" assumed a symbolically central position, followed by "the Negro" and "the Indian." As Lilia Schwarcz showed,2 after 1830 the national debates of the Historical and Geographical Institute rewarded and celebrated the contribution of those "Others" to "Brazilian- ness." It was an incorporation of excess, more cultural than social and economic, in a process that created expectations between the subordinated and the racialized.3

3 The symbolic process of inclusion as representative of the nation has increased greatly, albeit in a context where, for decades, the State has been less obviously present and there has been more involvement by other agents, both physically present and virtual. Incorporation of the popular into the national began during Vargas's nationalist- populist government, when certain features associated with Africa were incorporated and the "Afro-Brazilian" was invented. We can point to the concrete cases of samba and carnival, but also to capoeira, cuisine, and even the variant of Portuguese spoken in Brazil. The second phase occurred from 1994 to 2002, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was the first president to acknowledge racism as a national problem and denounce it. However, it was during the Lula era from 2003 to 2010 that new conditions and actors emerged, and with them possibilities for identity politics. I will mention just a few here: television and commerce discovered the Negro (although not the Indian); the institutionalization of the ideas and icons of multiculturalism, including the implementation of Law 10369/2003, which made the teaching of "History and Cultures of Africa and Afro-American Populations" compulsory at all levels of education; the policy of university quotas for poor and black students, and other measures inspired by affirmative action. As well as that, a focus on programmes of bilateral collaboration known as a Sul-Sul (South-South) perspective in external politics inspired the celebration of Africa and aspects of the African origins of the Brazilian people. There was a slow but steady growth in African studies, especially of the continent's history and anthropology, in Brazilian universities, which for the first time recruited specialists in their fields - many of them young. Attention was given to collective land rights on ethno-racial bases, to maroons, riverines, as well as traditional indigenous populations, while at last a new cultural politics sprang up whose guiding principle can be expressed concisely as the inclusion and patrimonialization of both concrete and abstract - or tangible and intangible - culture. The Brazilian Ministry of Culture and the State Secretaries of Culture launched a series of projects using completely new terminology within the sphere: Creative Commons, a new museum policy, cultural sites, territories of identity, ethnic tourism, and so forth. 4 As a result, the term "diversity" has now become a fixture in the Portuguese language, as something positive which should be maintained, being seen nowadays as a bonus for

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the Brazilian nation. For the first time in the history of the country, old "problems" such as Africa, the Negro, and the Indian have become, albeit gradually and contradictorily, a bonus. To that we may add the development and popularization of the notion of abstract or intangible culture, with a growing list of artefacts - such as samba de roda, the carnival parade of the Sons of Gandhi in Salvador, the Brotherhood of the Good Death in Cachoeira (Bahia), and musical instruments and traditional rhythms that had previously always been defined as essentially regional. It is a list whose tendency is to grow at an exponential rate, above all when local governments begin to discover that their culture "has value," as in the case of the municipality of São Francisco do Conde, the richest of the State of Bahia because of the royalties deriving from the huge oil refinery in its territory, which, in 2006, proclaimed itself the "Capital of Culture." 5 The new questions of the social verticality of a historically unequal country, with the emergence of more sophisticated and more specific demands of citizenship, create new sensitivities in the fields of authorship and intellectual property, image rights, authenticity, reparation demands, willingness to become a subject and to speak for oneself. All that puts limits on the freedom with which, when seeking to legitimize themselves, the various elites can appeal to the people. 6 All such novelties, sometimes at odds with each other, make possible a new configuration not only of the constructive process of collective identities, but also of memory, as much of subaltern groups as of the State, which alters and broadens the range of symbols within which identities are recreated, as much sectional as national. As mentioned, the process goes hand in hand with the rediscovery and reinvention of Africa.4 7 Now let us consider in more detail how, within a context of complex and changing cultural politics where many actions can be developed for the first time, the task of creating a type of ethno-racial museum, or rather an ethnographic one, might be more complex than first thought, even if in a digital format as in our case.

Preserving African and Afro-Brazilian Memory

8 The Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Memory began as a digital version of an anthropological archive and was therefore initially called the Digital Archive of Afro-Bahian Studies. Then, as it developed, it incorporated historians, curators, and library scientists into its team and network. The term "African" was included in the name to reflect the establishment of a series of exchanges with African archives and museums operating within a context that enriches the project in two ways. First, they have a great deal of documentation and material stemming from the colonial and - unfortunately to a much lesser extent - post-colonial imagery of Africa and black people there. Second, they are eager to develop new approaches and technologies for preservation, to ensure accessibility of documents, and to create digital exhibits. As regards the latter, for example, some of the staff of the Historical Archives of Mozambique have received training in the critical use of digital technologies in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, and it is hoped that in the near future something similar can be organized for the staff of INEP, the main research centre of Guinea Bissau. Those institutions receive various equipment from foreign donors, but the local staff are not trained in what to digitize, nor how to do it and why, for example because information

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might have some use in the future even if it seems to have little use now. Also, there is hope concerning the production of an open-source prototype of a digital museum that could be used by African researchers to make their own museum, if they wish, in partnership with our Museum. Such a digital museum could also be the engine for joint semi-presential training and even graduate courses - where the same language, Portuguese, rather than an end in itself, comes to represent a useful tool. Distance learning at graduate level, in association with our digital museum galleries - each of which produces documents, courses, material, animation, and so on5 - is a new frontier that could be of special interest in regions such as much of Brazil and Africa.

9 It is worth noting that Brazil is one of the countries in the Americas with the closest connections to the African continent, where ancestral links emerge in our everyday life in an intense way, often leading us to think of them as authentic Brazilian manifestations, so much so that we forget their real origin. To that may be added the effort the current Brazilian government is making to become diplomatically closer to African countries, and of course commercial interests in pursuit of new markets for Brazilian goods, services, and technologies are a key factor. Yet all of that goes together with policies and practices that stimulate academic and scientific exchange with African institutions, as well as increase the number of grants to encourage the exchange of students and scholars - especially Lusophone - between African and Brazilian academic institutions for research and experience purposes. Until recently Brazil has traditionally been a country that received a good number of scholars from the North, but very few Brazilians ever gained experience of research abroad - certainly not in the Global South. Even though the situation is not free from self-interest, especially when it concerns large companies now investing in Africa, there is a fair degree of genuine curiosity and potential generosity towards Africa among many Brazilians. 10 The Digital Museum can be understood as a democratizing zone in which relations of otherness and constructions of identity are produced, that is, forms of recognition of local, regional and national emotional affiliations. By its very nature, it is also an easily accessible, dynamic, and interactive device that mirrors the daily life and culture of different communities, ethnic minorities, and marginalized groups that are recognized by their common values, traditions, and local affiliations, and their individual and collective memories. 11 The Museum is also a conceptual space that stimulates the use of the social memories of ethnic minorities and social movements, and of national memory in general. In that sense, the idea of constructing an archive and museum of living memories, transmitted on the Internet, demands a meaningful dialogue on matters related to both tangible and intangible ethnic heritage involving different users. Such a proposal will contribute to the integration of classical and popular culture, while also permitting a younger audience - the primary consumers of new technology - access to cultural benefits as a strategy to create new sensibilities and knowledge. 12 The preservation of the memory and intangible heritage of the Afro-Brazilian population and the question of image rights represents a more than current issue. In Brazil, little has been done to preserve the memory of the conflicts and daily life of the Afro-Brazilian population; indeed, their museums, galleries, archives, and centres of documentation are few in number and in poor condition. The effort required to preserve such memory is still lacking within the large institutions that should perform

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that function, above all the National Library (BN) and the National Archive (AN), but also within the more specialized archives such as the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation (Fundaj) in Recife and the Edgard Leuenroth Archive at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in São Paulo state. I anticipate that our Digital Museum project will try to raise the awareness of those institutions too, in the sense of getting them to include among their priorities the "black issue," meaning race relations, racism, and Afro-Brazilian culture. They must review their collections, and change their indexing systems to include terms such as race or colour, racism, Negro, Afro-Brazilian, and Africa. Finally, priority must be given to those topics in their exhibitions and publications.6 13 Although it can be difficult and painful to recall the time of slavery, above all when it has left its long-lasting mark in contemporary inequalities such as racial discrimination, and especially when it still affects the majority of the population, it is now positively necessary to do so.7 The federal law of 2003 that demands the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian cultures as a part of the social sciences cannot be effectively implemented without the preservation of collections of documents, visual images of all sorts, and audio-visual materials including interviews with black mães/ pais-de-santo - who are the priestesses and priests of Afro-Brazilian religions - activists, politicians, and intellectuals; or sound recordings of samba de roda groups, congadas, ternos de reis and so on. In other words, one way of giving visibility to the Afro-Brazilian population is to ask oneself what is the best form of nurturing their memory and their tangible and intangible cultural heritage. We must ask too what use to make of such memories, for there is a variety of possible uses, including academic, within the context of activism, documentary, or purely commercial. 14 Along with the need to preserve memories, sounds, and images, there are other developments in Brazilian society that must be confronted fully and openly. In the recent years of the consolidation of democracy in Brazil, the notion of citizenship has been expanding in the sense of incorporating the desire for greater control by the individual over public use of the image of the citizen, above all the black citizen. What then is the best way to understand and overcome the dilemma that seems to set the duty to preserve the collective memory of the Afro-Brazilian population's experience against a growing demand by them for the right to control how photographs, images, lyrics, and songs produced by blacks or associated with them are published and circulated? 15 Our Digital Museum project considers that tension and so works by a code of conduct that safeguards the individual's right to images while realizing the need to exhibit them, and to listen to recordings and read texts produced by blacks. We must satisfy the growing curiosity about African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture which exists throughout the extensive layers of the population, and we must reveal above all those who, until now, have not been properly represented but have been condemned to silence or invisibility. And how do we cope with the new tensions that result from the process by which certain cultural forms, finally "discovered" and, at times, defined as intangible heritage, pass suddenly from invisibility to hyper-visibility, such as happens when, for example, a hitherto very "local" samba de roda group is introduced to play in the media spotlight (samba de roda is a genre of samba recently registered on the list of intangible heritage maintained by the IPHAN)?

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16 To patrimonialize Afro-Brazilian heritage also implies, in some form, defining what that culture is, from what elements it is composed. The need to determine the particular traits of a culture is in tension with the dynamic notion of culture that is today canonical in all the social sciences. In fact, we need to build a consensus around what we might call the common denominator of Afro-Brazilian culture.8 17 Other challenges are offered by the large size of the Afro-Brazilian population, which, far from being a minority, comprises more than half the total population of Brazil, and the huge variety of cultural expressions associated with the black population. There is also the importance of the "black question" in Brazilian history. The dilemma is that, far from being able to reflect such grandeur and complexity, our Digital Museum must necessarily make a selection of expressions, themes, and areas case-by-case and region- by-region but without thereby falling into the trap of reductionism. 18 New communication technologies have a profound impact on the construction of collective memory and its relationship with the process of identity. The assumption of an identity today is not a process or project carried out by the same methods as were used before the popularization of the Internet and the mobile telephone, and all their digital trappings. It is necessary to reflect more closely on the interface between technology and the way we remember, celebrate, choose, and organize our ideas as much in our own minds and thoughts as in relation to those of others. 19 Virtual or digital museums should not be seen as substitutes for physical ones; digital and physical visits - or tactile and digital experiences - should be seen as complementary rather than adversarial. However, I am acutely aware of the irony by which digital museums, as well as intangible heritage, seem in some way to be the "solution" to the historic lack of museums in the Global South, as it is the Global North that focuses more on tangible heritage and physical musealization. I do not believe digital technology to be the solution in itself, but, without any doubt, it provides a new context and offers new possibilities. It should not, however, become a sort of sacred cow, and it must always be understood within the logic of politics - digital politics. The digital medium is a means, not an end in itself; in fact, we could say it is rather like learning a foreign language - useful only if you have something to say in it. 20 More than an antidote, the Internet reflects inequalities - and it makes them clear for others to see and interpret. Information passed via digital media, in the quantity and organization - or disorganization - that it restores, as Baudrillard would say, is a dilemma of a new aphonia opposite the new plethora of information, in which knowing how to choose becomes a question of status - knowing how to choose defines one of the principal characteristics of the new intellectual elite. Facing these new challenges and possibilities may be similar to what Gramsci suggested in relation to activism: we need to be (techno) sceptical, but allowed to be moved by the optimism of digital action.

A Museum without Owners

21 The Digital Museum began in 1998 at the dawning of the International Advanced course in ethnic and racial studies called "Factory of Ideas" (www.fabricadeideias.ufba.br), at the Center for Afro-Asian Studies, Candido Mendes University, in Rio de Janeiro. Since 2002, the Factory of Ideas has been part of the Graduate Program in Ethnic and African Studies at the Center for Afro-Oriental Studies at the Federal University of Bahia

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(UFBA). The museum began with a collection of newspaper and magazine articles in the Brazilian press about a Negro movement, racism, and Africa. The pieces were initiated under the coordination of Carlos Hasenbalg, and received funding support first from the Mellon Foundation and later from the Sephis Programme for the rescue of archives in danger. Our Digital Museum project intends to take advantage of the international network of almost 450 researchers, developed thanks to the sixteen editions of the International Advanced course. Ideally, each of the researchers will be able to become a collaborator in our interactive museum project - providing the digital copy of documents as well as suggestions, criticism, and contacts. Our Digital Museum is, indeed, desperately keen to acquire a large network of reception antennas.

22 Our Digital Museum has already received support from important national and international groups, including the Prince Claus Foundation, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Co-ordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), Financier of Studies and Projects (FINEP), and the Research Support Foundations of the States of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Maranhão. We have established a series of institutional partnerships with the Brazilian Association of Anthropology, among other bodies. We are participants in the network of the Virtual Memory of the National Library Foundation (FBN) and are developing a partnership with the National Archive (AN), which means we shall soon be able to prioritize the question of the Negro, since the AN recently highlighted the subject of torture during a fascinating digital exhibition. Through the Dspace platform, the FBN will be our digital repository and, with continually updated resources, will hold high-definition digital copies (300 dpi) of all the documents our Digital Museum makes available.9 The documents in our Digital Museum can be used freely for educational and research purposes, it being sufficient to cite the original text and our Digital Museum. Anyone requiring high-definition copies, perhaps for publishing purposes, will be able to obtain them from the appropriate sector of the FBN. 23 Our collection is as much "inherited" from already extant archives as it has been created from scratch through new research and document acquisition. Inheritance of documents refers to the digital copy recuperation process, be it total or partial, from collections already present in the archives - copies that we can exhibit in themed galleries composed of documents from various archives.10 24 In order to describe what is involved in the creation of our collection, it is useful to refer to four policy concepts that guide our work: digital repatriation, digital donation, digital ethnography, and digital generosity. 25 Digital repatriation: We suggest to foreign archives that they continue to conserve original documents, but urge them to be altruistic with the digital copies, which we believe should be circulated freely without any significant cost of reproduction, thus permitting researchers to analyse documents without necessarily having to interrupt their work to travel abroad.11 26 Digital donation: We intend to inspire a policy and practice of making available documents that were previously difficult to access or entirely inaccessible. We mean to do that through our homepage, by means of a digital transfer tool already available there, and, indicating the National Library as a digital repository, through the Dspace platform. We do not wish to keep original documents nor items, but only to digitize them, archive them, and display them as museum pieces in our virtual galleries. The originals will be returned to their owners, after cleaning if necessary, using improved

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methods of storage according to the criteria of the most up-to-date archival science. We aspire eventually to be a museum without owners. In certain cases, especially when there is a risk that original documents might be lost or suffer damage, perhaps through poor earlier preservation or because they might be sold abroad or lost to private collections, then retention of such items can be mandated within an archive or public library as documents of public interest, both in order to avoid their being sent abroad - as often happened in the past - and to facilitate the sourcing of resources for proper conservation. The value of correct conservation processes cannot be over-estimated, above all in relation to the north-east of Brazil, where there is a grave shortage of public institutions, whether public archives, libraries, or museums. Furthermore, north-east Brazil seems to be a region where the public visit such facilities much less, as Myrian Santos has noted.12 That is why that region, with its large black population, is where we will focus our attention, although of course with no detriment to other regions, in our campaign to raise awareness of digital donation. 27 Digital ethnography: This method addresses the reception of documents and at the same time the awareness of specific communities, in the sense of adhering to the movement for digital donation. We will do this through research in the field by means of a mobile digital scanning station and, later, a sort of travelling museum, permanently under development and never seeming to be finished, searching out its audience and creating moments of drama, for example about memories of slavery in the Bahian Recôncavo. 28 Digital generosity: This point sets out from the premise that we are experiencing a new and growing anachronism in the process of creating the diffusion of knowledge: today, more books than ever, and texts in general, of an academic nature are being produced and edited and they can be more easily and quickly translated than before too. However, the use and interpretation of such information is not so easy to put into context; indeed, text and context go hand-in-hand less than ever before. Was it ever possible to trace the genesis of a text and complete an authentic archaeological investigation of its production process without being able to base our reflections on field notebooks, notes, writings, sketches, and the exchange of letters that the archaeology of knowledge thinks it is today? Hypertext is already penetrating our research practices, and the daily exchange of opinions between colleagues. Few bother to save their emails, which are always too often and frequently written according to what the philosopher and writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in referring to the late 1960's European community talk-radio stations, called "filthy discourse" - grammatically imperfect and full with jargon, invented terms and dialect.13 On the other hand, in its exploration of new methodological frontiers the Internet could well become a great new way to share research experience. Learning to share both secondary and even primary data where possible, suggestions, tips, questions, answers, annotations - all this is possible through the Internet. In some cases, perhaps as a way of becoming the subject instead of just the object of research, our own sources will be able to have a presence on the Digital Museum's homepage, at least the key ones will, those who care most about maintaining contact with others who are researching their subjects' individual and collective reality. In that sense, a prototype portal might be created where researchers could exchange their experiences within a sort of chat room inside our Digital Museum - collective curatorship that benefits from the opportunities created by the internet for new forms of crowdsharing and crowdsourcing.

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29 With respect to copyright, we believe in the philosophy that guides the Creative Commons movement: citation is necessary, but payment is not. As part of our Digital Museum's work, questions of copyright arise with the use of software in accordance with image rights, the safeguarding of privacy, and the digital reproduction of a document and its subsequent availability on the Internet.

Documents in the Digital Museum

30 We began the Museum with a series of collections featured in the United States and France which, until then, had not been available to a wide Brazilian audience because they were either not digitized or were unavailable online. The virtual "repatriation" of those records, in cooperation with foreign institutions that provide digitization and availability through the Internet, has been the first stage of our programme, although it is still incomplete because many pieces remain in the collections of foreign researchers which are more difficult to access.

31 It is important to specify what we mean by a document in the context of our Digital Museum. It is, of course, well known that the term "document" is polysemic and that every document is in fact a monument. As far as digitization is concerned, which documents we select are the results of policy, decisions, and processes of monumentalization and patrimonialization. Specifically, the documents to which we give priority are taken from a wide range that obviously includes written sources, but is not limited to the written record in the narrower sense. We are interested in printed material such as newspaper articles, minutes of meetings, unpublished original texts, private documents, letters, poetry, traditional recipes both culinary and medicinal, photographs, iconography, sound recordings and music scores, testimonials both pre- recorded or produced ad hoc by our own team, prayers, tunes, reproductions of cultural objects or artefacts, and film footage and recordings of cultural or political events. Above all we consider: 1. Documents, whether already in archives or private collections. That is as much the files "about" the Afro-Brazilian population as, to a lesser extent, the records produced by Afro- Brazilian anthropologists, intellectuals, artists, activists, religious leaders, and so on. We can be a Museum of Museums and an Archive of Archives: for example, we can hold temporary exhibits alongside pieces from different archives or museums - pieces that could then be exchanged through a digital lending policy. 2. Documents secured or produced by researchers which we then circulate online, authorizing either their partial or full publication during or after the completion of research. 3. Documents created from scratch, above all their appropriation when there are no previous records. These may be testimonies, photographs, music recordings, and so on. It might refer also to previously produced documents recording or registering as a determined group or community receives our project and researchers - as people receive, comment, and sometimes dramatize images and documents about their own reality that we present for them. This last form of acquiring documents and registering the Afro-Brazilian memory we should like to call "the barnstorming museum" - the type of museum as mobile, as it is eternally unfinished, seeking and in fact creating its own audience.

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How we Choose the Records

32 For the recovery of the Afro-Brazilian memory, well-known figures in the social, political, and intellectual life of Brazil interest us as much as do the anonymous and unknown ones - for example, mães/pais-de-santo, or the first classes of students admitted to a public university as a result of the new quota system.

33 The site, with dynamic ideographic screens, will be continually updated as new material is produced so that subjects and researchers can communicate about documents already online and add others according to the principles of generosity and digital donation. In that sense, our project provides constant research and the updating of software or more adaptable platforms to facilitate content management and the creation of digital repositories. 34 In the first instance at least we consider documents and materials produced by people who identify themselves as black or Afro-Brazilian, because that is where the main need resides, and alongside them we look for material on Afro-Brazilian religious leaders, black activists, trade unionists, classical and popular musicians, capoeira schools and teachers, maroon community leaders, NGOs concerning the Afro-Brazilian population, the Catholic Church (especially the Pastoral Care of the Negro) and some Pentecostal churches, and the personal archives of components of the black elite.14 Important too will be records still unpublished or, if already published, to which access is difficult, records produced "about" or "for" blacks or Afro-Brazilians, records of race relations, and more general material about a variety of figures either from the professional or intellectual worlds who have observed the reality of circumstances throughout the history of Brazil. Of interest too are travellers, missionaries, diplomats, faith workers, essayists, journalists, anthropologists, and other social scientists.

Internal Structure: A Head Coordinator and a Network of Collaborators

35 We are working with regional teams that enjoy full autonomy, based in four of the Brazilian states, namely Maranhão, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia.15 Our Digital Museum is a research instrument with the characteristics of a public service and works with a headquarters team of researchers and technicians, and then a wider network of collaborators. They include active researchers in the academic field, and with them collectors, self-taught researchers, activists, and curators. However, our Digital Museum should be more than a digital archive. We hope visits will be made on various levels, and there will be interaction between users and the Museum, including the creation of points of memory and document reception in the public spaces. We want to operate through the Internet, with the support of our advisory board, which unites researchers, curators, intellectuals, artists, and activists from various countries and meets periodically via videoconference, as well as with the support of an association of friends of the Digital Museum, who can be relied upon and will inspire a virtual discussion of our Museum, on our homepage.

36 Collaboration can take various forms. Digital material can be donated, there is suggestion and criticism, or someone can take on the job of constructing and curating a virtual gallery consisting of a set of documents focusing on a specific topic made

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available to the Museum from various sources. Our policy is to ask individual researchers to be responsible for the construction of "their" gallery.

Challenges

37 Our first phase of activity has brought with it a series of enormous challenges. We had to make quick decisions about dealing with things such as authenticity (what is an authentic document?); originality (which documents to choose within frequently quite large groups?); property (which property to recognize or reject? And to what extent?); exclusivity (that phenomenon finding expression among historians as the category "my documents" and among anthropologists as "my informants"); copyright, image rights, and privacy (can everything be made public? What is public or private; why, for what purpose; and whom to ask for authorization?); the status of the researcher (what to do with the self-taught ones); whether and how to incorporate the archives of social movements, associations, and NGOs; what type of exchange to weave with other virtual or digital museums; what relationship to maintain with projects of archive digitization, for example in Africa - it must be for the exchange of technology or of documents on subjects of transatlantic importance, such as miscegenation, elites or colonists of colour, and racist iconography.

38 Our Digital Museum will also be a museum of race relations and hierarchies such as that of racism. The testimony of both blacks and whites will be as important as records found in documents, processes, or newspapers. To place racism into the context of a museum, even a digital one, naturally demands that we reflect on what it means to contemplate pain and evil. Reflections on the Holocaust and slavery, and museums of apartheid, will therefore be a source of inspiration. 39 Finally, our project is challenged by having to develop new forms of virtual musealization, creating galleries that take advantage of documents and pieces of our own and other digital archives, to make them dynamic and somehow spectacular. In short, how does one make a contemporary virtual museum thrilling to a wide variety of audiences? 40 Our Digital Museum, through it all, is as much a public service as it is a tool for research and to stimulate reflection upon the social sciences and their applicability, particularly to the questions raised by the development of the new Brazilian-style multiculturalism, and the relationship between new communication technologies and the use of human memory. We want to make a concrete contribution to the creation of a new geopolitics of knowledge. To create museums and archives from the South and from a Sul-Sul (South-South) perspective, even in the case of digital or virtual experiences, will contribute to reversing traditional ways of associating place with knowledge and with the preservation of knowledge. Therefore, we believe it is sensible to start thinking about a new, more critical and less "natural" conservation policy - one that will question the current relations of power surrounding the process.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENZENSBERGER, Hans Magnus. 1974. The consciousness industry: on literature, politics and the media. New York: Seabury Press.

SANSONE, Livio. 2000. "Remembering slavery from nearby. Heritage brazilian style". In: Gert Oostindie (ed.),Facing up to the past: perspectives on the commemoration of slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe.London: Ian Randle/James Currey. pp. 83-89.

SANSONE, Livio. 2003. Blackness without ethnicity. Creating race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave.

SANSONE, Livio. 2007. "Que multi-culturalismo para o Brasil". Ciência e Cultura, 59: 24-29.

SANSONE, Livio (ed.). 2012. Memórias da África. Patrimônios, museus e políticas das identidades. Salvador: Edufba.

SANSONE, Livio (ed.). 2012. A política do intangível. Museus e patrimônios em novas perspectivas. Salvador: Edufba.

SANTOS, Myrian Sepúlveda dos. 2003. "Museums without a past: the brazilian case".International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6-2: 180-201.

SCHWARCZ, Lilia. 1996. The spectacle of the races: scientists, institutions, and the race question in Brazil, 1870-1930. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

WILLIAMS, Daryle. 2001. Culture wars in Brazil: the first Vargas Regime, 1930-1945. (Durham/London: Duke University Press.

APPENDIXES

A glimpse of our digital collections The entire set of collections, with documents from a vast variety of sources relating to different time periods , can be browsed on the websites of the four stations of our digital museum:

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Selection from the Bahia station collection The following photos have been made available to our Digital Museum by 'digital donation' or 'digital repatriation' resulting from collaborative projects with a number of institutions and individual scholars in Brazil and abroad. In some cases, such as with

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the Schomburg Center, digital photos and the right for 'one time use', for posting on our website, have been purchased, generally at a reduced price because we are a nonprofit user. I thank Jamie Anderson, graduate student at the Program of Ethnic and African Studies, Federal University of Bahia, for helping to contextualize Landes' pictures.

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NOTES

1. Daryle Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930-1945 (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2001). 2. Lilia Schwarcz, The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870-1930(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996). 3. Livio Sansone Blackness Without Ethnicity. Creating Race in Brazil (New York: Palgrave, 2003), chapter 2. 4. On this process of the patrimonialization of aspects of popular culture together with a new reinvention of Africa, see, among others, the two recent anthologies edited by the author: Livio Sansone (ed.), Memórias da África. Patrimônios, museus e políticas das identidades (Salvador: Edufba, 2012); Livio Sansone (ed.), A Políticas do Intangível. Museus e patrimônios em novas perspectivas (Salvador: Edufba, 2012). 5. In July 2013 we plan to launch our first national digital exhibition, called "Brazilian Houses;" in 2014 we will have our second one: "Blacks and Football." 6. The special issue of the National Archive's magazine, Acervo, published in 2010 and dedicated to the Negro is indicative of a positive change. 7. Livio Sansone, "Remembering Slavery from Nearby. Heritage Brazilian Style," in: Gert Oostindie (ed.), Facing Up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe(London: Ian Randle/James Currey, 2000), 83-89. 8. Livio Sansone, "Que multi-culturalismo para o Brasil," Ciência e Cultura (SBPC) 59(2007),24-29. 9. Initially, they will be in a lower resolution (64 dpi) to allow quicker navigation, or owing to copyright restrictions. 10. This is an idea developed at a meeting with the AN team in 2009, where the director, Jaime Antunes, proposed that our DM could also function as an archive of archives.

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11. We already have copies of documents from leading researchers (see website), either repatriated or donated, with the support of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, the Archive of Traditional Music at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, the UNESCO Archives in Paris, and the AEL at UNICAMP, in the case of Donald Pierson's collection. We are slowly perusing/researching those collections of great interest to us in Brazil, in the BN, AN, Fundaj, and other smaller archives (such as the Geographical and Historical Institute of Bahia, the Jair Moura da Capoeira Archive, the private collections of researchers, activists, Candomblé houses, trade unions, and collectors). We completed the first national inventory at the seminar to launch our DM on 10-11 June 2010. 12. Myrian Sepúlveda dos Santos, "Museums Without a Past: The Brazilian Case," International Journal of Cultural Studies 6-2(2003),180-201. 13. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The consciousness industry: On literature, politics and the media (New York: Seabury Press, 1974). 14. We are relying here on the research of Angela Figueiredo and Ivo de Santana, both associated with our research group. 15. Thus far, our DM has teams from the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). Each team has its own homepage, but all are synchronized with the project's homepage and they use the same software, differing primarily only in their graphic appearance and the way in which they musealize documents or favour the recovery of certain endangered files, or the creation of new documents, or even the organization of galleries on the basis of documents already present in paper archives.

ABSTRACTS

Historically subaltern groups envisage new possibilities for the creation of community museums and exhibits. This seems to be particularly true of the Global South and, even more so, of Sub- Saharan Africa and the African diaspora to Southern America - two regions of the world where, when it concerns ethno-racial minorities and social movements, presential museums and "actual" archives have more often than not been poorly funded, ill-equipped, and underscored. This article teases out the process of creating such a digital museum that focuses on African and Afro-Brazilian heritage. It is a technological and political experiment that is being developed in a country experiencing a process of rediscovery and of the patrimonialization of a set of elements of popular culture, within which "Africa" as a trope has moved from being generally considered a historical onus to (Western-oriented) progress to become a bonus for a country that is discovering itself both multiculturally and as part of the powerful group of BRIC nations.

Em nossa época os museus digitais e as novas tecnologias da informação parecem oferecer novas oportunidades para a preservação do patrimônio e sua divulgação e visitação. Grupos historicamente subalternos enxergam novas possibilidades para a criação de museus e exposições comunitárias. Isto parece ser ainda mais valido no 'Sul Global' e, de forma especial, na África subsaariana e na diáspora africana na America do Sul - duas regiões do mundo onde museus presenciais e arquivos propriamente ditos, quando se trata tantos das minorias de cunho etno-

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racial quanto dos movimentos sociais, têm recebido poucos fundos, equipamentos e pessoal qualificado. Este texto descreve o processo de criação de um destes museus digitais, que enfoca o patrimônio e memória africana e afro-brasileira. Trata-se de um experimento tecnológico e político que foi desenvolvido em um pais que está vivenciando um processo de redescoberta e patrimonialização de um conjunto de elementos da cultura popular, no âmbito do qual o status do ícone África mudou de ser historicamente considerado um ônus para o progresso (pensado de forma ocidental) para um bônus para um pais que está se descobrindo tanto multicultural quanto pertencendo ao poderoso grupos dos nações BRICS.

INDEX

Keywords: intangible, digital, technology, identity, visitation, Afro-Brazilians Palavras-chave: intangível, digital, tecnologia, identidade, divulgação, Afro-Brasileiros

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The indians of the Lower Oiapoque and their museum Kuahí The Indians of the Lower Oiapoque and their museum

Lux Vidal Translation : Jeffrey Hoff

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013

Introduction

1 In the 1980s and 1990s large ethnographic exhibitions were organized in Brazil and abroad, giving visibility to the material productions of indigenous peo ples, especially the aesthetic of art made with feathers. In 1980 the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo presented an exhibit curated by artist Norberto Nicola, whose tapestry art was strongly influenced by indigenous featherwork. In 1992 a show called "Indians in Brazil: alterity, diversity and cultural dia log," was part of a broad cultural program to celebrate 500 years of "discovery" of the Americas. The Bienal de Artes of 1983 had a display of indigenous art; and the Rediscovery Exhibit in 2000, mounted at Oca in Ibirapuera Park

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in São Paulo to commemorate Brazil's 500th anniversary also highlighted a module called Indigenous Arts, to mention just a few. The large exhibition (1980-81) "Arte Plumária do Brasil" [Feather Art of Brazil] was presented at Itamaraty in Brasília, at the National Museum of Bogotá, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, at the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City, in Madrid and at the Fundação João Miró, in Barcelona. At that time, this con tributed to giving greater visibility to indigenous peoples from a new perspective. Nevertheless, these exhibitions belong to the past, given that, according to environmental preservation laws, it is expressly prohibited to hunt birds and sell products with feathers, which indicates the importance of the oldest collections of these artifacts, which are now preserved in museums.

2 In academic circles, to the degree that studies about indigenous societies have advanced, the essential role of tangible and intangible expressions in the understanding of the dynamic and reproduction of Amerindian societies has be come evident. These expressions include body painting, ornaments - especially feathered ones - masks, musical instruments, song and narratives. 3 This entire context encouraged many students to take interest in these issues among indigenous groups, resulting in courses, seminars, and in the 1992 publication of the book "Grafismo Indígena," [Indigenous Graphics] with various contributions, and which is now a reference in the issue. Over time, it became increasingly clear that the study of the objects and aesthetic manifestations of the indigenous peoples constitutes a very promising field of investigation. 4 Recently, many researchers, influenced by perspectivism and by the concept of agency, in addition to conducting long periods of field work reinforced the cosmological aspects of indigenous art which is intimately related to shaman istic activities. For the Amerindians, art originates in the world of the invisible beings and their tangible manifestations are not only representations, but living things, beings that have agency. When art is defined this way, it becomes a fun damental factor in understanding how the Amerindian societies present them selves and represent the world. The result of these ethnographic and analytical efforts has been the production and publication of excellent monographs, arti cles and videos, which have made an important contribution to the anthropology of art. 5 All of these productions, however, take place only in the urban world, essentially in the academy and in traditional museums, far from the local contexts of the indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the struggles for recognition of their lands and constitutional rights, there was a significant increase in the participation of Indians on Brazil's national scene. 6 Today the indigenous peoples and their organizations include the category of culture in the preparation of their "life plans" or "sustainable development programs," along with topics such as healthcare, education, territorial and en vironmental management,.

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7 On the other hand, since the enactment of Brazil's Constitution of 1988, Indians have the right to a differentiated education through the teaching of indigenous language and culture. Since today, in the villages, most of the teachers hired by the state are Indians, there is an interest and even a need to promote reflections about how to organize and transmit a significant archive of traditional knowledge, which is specific to each people and produce pedagogi cal materials that can be used in indigenous schools and cultural events. In this context, the indigenous museums perform an essential role by configuring them selves as institutions, although as independent spaces that are more free, infor mal and interactive and dedicated to the development of innovative actions and activities, places for experimentation. The indigenous museums also promote a range of partnerships for the concretization of projects and a more just and par ticipative insertion in Brazilian society.

The Kuahí Museum

8 We have recently observed the proliferation of indigenous and regional museums throughout the world, a model that has been emphasized because it has specific characteristics, including active participation of the communities where they are inserted.

9 To better understand the specificity of the Kuahí Musuem, it is important to offer some preliminary information about the region and the people that live there. First, the term Kuahí refers to a small fish found in the region and to the name of a graphic pattern that is commonly used in the decoration of a wide variety of artifacts (figure 1). 10 The indigenous peoples of the far north of Amapá, - the Karipuna, Palikur, Galibi Marworno and Galibi Kali'na - residents of the Uaçá River Basin and of the Lower Oiapoque River, are the result of various migrations and ancient and more recent fusions of different ethnicities, even non-Indians. They are bearers of heterogeneous cultural traditions, histories of contact and differentiated tra jectories, as well as languages and religions. Over time these people have been able to coexist and construct a space for interlocution, particularly through their annual assemblies, which bring together the four ethnicities and their indigenous organizations. Despite their differences, a visible solidarity prevails among these people because they inhabit a single territory, they experience a common geopolitical situation, and maintain and reactivate relations of kinship and mutual assistance, as well as struggle together for land, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. They share a specific indigenous cosmology, which is Carib, Aruak, Tupi and also Christian, a distinctive factor that the Indians de fine as "our system."

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11 These people total a population of 7.000 Indians distributed in various villages and smaller localities on the indigenous lands of Uaçá, Galibi and Juminã, which have been demarcated and legally registered, configuring a large continuous area, which is cut on the west by federal highway BR-156 which links Macapá to Oiapoque. 12 Much of the indigenous population of the lower Oiapoque communicates in various languages; Portuguese and patois or kheoul (the regional língua franca), a native language of the Karipuna and Galibi Marworno; while the Palikur and Galibi Kali'na speak their respective languages in the villages. Some Indians also know how to speak French.

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13 The landscape typical of the region inhabited by the indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque is a flooded savannah, bathed by three large rivers the Uaçá, the Urucauá and the Curipi, in addition to countless tributaries, igarapés and lakes. The Oiapoque River marks the border between Brazil and French Guyana. The western portion of the indigenous territory has tropical forest with rich vegetation with many palm trees and meets the Tumucumaque Mountains; to the east are the Cassiporé River, Cape Orange and the Atlantic Ocean. The villages and the plantations occupy different islands. It is a region with many birds. 14 This territory is primarily a living space. The Indians have a refined knowledge of this vast rich and diversified region, which is always present in their myths and narratives. This entire landscape, according to the Indians, is in habited by human beings, animals and vegetation and also by beings "from the other world," which is manifest by the intermediation of the pajés or shamans. This is a predominantly aquatic world, whose cosmology emphasizes invisible supernatural beings that inhabit "the center of the forest and the depth of the waters." The ancient cartographers called the region the "pays sous l'eau", peí ãba dji ló, in patois. 15 The indigenous communities maintain very close contact with the city of Oiapoque and even with Saint Georges, in French Guyana, where they sell their agricultural products and artifacts, usually in the street or on the river bank.

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16 Today, many infrastructure works are being executed in the region: the paving of federal highway BR-156 (which cuts through the indigenous territory) and will involve the removal of eight villages along the highway; the construction by the federal electrical company Eletronorte of a transmission line along the highway and the construction of a bridge, which has been completed, over the Oiapoque River, between French Guyana and Brazil.

History of the Museum

17 In 1997, after some indians traveled to Germany, France and Portugal accom panied by federal deputy Janete Capiberibe, indigenous leaders from the region proposed the creation of a museum in Oiapoque, at the center of the city, to give visibility to the indigenous culture and serve as a center of reference, memory, documentation and research for the Indians from the Lower Oiapoque. This proposal arose from the Indians'increasing desire to participate, on equal grounds - even if in a differentiated manner - in regional and national life. Aware of their cultural and environmental wealth, of the possibilities for production and ethno-scientific, artisan and artistic promotion; and also aware of the possibilities for sustainable development and the urgent need for better school programs, the indigenous peoples of Oiapoque proposed the Kuahí Museum as a space that would encourage a vast range of activities, research and actions to benefit the indigenous communities and their initiatives as a whole.

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18 The museum would also allow closer relations between the Indians and the population of the municipality of Oiapoque. The proximity with the in digenous villages, in turn, would insert the museum in its regional context facilitating the understanding of the collection, but remaining just far enough from the communities to allow a separation from daily life, leading the Indians to a more critical vision of themselves and their cultural heritage. In addition, it would allow the exchange with indigenous peoples and museums in Brazil and abroad, through agreements with institutions and universities. 19 Another objective of the museum would be to create alternative income sources by means of planned sales of craft production. The museum would give visibility to the artifacts produced in the villages and above all, promote the knowledge of the master craftsmen and craftswomen and artists, and raise concerns about the sustainability of the raw materials used in their material productions. 20 Various Indians from the region have been to the Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belém and have seen photographs of the Magüta Museum of the Ticuna Indians on the Solimões River. These were the sources of inspiration for the preparation of the proposal for the construction of the Kuahí Museum. 21 The concrete proposal for the construction of the museum was presented by the indigenous leaders to the government of Amapá in 1998 and was formal ly included in the Sustainable Development Program of then Governor João Alberto Capiberibe. 22 Construction of the museum was initiated in 2000, and the Indians, with as sistance from myself and Lucia H. van Velthem of the Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum, presented the government a set of documents: a justification and objectives for the museum, by-laws, a list of equipment and related items. It was an innovative proposal because it was not a museum about Indians but by Indians. 23 As planned, the museum would be maintained by the Amapá state government and administered by the indians themselves directly involved in all the activities. Courses and training workshops would be offered for the training of mu seology technicians to people selected by the indigenous communities. Effective support of a non-paternalistic nature for the indigenous communities and their cultural manifestations was expected from the government, understanding that the construction of the Indians'citizenship is based on their own values, dynam ic and historic process.

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The implementation of the Museum

24 Although the Kuahí Museum was only inaugurated in 2007, its presence had been felt since 2001 with the realization of the first training course in museology for a group of 20 indigenous people who were chosen by the communities them selves based on the schooling and interests of each participant. These courses were given in Oiapoque and Belém, at the Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum and at the Museum of Art. In Belem, they also visited the Museum of the State, the Museum of Sacred Art, art galleries and locations in the city of historic and cultural interest.

25 In parallel, two cultural projects undertaken in the villages were of sig nificant importance for stimulating the cultural revival that these indigenous peoples had witnessed. They involved two projects: "Cultural Revival and Strengthening," undertaken by the Indigenous People's Association of Oiapoque (APIO) in partnership with the Demonstration Program for Indigenous Populations of the Ministry of the Environment (PDPI/MMA); and "Cultural Heritage Managers Training," undertaken in conjunction with indigenous teachers who work in the villages along federal highway BR 156, conducted by the Indigenous Educational and Research Institute (Iepé), in partnership with the program Petrobras Cultural. 26 The Cultural Revival and Strengthening project (APIO/PDPI), undertaken with the Indians, sought to encourage the old craftsmen and women, in their own villages and places of traditional production, to transmit to the younger generations their knowledge, information and techniques related to a wide variety of material and immaterial artistic and craft manifestations. The goal was to guarantee the transmission of knowledge that was at risk of extinction, given that only a limited number of people still had this knowledge and most of them were quite old. This project considerably stimulated indigenous craft production in all the villages of the region.

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27 According to Marina Zacchi who coordinated the project (Zacchi:2012), because of the way that it was conceived, the project would promote the transmission in the villages of knowledge that few people held, or that some held in a special manner. It was decided, however, to not use a workshop format. The project designated the detainer of knowledge as a master, giving him or her a distinctive status, suggested a small number of apprentices and supplied the needed material. It was up to the "master" to name the apprentices, and determine how, when and at what pace the transmission would be conducted. During the process, the anthropological coordination accompanied and registered the choices made. 28 The most interesting aspect of this experience was to observe the appropriation of the project in the villages, which was possible, actually, thanks to the program's openness to the alterations suggested by the indigenous participants. Finally what was important was not if the cultural expressions would continue to be practiced or not. This necessarily is, and would continue to be, a choice made and remade by their producers, according to the meanings that the cul tural expressions acquire in the course of history. The purpose was important to place the indigenous cultural expressions on the agenda to provoke a reflection on them. 29 Foreseeing the growing interest in the indigenous cultural expressions that resulted from the immaterial heritage policies instituted by Dec. 3551/2000 and promoted by its instruments, this project proposed preparing the Indians of the Oiapoque to assume the initiatives of promotion and diffusion of their cultural heritage and to give them a basis upon which they could chose the orientations for proposals made by possible partners. 30 In turn, the objective of the "Cultural Heritage Managers Training" - Projeto Iepé/ Petrobras Cultural, was to prepare indigenous researchers to act as managers of their material and immaterial cultural heritage, by learning the procedures for selection, preservation, research, registration and internal and external promotion of their cultural goods. The villages located along federal highway BR-156 were chosen for the realization of this project due to their high vulnerability caused by the paving of the

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road that linked Macapá to Oiapoque and for which reason the villages would be removed. The project led to the ap propriation on another level of the knowledge that these people held. It wound up stimulating reflections about the issue of ethnicity and others, such as the condition of indigenous women and the relationship between youths and elders. In each one of the villages, the formation of researchers acquired a format dictated by the local dynamic, although the dynamic of the project led the different ethnic groups of the Karipuna, Galibi Marworno and Palikur to dialog among each other. 31 These projects also stimulated initiatives and innovations by the Indians in the villages. A good example is the work with gourds, which are common artifacts in the daily rituals and religious contexts in the villages, and which serve many varied uses and which had not been previously considered as the object of an intervention project. But this wound up taking place, because of the initiative of craftswoman Edilene from Manga, a Karipuna village. What is interesting is that Edilene was not concerned with teaching the technique of engraving or dying gourds, which is known by many people. Edilene proposed researching the traditional markings, consulting the most elderly and register ing the information obtained. Since she was a Galibi-Marworno who had lived for many years in a Karipuna village, she adopted as a procedure designing the gourds on paper and noting if the markings were related to both ethnic groups and if there were differences in the names attributed to them. In her research, she also registered the markings and information that she obtained in dreams about older relatives who had died, utilizing a traditional creative mechanism in which the aesthetic creation is linked to the invisible.

32 Another interesting aspect is that with the recent introduction of figurative motifs in the ornamentation, some men also began to engrave the gourds, an activity that in the past was exclusively for women. In the work by men, like that of Getúlio from the Kumarumã village, there are ornamental plants and animals and strong war scenes and

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shamanic confrontations. Also in the Kumarumã vil lage, Manoel Azemiro Charles adopted his own way of working. Instead of en graving the motifs and later using cumatê paint, he engraves over a gourd that has been completely painted by his wife, so that the design appears in white, standing out more than usual. The innovations introduced do not annul, but reposition the gender differences in the graphic expressions. These two exam ples show how the Indians, encouraged by these projects, began to take their own initiatives in relation to their cultural goods, conducting systematic surveys and introducing innovations.

From inauguration until today

33 The Kuahí Museum was inaugurated on April 19, 2007 - the National Day of the Indian - with the presence of indigenous people, state governor Antonio Waldez Góes da Silva and other government authorities, representatives of the Amapá State Secretariat of Culture- Secult/AP, as well as the local population.

34 The museum is a public not-for-profit entity, with indirect government management, linked to the organizational structure of the Amapá State Secretariat of Culture. 35 The museum's inauguration, with a significant inaugural exhibit that occupied all of the spaces, would not have been possible without agreement 158/2005 between Secult/ AP and the Ministry of Culture - MinC. This agree ment allowed Secult/AP to furnish and equip the various installations. The museum now has exhibition rooms, proper storage space, an auditorium that is equipped and suitable for its public, a document processing room, a library, reading room, research room and pedagogy room. At the entrance, a large hall welcomes visitors and also includes a shop that sells crafts. There are also outdoor spaces such as a large veranda, which is used quite often. Thus, the museum has established an exhibit of indigenous crafts available to all the indigenous

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peoples and residents of Oiapoque, a collection that is quite represent ative and that is growing through new contributions. The books and magazines from the library have been increasingly requested by indigenous teachers and students to help them in courses. Indigenous teachers from other ethnicities in the region such as the Wayãpi and the Wayana, who are students at the Federal University at Amapá and who are taking courses offered in the city of Oiapoque, also use the library, and leave artifacts for sale in the museum store.

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36 The agreement between Secult and Minc allowed the revival of an extensive and intensive professional education process, in museology and museographics for seventeen indigenous students who now work at the museum as technicians contracted by the Secretariat of Culture of Amapá State. From April 2007 until July 2009, work was conducted to train the staff members for the specific museum sectors for which each indigenous student planned to work. This process had the assistance of anthropologist Francisco S. Paes, who was hired by the Secretariat of Culture. 37 In 2007 the indigenous technicians at the Museum attended training courses in preventive conservation, history of indigenous America and of Amapá and administration and management. In 2008, training modules were offered in an thropology, archeology, community journalism and newsletter editing, textual reading and production, audiovisual language, museology, documentation, edu cational action and research methods.

Collections and Exhibitions about the Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque

38 An interesting aspect of the cultural revival activities in the villages, from the inauguration of the Kuahí Museum and the request for 250 objects for the ex hibit "The Presence of the Invisible - daily life and ritual among the Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque," mounted in 2007 at the Museum of the Indian in Rio de Janeiro, is the formation of various collections, at different times and which when compared with each other reveal a lot about the history of the indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque, the role of the museum, documentation, anthropological research and the effective actions of cultural valorization and strengthening. From a comparative perspective of the various collections, each one acquires its own relevance, which reveals the characteristics and value of each one in rela tion to the others.

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39 The Museum of the Indian in Rio de Janeiro has an old collection, from the 1940s and 1950s about the indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque, essentially about the Palikur. It includes valuable objects collected by Eurico Fernandes, a former employee of the SPI in the region and other indigenists. The documentation is deficient and the description is summary. There are pieces of feather art that the Indians no longer produce, or do so with different forms of decoration, as well as old clarinets, the famous turé, and delicate objects that serve as invitations for the rituals, in addition to small wood artifacts that the women used during rituals to ask for rain. There is also a collection of fishing equipment; which have not changed until today, they are the same artifacts made in wood,taboca [a bam boo], curuá thread and hammered iron. In 2007, they had the same shapes and methods of regular use as in the 1940s and 1950s. On the other hand, comparing the typical Palikur hats, while in the past the neck covers, made of stripes of buriti palm trees, were always decorated with geometric shapes, today the indians paint more figurative designs with mythic themes or those of daily life, or even inspired from covers of magazines or DVDs. 40 We know that there is a Palikur collection in Europe, at the Museum of Gothenburg, but we have not consulted it. It is composed of objects collected by Curt Nimuendajú in 1926, when he studied in the region. There is also a small collection at the Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum, which is not substantial and has little documentation, but has some Galibi-Kali'na ceramics from Oiapoque, crafts that are no longer produced, which were brought by the anthropologist Expedito Arnaud in the 1960s. 41 The first more systematic and documented collection, donated to MAE at USP was one that I conducted among the Palikur, Karipuna and Galibi- Marworno in the 1990s. The Indians made few artifacts for sale, mainly neck laces, but they used decorated gourds, baskets, especially for working with manioc, as well as graters and sculptures for the turé festivals - staffs and benches - as well as musical instruments.

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42 This collection of 260 pieces was not based on an a priori plan, but resulted from field research that began in 1990 in the region by teachers and students of the anthropology department of the University of São Paulo, linked to the Nucleus of Indigenous History and Indigenous Studies. There is a good rep resentation of all the categories of crafts, the objects are well-documented, but from an aesthetic perspective it is weak. The project of cultural revival had still not been started nor the research about the markings on the various mediums. Thus, it was a historic moment, it was the first collection that reviewed the be ginning of studies among the indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque. It followed a theoretical line that emphasized the history and processes and recognized the heterogeneity of the cultural manifestations in the region. This collection is inserted among that older one, at the Museum of the Indian and of the two col lections mentioned below, which are the fruits of the cultural valorization projects in the villages, and the research about indigenous cosmology, shamanism, immaterial culture and heritage, with the training of indigenous researchers, and the construction of the Kuahí Museum.

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43 The collection of the Kuahí Museum includes more than 300 objects, which were produced in the villages for the Museum and which represent all of the most expressive artifacts of daily and ritual use as well as pieces made for sale. The collection also includes some archeological artifacts and wooden sculptures from the Palikur people, which are directly related to indigenous astronomy. At the large inaugural exhibit for Kuahí, in 2007, the Indians wanted to display the entire collection that they had. They mounted the exhibit, with little museological criteria, but which expressed a cosmological dimension, the relationship of the objects with the invisible. A caxiri beer vessel was placed on top of a support pillar and appeared like a karuanã, an enchanted object that dominat ed the other artifacts, especially the sculptures of supernatural beings. But in 2010, the museum team reorganized the exhibit. They did something very beau tiful, but I was surprised, because now everything was divided, daily life in one place, and ritual life in another. And for each category exhibited, there was just one little thing, just one object. The Indians said that the way that it was before they could not explain to the school groups and other visitors the order of the exhibition. Thus, all the large sculptures, representing invisible and dangerous entities, were taken to the technical reserve space. On the week of the Indian of 2011, however, the indians mounted in the Museum Hall a complete structure for the realization of a turé ritual, when those sculptures were placed again in that sacred space, indicating that in addition to being museum pieces, they are entities, people present in that context.

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44 In sum, both for the collection of the Kuahí Museum and for the exhibition "The Presence of the Invisible, "at the Museum of the Indian, two large and very high quality collections of ethnographic artifacts were produced, a fact that surprised everyone, even the Indians themselves. When the artifacts collected in the villages along the various rivers reached the Kuahí Museum and were stored in two rooms while waiting for their destination, the group of objects caused quite an impact. Some Indians said that they had never seen certain artifacts, they did not know them. Others did not stop asking questions and taking pictures. In fact, they did not know that all these things still existed and could have value in other contexts. The artifacts gathered under the form of a collection represented something new for them, especially the collection for exhibit in Rio de Janeiro. 45 In the museum storage there is yet another collection, the result of the Cultural Revival project APIO/PDPI - MMA. While the elders passed on their knowledge to the younger ones, the artifacts produced were taken to the offices of APIO and stored in a room. They are valuable pieces, many of them experimental and testament to the great effort at the transmission of knowledge among the generations. The collection includes very old pieces that are no longer made, but also innovative pieces, both in terms of form and design. In 2007, this collection was included in the archives of the Kuahí Museum, but as a specific and separate collection, a witness to this work of revival.

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46 In the same year, the Museum of the Indian, in Rio de Janeiro displayed the large exhibition mentioned above, "The Presence of the Invisible - daily and ritual life of the Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque," an exhibit organized in partnership with Iepé - the Institute of Indigenous Research and Education, with support from BNDES. 47 At the time, the book was published Povos Indígenas do Baixo Oiapoque - o encontro das águas, o encruzo dos saberes e a arte de viver, [The Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Oiapoque - the meeting of the waters, a crossing of knowledge and the art of living], which was a publication made for the indians and indigenous schools. 48 This exhibition was a risky but successful adventure. After the inauguration of the Kuahí Museum and the end of the Cultural Revival project, we thought of giving greater visibility to the shamanic, ritual and artistic expressions of the in digenous peoples of the Oiapoque. José Carlos Levinho, director of the Museum of the Indian - Funai (Brazil's National Indian Foundation) who was responsi ble for the revitalization of this institution, suggested presenting a large exhibit. I had a specific conceptual proposal in mind and we assembled a team to execute it. A beautiful collection was acquired from different indigenous peoples of the region, and was collected and wrapped at the Kuahí Museum under the orientation of Francisco Paes, who was also responsible for bringing it to Rio de Janeiro with help from the Brazilian Air Force. To assemble the exhibit, we used older pieces from the archives of the Museum of the Indian, gathered in the 1940s and 50s by inspector Eurico Fernandes of SPI. Thus, old and poorly documented collections were reinserted in the museuographic context and served as a model for the Indians of today.

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49 The central idea for the exhibit was to reveal the cycle that ran from diagnosing and curing the ill, the work that the shaman conducts in his home, in the tocai, smoking, singing, playing the maracá, conversing with thekaruanã, the invisible, assisted by the paliká and an attentive audience, to the collective ritual, when this shaman organizes a turé, a public ritual, in which the invisible beings who helped in the cures are called to participate in the ceremony and honored with songs, dance and lots of caxiri beer. Among these two poles, where the cosmic dimension of the cures and festivities are emphasized, all the artifacts are presented that participate in this context, with their beautiful forms and ornamentation, the marks. The large hats stand out, as well as the ceramic dishes, the sculpted benches, the engraved gourds, the basketry and the musical instruments: the cutxi noise horns, the turé clarinets and the maracás. From the domestic environment are sacks of flour, hammocks, football trophies, the ban ner of the Holy Ghost, and a family alter with their saints, candles and colored ribbons.

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50 Thirty Indians came to the inauguration, after having helped in the finishing touches and the mounting of thelakuh, a sacred space, in the Museum's outdoor grounds, where at night they presented a turé. The travel from Oiapoque to Rio in the rainy season along the rutted BR-156 had not been easy for them. But a visit to the Cristo Redentor made up for all the sacrifices. 51 In 2009, using the vast material produced during the execution of the Iepé/ Petrobras Cultural project, a traveling exhibit was assembled with banners that circulated through the villages. This exhibit was the result of a workshop and publication (Iepé/ Museu Kuahí:2009) related to the turé ritual complex, which is very present in the region, and which emphasized the cosmological aspects of this manifestation, the fabrication of the objects present in the ritual and their orna mentation, as well as the dance and music performance itself. 52 In 2009, the Kuahí Museum received an exhibit about the social organiza tion of the Waiãpi, "Jane Reko Mokasia," encouraging greater approximation and exchange among the indigenous peoples of Amapá. This allowed the region al population and the Indians of the Oiapoque to have contact with that interest ing material and know another cultural reality.

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53 In 2010, on the day of the Indian in April, a cross-border exhibit was inaugurated, "Kali'na Tilewuyu Memory and Identity," which was divided into two parts: "They left for the country of the white man - 1882 and 1892" and "The Galibi Kali'na Tilewuyu of Brazil - 1950-2010." 54 This initiative was part of the educational activities of the indigenous researchers and of the cultural registration and valorization that was being conducted by the Iepé, in the realm of the project Strong Points of Culture "Art and Life of the Indigenous People of the Amapá and northern Pará," financed by the Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) of the Ministry of Culture (Minc). 55 Due to a greater approximation among the Indians on both side of the border, the idea arose to conduct a cross-border exhibit between Brazil and French Guyana, which would present historical facts about the Galibi Kali'na of French Guyana and the life and history of the Galibi Kali'na who migrated to Brazil in 1950, addressing different times and places, such as Brazil, French Guyana and Europe, from the universal exhibitions of the late 19th century until today. With these two faces, the historic and

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the contemporary, in different spaces, the exhibition was quite rich, because in reality it presented different histories, events and sea voyages in time and in space and encompassed various exhibitions organized since the 19th century, which were articulated with each other over time. 56 In May 2011, the Kuahí Museum received the ethnographic exhibit "Weaving Art, Weaving Life: Tiriyó and Kaxuyana women," organized by Iepé and the Museum of the Indian - FUNAI and assembled by the staff of Kuahí. The exhibit, which portrays the art of weaving with cotton, seeds and beads of the Tiriyó and Kaxuyana women, who live on the western portion of the Tumucumaque Indigenous Park in Pará, is the result of a program of cultural valorization underway since 2006, among women ranging in age from 12 - 80, from more than 20 villages. This exhibit was very much appreciated by the Indians and by the Oiapoque population due to the importance of the beads used both in making traditional indigenous artifacts and in contemporary jewelry. 57 In 2010 and 2011, as part of the activities of the project called Cultural Strong Point - Art and Life of the Indigenous Peoples of Amapá and northern Pará, the Iepé promoted a series of workshops about the production and sale of cassava flour, which resulted in the organization of a new exhibit at Kuahí and in a publication prepared by the Indians themselves. 58 The research activities were organized to join in the workshops the indig enous researchers of the Kuahí Museum and farmers from the villages. This procedure of integration produced a rich and varied collection of information, which came from the four indigenous groups of the Oiapoque, with narratives of daily experience and also narratives permeated by individual or group memories. 59 The researchers were responsible for registering traditional knowledge, organizing the data, editing and entering the texts, and for producing designs and photo albums. This research was published in the book, "A Roça e o Kahbe - Produção e comercialização da farinha de mandioca" (Iepé: 2011) "The Planted Ground and the Flour House - Production and Sale of Cassava Flour" and was conceived for use in indigenous schools.

60 It was quite significant to begin the workshop with the most subjective as pects: personal statements of each participant, memories of childhood and of the elders, the expression of emotions and feelings, at times explicitly ambiva lent, something that wound up characterizing and differentiating each person in the light of their personal experience and life history.

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61 The participants in the workshop did not feel foreign to the theme studied, but as protagonists of the research that expressed the importance that the indig enous peoples of Oiapoque attributed to agricultural activity, which is consid ered a central element of indigenous culture and as the principal means of sub sistence and income, one that is reliable and sustainable. 62 The participants also agreed about the need to pay tribute to agricultural work and the farmers, while recognizing that the work is hard and tiring, which the myths reveal and confirm. The workshop and the promise of a publication and exhibit also had a positive repercussion in the villages, as it did among the indigenous teachers. Since the participants were representatives of the four eth nicities that inhabit the region of the Lower Oiapoque, there was an effort, to the degree possible, to register in the four native languages (Portuguese, patois, Palikur and Galibi) the name of the artifacts, the sequence of work in the fields, and the steps for processing cassava. The statements reveal the variety of proce dures among the different ethnic groups. 63 An environment of mutual cooperation was created in the workshop activities, small workgroups were formed among the museum employees (who them selves are farmers in their communities, when they are on vacation) and the participants from the villages, who are fulltime farmers and recognizably better informed about the practices involved in the production of a variety of agricultural products. The information provided by these farmers caused admiration and respect. On the other hand, the museum employees, who are younger, better trained for research and the museographic activities such as registration and documentation, helped the indigenous people from the villages to record their talks by transcribing and translating narratives and myths, and typing and or ganizing the data, which pleased the people of the village, given that in most cases they were "relatives." Everyone felt inspired and "at home" at the Kuahí Museum.

64 The curatorial proposal of this new exhibition was to make even more clear the steps of these continuous and daily activities, which extend from the field to local or regional commerce. A folder was organized and published at the time, to be distributed at the exhibition. 65 The scenographic project was conducted in two steps. A first with a sce nography workshop realized at the Kuahí Museum in February 2012, when the indigenous researchers had the opportunity to receive instructions about theoretical issues and practices of mounting exhibits, such as measures and proportions of objects and use of

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space. They made models and miniatures of artifacts and reflected on the options to express the theme of the exhibition. 66 Later, at a second moment, in July 2012, an exhibit was assembled at the Kuahí Museum. The indians decided to use many panels with images and a few written panels. Aware of the command that they had of the theme, they preferred to present the exhibit as a script in which they, as the protagonists, could com municate with the public orally. In the exhibition space, the objects that allow and supported these activities were displayed on stands, which were also re stored and painted by the museologists from the Kuahí Museum. Choices must evidently be made in an exhibit, but certain themes were emphatically chosen by the indians, such as the myths and symbolic practices related to the cultivation and processing of manioc. 67 All of the panels in the exhibit were translated to French, on separate cards, for the many tourists from French Guyana, who come especially in July and August. The part of the educational activities also deserved special attention. 68 In April of 2012 space was open to the public for the exhibit "Art and the Knowledge of the Masters." It was an exhibit curated entirely by the Indians. From the choice of the theme, intellectual conception and scenography, it was conceived of and realized by the group of the Indian museologists of the Kuahí Museum. 69 The theme of the exhibition is the memory of the Demonstration Project of the Indigenous Peoples (PDPI), in which, at workshops in the villages, the mas ter craftsmen taught the youth apprentices who were interested in the traditional arts. 70 This process resulted in a separate collection, called the PDPI Collection, which is now exhibited in the main exhibition hall of the museum. The artifacts exhibited present this experience of cultural revival and valorization undertaken in the villages between 2004 and 2007. 71 Just a few years ago it was common to hear the elders say that much knowl edge ran the risk of disappearing because it was dominated by just a few masters who were already quite old. This exhibit shows the work and performance of the masters and their apprentices that gives continuity to their craft and artistic practices and which are promoted to the broader public that attends the Kuahí Museum. Since the artifacts are made by apprentices in conjunction with the masters, the exhibit shows various examples from different categories such as basket making, wooden sculptures, ceramics, indigenous jewelry, musical instru ments, gourds, the hammock and its implements, in addition to the recording of litanies in Latin and the songs of the turé. 72 This exhibition also reveals the importance that the Kuahí Museum staff at tributes to its own museographical archives, which was recently constituted, un derstanding that this collection represents the legacy of the recognized masters in indigenous lands as great craftsmen. It displays an awareness of the impor tance of transmitting the knowledge between the generations and recognition of the work of the youths that participate in these activities. It is also a recognition by the museum staff of the importance of respecting the most elderly since they are the bearers of a tradition that can be lost if it is not periodically revived. 73 As an example of this curatorial proposal a room was reserved to present the works of a Mr. Wet, an excellent Palikur craftsman and artist and his disci ples, highlighting their creations related to astronomy, such as sculptures about the constellations related to the rains "and to the great rituals, such as the Dance of the Flutes, the aramtem. In

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these dances, the shamans sculpt constel lations in the form of wooden benches. To sit on the bench of the Great Snake, is thus to see the world from the perspective of this creature. The sculptures, in a certain way, become a way of seeing the world as did the stars of the rains." (Green, Lesley and Green, David: 2011). 74 Another small room was reserved to exhibit only one Galibi Kali'na piece of great value, which was recovered during the project: a white cotton hammock made by two Galibi Kali'na women, one older and another younger, although it is an object that is no longer in use in the village. This single hammock is exhib ited in a specific space, accompanied by a basket that has a wad of cotton and the spindle used to prepare the thread.

75 These two craftswomen died in 2012 and there is no one else among the Galibi Kali'na of Brazil capable of spinning cotton and weaving this kind of hammock, for this reason this artifact reffers already to the past, although a recent one. A banner, with some explanations and photos of the two craftswomen, completes this spare and moving installation, which is important for the Indians of the region, and especially for the Galibi Kali'na.

Conclusion

76 These projects allow the Kuahí Museum to perform a role of great importance, by presenting the change in perception of the indigenous people about their own cultural production. From objects of common usage that can be sold or discarded, the artifacts of the collections are transformed into objects that serve as documents. This is a way to reconstruct the world of objects, leading to a process of reinterpretation and creation of meanings. This new positioning of the cultural production allows a different eye, which is distant and critical of this production. At the same time, it makes the administration of the cultural production more interesting and integrated to the

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modern world. The Kuahí Museum is also inserted in its regional context and close to the villages, so there is no danger of an extreme decontextualization, given that these artifacts continue to be used in the daily life of the indigenous communities.

77 The Kuahí Museum has been visited frequently and praised by the indige nous visitors, residents of Oiapoque and of all of Amapá, in addition to numer ous tourists, especially from the Guyanas and France. The educational activities of the museum for the local elementary and high schools of the city of Oiapoque have also been important.

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78 Another interesting aspect in relation to the Kuahí Museum is that the delay in its implementation led the Indians to appropriate it for themselves, as they made repeated calls for the government to inaugurate it. The museum thus appears to them as another conquest of the indigenous movement. As a conse quence of this process, the Kuahí Museum is now considered to be one of the indigenous institutions in the region, along with the indigenous associations and FUNAI (which are also administered by the Indians), that is, the muse um has become a political subject in the institutional indigenous context of the region, and has a power of representation. Moreover, many events in the city of Oiapoque are held at the museum, because of the good quality of the space that it offers, which also adds to the prestige of the indians in the urban and municipal context.

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79 A question to be considered relates to the documentation. There is a concern about which documents should be included in confidential archives and only be accessible to the indigenous peoples, and which should be accessible to the public. That is, the museum raises a series of very current discussions about intellectual property and forms of documenting and promoting indigenous culture, not abstractly, but very concretely.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GREEN, Lesley; GREEN, David. 2010. "The rain stars, the world's river, the horizon and the sun's path: astronomy along the rio Urucauá, Amapá, Brazil". Tipiti-Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America. 8, (2/3): 1-66 Disponível em: http:// digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti.

PESQUISADORES INDÍGENAS DO MUSEU KUAHÍ e ANDRADE, Ugo M. (orgs.). 2009. Turé dos povos indígenas do Oiapoque. Rio de Janeiro/ São Paulo: Museu do Índio/ Iepé - Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação em Educação Indígena.

PESQUISADORES INDÍGENAS DO MUSEU KUAHÍ e VIDAL, Lux B. (orgs.). 2011. A roça e o kahbe - produção e comercialização da farinha de mandioca. São Paulo: Iepé .

PESQUISADORES INDÍGENAS DO MUSEU KUAHÍ. 2012. A arte e o saber dos mestres. Folder da exposição. São Paulo/Oiapoque: Iepé/Museu Kuahí .

VIDAL, Lux B. (org. ) 1992. Grafismo indígena. São Paulo: Studio Nobel/ Edusp/ FAPESP.

VIDAL, Lux B. 2007. A presença do invisível - vida cotidiana e ritual entre os povos indígenas do Oiapoque. Folder da Exposição. São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro: Iepé/Museu do Índio.

VIDAL, Lux B. 2008. "O museu dos povos indígenas do Oiapoque - Kuahí. Gestão do patrimônio cultural pelos povos indígenas do Oiapoque, Amapá". Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo, 7:109-115.

VIDAL, Lux B. 2009. Povos indígenas do Baixo Oiapoque - o encontro das águas, o encruzo dos saberes e a arte de viver. Rio de Janeiro: Museu do Índio/ Iepé - Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação em Educação Indígena.

VIDAL, Lux B. 2010. Memória e identidade dos Kali'na Tïlewuyu - eles partiram para o país dos brancos. Folder da exposição transfronteiriça. São Paulo/ Oiapoque: Iepé/ Museu Kuahí .

VIDAL, Lux B. 2012. A roça e o kahbe - a produção de farinha de mandioca no Oiapoque. Folder da Exposição. São Paulo/ Oiapoque: Iepé/ Museu Kuahí .

ZACCHI, Marina. 2012. "Trazer do fundo: a memória em movimento no Baixo Oiapoque". Catálogo da Exposição A presença do invisível - vida cotidiana e ritual entre os povos indígenas do Oiapoque. São Paulo/ Rio de Janeiro: Iepé/ Museu do Índio (no prelo).

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ABSTRACTS

In recent decades we have witnessed a proliferation of museums, including indigenous museums, with an emphasis on regionalization and active participation of the collectivities in which they are inserted. This article involves the implementation of the Museum of the Indigenous Peoples of Oiapoque, which was a request made by the four ethnic groups that inhabit the region - the Palikur, Galibi Kali'na, Karipuna and Galibi Marworno - to the governor of Amapá in 1998. Since then, projects and actions have been realized for the revival and strengthening of the cultural heritage of these peoples that inhabit the far north of Brazil, on the border with French Guyana. We present these actions, their consequences and the articulation among partnerships (with indigenous organizations, government agencies and NGOs), which led to the development and operation of a regional museological institution that is dedicated to housing, preserving and promoting the cultural archives of these peoples, and to training indigenous museology technicians, teachers and researchers. Finally we address the importance of the different collections about these indigenous peoples that have been formed over the past two decades and report of the exhibitions mounted at the Kuahí Museum in Oiapoque and at the Museum of the Indian in Rio de Janeiro, emphasizing the specificity of each.

Nas últimas décadas assistimos a uma proliferação de museus, inclusive mu seus indígenas, com ênfase na regionalização e participação ativa das coletiv idades onde estão inseridos. Este artigo trata da implantação do Museu dos Povos Indígenas do Oiapoque, solicitado pelas quatro etnias que habitam a região - Palikur, Galibi Kali'na, Karipuna e Galibi Marworno - ao governador do Amapá em 1998. Desde então se desenvolveu nas aldeias indígenas proje tos e ações de resgate e fortalecimento do Patrimônio Cultural desses povos que habitam o extremo norte do Brasil, na fronteira com a Guiana Francesa. Apresentamos essas ações e seus desdobramentos, com a articulação entre parcerias (organizações indígenas, órgãos governamentais, ONGs) para o fun cionamento e desenvolvimento de uma instituição museológica regional, que pretende abrigar, preservar e divulgar o acervo cultural dessas populações, incentivando a capacitação de técnicos em museologia, professores e pesquisa dores indígenas. Abordamos, por fim, a importância de diferentes coleções sobre esses povos indígenas, formadas ao longo das duas últimas décadas e um relato das exposições montadas no Museu Kuahí em Oiapoque e no Museu do índio, no Rio de Janeiro, ressaltando a especificidade de cada uma.

INDEX

Keywords: museum of the indigenous peoples of Oiapoque (Amapá); revival and strengthening of the cultural heritage; collections and exhibitions; tangible and intangible heritage. Palavras-chave: museu dos povos indígenas do Oiapoque (Amapá); valorização e fortalecimento cultural; coleções e exposições; patrimônio material e imaterial.

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The peoples of oiapoque and the Kuahí Museum

Regina Abreu

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Acknowledgements: Lux Vidal. Anne-Courtois-Vidal

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 1 journals.openedition.org/vibrant/887

2 Anthropologist Lux Vidal talks about her work with the indigenous peoples of Oiapoque, who belong to a variety of ethnic groups and her experience at the Kuahí Museum. . In 1998, leaders of those groups asked the Government of the State of Amapá for a museum. Since then, this museum has been a place for mediation and articulation between the indigenous peoples, the State and civil society. The possibility it opened up for conceiving and setting up exhibitions about different themes in indigenous daily life, has been a major force for the Peoples of Oiapoque, and their affirmation of ethnic identity. 3 Director: Regina Abreu. Interviewee: Lux Vidal. Editor: Luciana Lima. Photographer: Noilton Nunes. Archive Material: Kuahí Museum; Iepé; Museum of Indigenous People (Museu do Índio); Socio-Environmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental). Music: Povos do Oiapoque. Translator: Luciana Lang. Year of Completion: 2012 4 A Production by the Laboratory of Memory and Image (Laboratório de Memória e Imagem do PPGMS - LABIM) of the Post-Graduate Program in Social Memory (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Memória Social - PPGMS), Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro - UNIRIO). Supported by the Working Group at the Kuahí Museum, Indigenous Communities of Oiapoque and CNPq - Edital Universal (2010)

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Anthropology in the museum reflections on the curatorship of the Xikrin Collection

Fabíola A. Silva and Cesar Gordon Translation : Thomas Bonnici and Peter Timothy Cahill

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013

Introduction

1 This article describes the approach to the curatorial process of the Xikrin ethnographic collection in the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (Archeological and Ethnological Museum) of the Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP Brazil, and analyzes the potential of these new relationships between anthropologists, indigenous peoples and museums, particularly for the anthropological study of ethnographic collections. The goal of the following reflections is to deepen the understanding of objects (and their various meanings and interpretations by the social actors who utilize and appropriate them) and for the understanding of the formation and conservation of ethnographic collections (with their diverse motivations and contexts). As the shared curatorial style is currently spreading throughout Brazil, our experience may help to foster new perspectives on the subject. On the one hand, the Xikrin Collection is a witness of a part of the history of Brazilian anthropology; on the other hand, it is a material representation of certain moments of history, the cultural trajectory and way of life of a Brazilian native population. We understand the collection as a combination of diverse perspectives and our task during the curatorial process has been to make these visible. Further, with the possible overlapping and fusing among these perspectives, we have made their mutual influences explicit. Part of the collection's curatorial process took

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place in collaboration with the Xikrin people whose insight and knowledge enriched the work by giving life to the anthropological objects and new meanings to the collection.

2 The article is divided into four sections. The first section consists of a brief historical sketch of the relationship between anthropology and museums within the international and Brazilian contexts. In the second section, the Xikrin collection is introduced and described (for more detailed information on the collection, refer to our previous work Silva & Gordon (Orgs.), 2011). The third section deals with the curatorial process itself and gives an idea of the procedures and steps taken by the authors, specifically regarding the participation of the Xikrin Indians. The fourth section recounts the reflexive analysis that the Xikrin participants provided and focuses on typical cultural misunderstandings which, in our opinion, illustrate in a singular way the style of curatorship we intend to undertake, one that makes explicit the polemical, relational and disputed dimensions of the entire curatorial process.

Museums and Anthropology

3 Collections of ethnographic objects are fundamental to the formation and the history of the institution of the museum worldwide. Starting from the curiosity cabinets that made up private collections of cultural artifacts, flora and fauna specimens, fossils and minerals collected in the wake of European colonial expansion between the 17th and 18th centuries1, museums became places of conservation, investigation and exhibition of objects (Ribeiro & van Velthem 1998; Nash & Feinman (Eds) 2003; van Velthem 2012). The Brazilian case was no different and ethnographical collections date back to the 1818 establishment of the Royal Museum, initially specializing in agricultural plants (Kodama 2009). In its first issue in 1839, the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute (IHGB) published "Suggestions as to what the members of the Brazilian Historical Society should seek in the provinces to send to the society's headquarters in Rio de Janeiro" and asked for "information on the customs of the Indians, their religious habits, their civilization, their estimated population, their artifacts ...". The Institute was also looking for "information on minerals, animals, fowls, birds, fish and other specimens, labeled, if possible, according to their scientific taxonomy...wood used for building, exotic plants... useful fruits, balms and oils, and their employment in medicine". After many years of debate, in 1847 the IHGB proposed the establishment of a Section on American Archeology and Ethnography. In 1851 the new statute updated the institutional perspectives according to contemporary scientific progress and in its first clause announced that the IHGB had the "responsibility of collecting, classifying, publishing and archiving documents on the history and geography of the [Brazilian] Empire and on the archeology, ethnography and languages of its native peoples" (Ferreira & Noelli 2009).

4 By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Natural and Anthropology History museums put great effort into forming, studying and exhibiting collections of objects from nature as well as from native societies and cultures. In the United States, professional anthropology was born around museums, such as the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology (at Harvard University), the Field Museum (in Chicago), the American Museum of Natural History (Patterson, 2001). Even under the influence of the Boasian

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project, which, up to a certain point, helped transfer the center of anthropological practice from the museum to the university, the complementarity of ethnographic research and museumology remained. In fact, several scholars endeavored to map out new areas of research by developing comparative regional projects that were materialized in new ethnographic collections while they intensified studies within existing lines of research. 5 Within the Brazilian context and with regard to the formation and analysis of collections, the relationship between Anthropology and Museums was defined by a specific manner of practicing anthropology, which, in its turn, implied different collecting practices. The first Brazilian anthropologists were museum professionals and thus directly or indirectly responsible for the acquisition of the extant ethnographical collections current in the country's museums, such as, for instance, the Museu Nacional (National Museum) of Rio de Janeiro, the Museu Paulista (Museum of São Paulo), the Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belém (Pará) and the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo (Archeological and Ethnological Museum of the University of São Paulo). The first phase of collection in Brazil, ranging between the last decades of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, was marked by studies on native populations. Anthropology was mainly related to the natural sciences in the context of encyclopedic and multidisciplinary research. Several collections of human remains were built parallel to ethnographic collections that were organized from a conservational point of view. During this period one of the main aims of museums was the collection and preservation of material testimonies to indigenous populations thought at that time to be close to extinction or cultural assimilation. As from the last quarter of the 19th century, the most important figures in the Brazilian anthropological collectionism were Ladislau Neto, director of the Museu Nacional of Rio de Janeiro from 1870 to 1893; João Barbosa Rodrigues, who founded and supervised the Museu Botânico do Amazonas (Amazon Botanic Museum) from 1884 to 1890; Emílio August Goeldi, manager of the Museu Paraense (The State of Pará Museum) between 1891 and 1907; Hermann von Ihering, director of the Museu Paulista between 1894 and 1915; and Curt Nimuendajú who collected numberless objects produced by several indigenous peoples from different Brazilian regions under the aegis of national and international museums (Grupioni, 1998; Abreu, 2005; 2008; Ferreira, 2010). The beginnings of anthropological research on ethnographic objects deposited in museums may be characterized primarily by classification and descriptive work on collections and their organization by evolutionary, comparative or historical heuristics according to the researchers' theoretical interests (Collier & Tschopik Jr. 2003 & Fowler 2003). At this time, then, Brazil followed closely the trends of international anthropology and museology. 6 With the preeminence of British structural functionalism in the 1920s and 1930s, interest in the study of ethnographic objects in museums was replaced by a focus on deep fieldwork and the functional logic of social life. Although an important factor for the descriptive and theoretical interests of the evolutionist and diffusionist traditions in anthropology, material culture did not retain its former importance and gave way to the type of sociological analysis envisaged by the British School. In fact, social anthropology was more concerned in studying social organization, kinship structures and political systems (Kuper 1973). In the United States, the new Boasian generation moved towards the psychological and mental dimensions of culture as Ruth Benedict's Configurationalism and the Culture and Personality School demonstrate (Stocking 1976). Motivated by the new research interests, anthropologists, as a rule, tended to

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abandon the study of artifacts in museums and in the field. Since Brazilian anthropology followed these international trends closely, the displacement of the discipline from museums to universities occurred there as well. 7 There is no need to review the discipline's history. It is enough to point out that the greatest reduction of importance given to museums and their contents occurred during the 1960s with the arrival of post-modernism which not only problematized field research and ethnographic writing but also strengthened the idea that museums were instruments of colonial glorification (Gordon & Silva 2005). These ideas began to shift during the final decades of the 20th century which saw the surge of anthropological interest in the study of material culture. A series of reasons, external and internal to the discipline, caused a return to objects and museum collections in anthropological research, especially as they started to be understood analytically as mediators and materializations of diverse social relationships, agencies, subjectivities, knowledge, memories, that circulate in and help to manage different regimes of meaning and value within the most varied social, cultural and political contexts (Appadurai (ed.) 1986; Miller 1987; 2005; Thomas 1991; Gell 1998; Myers 2001; Fabian 2004; Pasztory 2005; Henare et al 2006; Santos Granero (ed) 2009). In fact, we are still in the middle of this renewed anthropology of objects (for more recent discussions, see Gonçalves 2005). 8 Divergent ways of conceptualizing ethnographic collections arrived later and were mainly motivated by new anthropological perspectives on the concepts of the museum and its collections. Furthermore, they were also stimulated by an understanding of the transformations which occurred between colonized peoples and these institutions within post-colonial conditions (Pearce (Ed.) 1999; Hallam & Street (Eds.) 2000; Peers & Brown (Eds) 2003; Barcelos Neto 2006; Fabian 2010; Broekhoven, Buijs & Hovens (Eds) 2010; Silva & Gordon (Orgs)2011). During a long period, the relationship between museums and source communities was asymmetrical since professional researchers were the protagonists or leading agents of knowledge on these sources. They based their curatorial practice only on Western scientific traditions and on preservationist presuppositions that viewed indigenous populations, their way of life and their cultures, as destined for extinction or cultural assimilation (Shelton 2000; Hallan 2000; Peers & Brown 2003; Nicks 2003). However, such a relationship has recently become more inclusive and symmetrical in many museological contexts as greater agency is practiced by indigenous populations, whose values and perspectives on sources and museums provide new and enriching perspectives (Peers & Brown (Eds) 2003; Broekhoven, Buijs & Hovens (Eds) 2010; Silva & Gordon (Orgs) 2011). 9 It is highly interesting to note that during recent years several studies have investigated the contexts in which these collections were formed, taking into account the historical, social and cultural milieux of the collecting process, the collectors' motivations and their management of the collections over a long period of time. Studies have shown that collections are not necessarily formed intentionally. Some scholars purposely form collections, which thus have more structure and adhere more tightly to certain themes, types of objects and chronology. Non-intentional collections, on the other hand, are those formed without previous planning. It may occur that these collections may have been perceived as such by their collectors after a certain lapse of time. In this case, collecting may become a conscious action and certain objects may be collected for a specific goal. Another important aspect that should be taken into consideration is that when the motives for the formation of collections are debated,

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they reflect the occupation of the organizer. The collected items are also vectors that express a certain lived experience (Belk 1999). Collections may have been formed because the collectors wanted to demonstrate their relationship with certain people or preserve certain objects as history and give continuity to a determined experience or achievement (Formaneck 1999). In this case, the objects accumulate yet another meaning which enrich their interpretive possibilities and potential angles of research (Pearce 1999a; 1999b; Grupioni, 1998; Nash & Feinman (Eds), 2003; Hallam, 2000 & Shelton, 2000).

The Mebêngôkre-Xikrin ethnographic collection

10 In our view, a collection of ethnographic objects allows diverse interpretations. It is, after all, the result of a certain collector's perspective and decisions, embedded within a complex context of interaction with those who produced the objects at a specific historical moment. At the same time, it is made up of objects with their own specific courses and agencies, with multiple meanings and interpretations including those attributed by the cultural systems that produced them and the museological institutions with their own paradigms of classification and analysis. The plurality of interpretations necessitates multiple levels of analysis that can only be performed by many different actors contributing their perspectives, and thus requiring the participation of various specialists, both academic and indigenous (Silva & Gordon 2011a).

11 The Mebêngôkre-Xikrin ethnographic collection was donated to the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Uiversidade de São Paulo (MAE-USP) in July 2001. The collection was formed by the anthropologist Lux Boelitz Vidal during her thirty-year research among the Xikrin Mebêngôkre Indians, a thousand strong indigenous group living near the Carajás Mountain Range in the northern state of Pará, Brazil, linguistically and culturally similar to the Kayapó (who refer to themselves as the Mebêngôkre). Vidal started her ethnographic research among the Xikrin in the late 1960s when only scanty information was available. Her doctoral thesis was the result of her cumulative research, which in turn, was published as Morte e Vida de uma População Indígena [Life and death of an indigenous population] (Vidal 1977), followed by a series of other publications on the same subject. However, Vidal's relationship with the Xikrin went beyond purely academic interest. She became involved in advocacy for the Xikrin and participated actively in the demarcation process of the Xikrin Indigenous Land of the Cateté in the 1980s, as well as in a non-governmental organization for the protection of Indigenous persons. She acted consulting anthropologist during the planning of the Projeto Grande Carajás (Project Grand Carajás) of the Vale do Rio Doce mining company, with tremendous social, political and economical impact on the southern region of the state of Pará and on the history of the Xikrin population (Gordon 2003; 2006). During her decades among the Xikrin, Vidal collected objects manufactured by the community, which she received as presents, exchanged or bought. The items were part and parcel of her academic activities and her life as an anthropologist. They were kept at her home, utilized as illustrations in her lectures and lent out for several expositions. They are currently kept at the MAE at the University of São Paulo.

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12 The collection is composed of approximately 400 different and relatively well- preserved items. They comprise body ornaments made of bird feathers (bracelets, head-dresses, necklaces, breast plates, earrings and sashes), cotton fibers (bracelets, head-dresses, belts), straw (bracelets, belts, crowns), wood (lip ornament, ear expanders), animals' teeth and bone (necklaces), beads (necklaces, belts, sashes, wrist bands), seeds (belts, sashes, wrist bands, necklaces), shell (earrings, necklaces); musical instruments made from animals' nails (rattles), reeds (horns and pipes), gourds (maracas), straw (whistles), wooden weapons (cudgels), palm tree (arches and arrows), bamboo (arrows), straw, resin and fiber toys (small animals); utensils and bone tools (needles and scarification instruments), earthenware (spindles), seeds (spindles), animals' nails (scarification instruments), wood (scarifying comb, containers); woven items (carrying baskets, pocket-like baskets, caselike baskets, small baskets, hammocks, mats, manioc strainers, masks), and prime materials (feathers, seeds, vegetal fibers). 13 The collection was formed unintentionally and without any previous planning, as opposed to other collections at the MAE-USP that were intentionally shaped by collectors who ordered and purchased the items. According to Vidal, she obtained and kept the items without any intention of making a collection. In fact, they were acquired during her research work and through mutual relationships with the Xikrin. However, the anthropologist was always eager to register (mainly ethnographically rather than from a museological point of view) and preserve the objects for donation to a museum, as in fact occurred. It may be said that the collection has a double meaning: 1) as the product of several years' work among the Xikrin Indians, it may be interpreted as a witness of the history of Anthropology in Brazil, since it represents and contextualizes part of the ethnologist Lux Vidal's research; 2) it also represents cultural traces of the Jê people through the material expression of their life styles. It should be noted that several items in the collection have a detailed history recorded throughout the years in Vidal's written registers (Silva & Gordon 2011b).

The curatorial management process

14 According to Prown (1999), the museological analysis of a collection's objects may be divided into three steps: description, deduction and speculation. The descriptive stage outlines the objects' most generic and physical aspects, such as, measurements, weight, materials used and the way they were manufactured (for instance, welded, stitched, glued etc). Decoration is evaluated and the objects' three-dimensional aspects are analyzed. The deductive stage consists of verifying the objects functionality and their relationship with their formal characteristics. At the speculation stage, the researcher tries to understand the objects cultural meaning and thes social context of their production, distribution, and use.

15 On the other hand, according to Pearce (1999; 1999b), when researchers investigate an artifact, they try to answer the following questions: What? How? Where? When? By whom? Why? Consequently she divides research into the material, environmental, historical and significant spheres. The combined understanding of these contexts sheds light on an object's interpretation. The material sphere comprises the constructive aspects of the object, its design and characteristics in terms of origin and technique. In this way, it is possibly to construct a preliminary inventory of descriptive and comparative features. In the case of environment, the object's relationship with

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available natural resources on production and collection sites is elaborated. Studies on the landscape and local resources should be undertaken for this purpose. Regarding the historical contextualization of the object, the researcher should try to recover information on the artisan that manufactured the object, its contextual usage, and the history of its collection and exhibition. For significance, the researcher should understand the object's social and symbolic role within the context of its production and usage. 16 As curators of the Xikrin Collection, the current authors adopted the above-mentioned museological methods for the study of the collection and the analysis and classification of ethnographic material produced by other researchers devoted to the study of ethnographic collections2. Further, the ethnographic experience and the scientific production of researchers who worked among the Xikrin3, the knowledge of museum professionals (stewards, photographers, archivists, technicians), the perspective of scholars on material culture from other areas of knowledge (archeologists and architects) and the insights gained from the collaboration of Xikrin individuals were added to the authors' efforts. From the beginning of the research, Wagner Souza e Silva, a professional photographer, assumed responsibility for all documentary reports. Having documented the whole curatorial process, he is co-author of the book Xikrin: uma coleção etnográfica [Xikrin: an ethnographical collection]. (Silva & Gordon (orgs) 2011). A brief description of the process will be given below since the process as a whole has already been detailed in other publications (Gordon & Silva 2005; Silva & Gordon 2008; Silva & Gordon (Orgs) 2011). 17 The first step consisted of an inventory, numbering, technical and morphological description and cataloguing of the objects. The objects were photographed one by one and their main formal and technical characteristics emphasized. Initial photographic documentation aimed at constructing a database of images for future studies. All objects were registered on a standard card prepared by the Collection Management Department of the MAE (DAP)4. Besides providing information with regard to its place in the museum, the card also contains a description of the item with its morphological, functional and historical characteristics. It may also provide information on its state of conservation, on the researcher who collected and studied it, and on the available bibliography and the population that produced it. All descriptions and sketches of the items were undertaken after consulting works by Ribeiro (1980; 1985; 1987; 1988), van Velthem (1998), Frickel (1968), Chiara (1986) and Chiara & Heath (1978).

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Observation and design of Xikrin Basketry

Photo by Wagner souza e Silva

18 Reviewing, correcting and revising the descriptions from information provided by researchers and by Xikrin Indians brought to São Paulo constituted the second step. Through a series of conferences, Lux Vidal gave information on the history and life cycle of several objects of the collection. Other researchers explained the cultural significance (social, ritual, economical) of different objects and the Xikrin Indians furnished the indigenous native terms, identified the objects' prime materials, production techniques, usage and meanings. They also gave details on rights of property, different styles of the artisans and histories and narratives of their origin. Both the curators and the Xikrin themselves documented all this work in audio and video.

When the field is the museum

19 Anthropologists normally travel to the regions where native populations they desire to study live. In contrast, in this case the Xikrins traveled to the "anthropologists' region" during the authors' curatorship. The museum became the ethnographic field. Ethnography was in the hands not only of the professional anthropologists but also of the Xikrin Indians who documented with their cameras everything they thought relevant to show to their peers in the ancestral village upon their return (for instance, MAE's resources and labs, the researchers' work, the supermarket shelves, the showcases full of beads in the Rua 25 de março in São Paulo).

20 The Xikrin chose two members of their community to go to São Paulo to participate in the curatorial process. Kengore Xikrin belonged to the social category of mature males with grandchildren (mebegnêt) and was considered a good artisan by the Xikrin, with vast experience and knowledge on the objects' manufacture, usage and meaning. He had actually worked with other anthropologists in the formation and stewardship of Xikrin ethnographic collections in a museum in Europe5. The second Indian curator, Tamakwaré Xikrin, belonged to the category of male adults with many children but no grandchildren (mekrare tum). He was younger than Kengore, with a reasonable knowledge of material culture, and great importance within the community shown by his specific political involvement (he was brother to a chief of the male group and cousin of the village's elders). Since Tamakwaré had significant experience in political

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relationships between the Xikrin and non-Xicrin, his participation lent political legitimacy to the enterprise. 21 The curatorial work started with a visit to the MAE's archives and deposit (Reserva Técnica). During the one-day visit, the Xikrin saw how objects from different ethnic groups were stored in the cabinets. They could specifically identify Xikrin and Mebêngôkre items that made up most of the deposit and which was their main interest. Disdain was their first reaction, as the Xikrins' attitude usually is (a sense of humor not unmixed with sarcasm), when they saw the drawers full of old artifacts. They remarked they were astonished that we kept all those old objects which belonged to people already dead, that it was better to throw everything away and that it would be more interesting to keep only the feathers and plumes for the manufacture of new items. In fact, it seemed to them that our keeping such old and decrepit items in the Deposit was the result of some type of morbidity on the part of the white Brazilians (or kuben, which is the mebêngokre native term for white brazilians and for non-Xikrin people in general). It is customary for the Xikrin to bury a person's material belongings together with the body itself. According to the Xikrin, personal objects are part of the person and invested with his or her subjectivity or agency. They may actually bear part of the dead persons' spirit (which is usually expressed by the mebêngokre word mekaron) and may eventually be transformed into dangerous pathogenic vectors. They were really astonished that we had made it a point to store so many different sorts of cultural objects manufactured by the Xikrin people and other items of diverse indigenous populations. However, after these first impressions, the two Xikrin men started to show some interest in the collection. By the end of the day they suggested that it was a good idea to collect and preserve some objects in the museum, especially those that were no longer manufactured in the village. For better or for worse, it was worthwhile to preserve that part of their history enclosed within the museum's drawers.

Study and documentation of the objects by the research team

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva

22 During the days that followed the visit to the Deposit, the Xikrin representatives assisted the authors in the curatorial processes in the strict sense of the term. This comprised a revision of the initial classification of the objects in the collection during which the two Xikrin participated willingly, patiently and even enthusiastically. We met in the Laboratório de Etnologia (Ethnology Laboratory) for the following ten days with several researchers, students and staff of the museum during the first stage of our

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work6. Daily work consisted of selecting a set of objects on which the Xikrin and researchers could speak and discuss with regard to their material features, techniques, usages and cultural meanings. The researchers first presented their knowledge of the objects and then the two Xikrin representatives confirmed or dismissed the information presented. They would correct and complement data and settle doubts on the prime matter used, utilization, names and the objects' manufacturers.

23 It should be noted that during the whole curatorship work the Xikrin thought and spoke freely on any and all objects in the collections. They highlighted the difference between the objects which were considered beautiful and correct (mejx, kumrenx) and others that were considered ugly (punure), fake or sham (kajgó) or pseudo-original imitations (ka'àk). Additionally, other objects reminded them of personal experiences as in the case of certain types of weaving which had been produced by Bep Karoti - a late but important Xikrin chief who is still remembered as a highly sophisticated artisan. Some objects caused unease while others caused admiration. Some were considered dangerous, like the breast decoration made of the Crax curassow's (mutum) head skin. And others were no longer manufactured in the village, like the scarification instruments made from the claws of the harpy eagle (harpia/gavião real). Other items, especially plume ornaments, were identified as the property or wealth (kukradjà) of certain persons or groups of individuals (Gordon 2011).

The Xikrin examine the pieces and restore certain items

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva

24 It should also be underscored that the Xikrin assembled some objects and repaired others, such as the feather ornaments and the rattles made from tapir nails. One of the most interesting, albeit somewhat tense, moments in the curatorial process occurred when the two Xikrin started to disassemble one of the parts of a magnificent plume ornament (krokoktire) (they slightly damaged it in the end), which, in our opinion, had great aesthetic, historical and ethnographical value; a masterpiece of the collection. According to the Xikrin, because the headdress had been restored and assembled incorrectly by a restorer hired by Lux Vidal some time ago and it should be repaired so that it would be once again not only beautiful but also correctly assembled. Working under the observation of the researchers and a concerned Vidal, the Xikrin transformed the object. In the opinion of the MAE curator, it became another object (Silva e Gordon 2008), although it was then the true/correct object, according to the

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Xikrin. Our position, as curators, was that it was transformed into a richer and more complex object.

25 When Vidal commented later on the event, she slightly criticized our attitude: "In my opinion, the Indians' participation was fundamental for the work done. However, a more structured discussion on the precise role of each within the curatorial process would have been worthwhile. Greater preparation and previous planning could have controlled better for the different variables that would result from the collaboration of the Xikrin with the MAE. What did you want from the Indians? Why were they required at that particular moment in the research? What should their contribution have been?" (Vidal apud Silva & Gordon 2011b, p. 42). 26 Although we recognize that Vidal's critique was pertinent from her perspective and from the conservation stance in general, we would like to insist that the experience mentioned above evidences that anthropological practice in the museological context may (or should) also comprise the same uncertainty and imponderability as in the ethnographic fieldwork. In the field we are constantly mobilized by the indigenous persons' agency so that the anthropological endeavor would never be merely that of the anthropologists but also that of the 'natives'. Regardless of our theoretical and methodological choices and the definition of our research aims, it is always necessary to revise our investigative parameters and, should it be appropriate, transform our perspective vis-à-vis the perspective of the "Other." Precisely, if the leading role of Kengore Xikrin and Tamakwaré Xikrin in this specific episode left us motionless in the first place, on the other hand, and in the end, they provided more coherence to our proposal for shared curatorship. In this sense, as Lúcia Hussak van Velthem (2012:64) points out: "The association of indigenous people with interpretative practices of collections would deconstruct the point of view of collectors and current museum techniques and would reconstruct a new perception. The collection of ethnographic objects as artifacts provided with functions and meanings would undergo a qualitative change since it would bear an evocative and mediating power. From this point of view, ethnographic objects would be collected less as remnants of traditional cultures and more as aids for discourse regarding identity of peoples long muted by those institutions". 27 We would like to insist that the above-mentioned episode, even as a misunderstanding and coupled to its polemic and contestable possibilities, strongly embodies the curatorial approach we would like to put into practice.

Conclusion

28 An ethnographical collection is formed by the selection and collection of objects that have a cultural meaning and value within a determined context. When the objects are displayed in a museum, they accumulate other meanings and are inserted into other value systems. They become objects that will be preserved, seen and studied by different persons who, in their turn, will provide them with other meanings according to their focus and experience. Pearce (1999b) states that museum objects are plurisemantic and as material reality their meanings will be re-elaborated and constantly revised and contested.

29 When campaigns in the defense of material and immaterial indigenous heritage become more widespread, research will be undertaken to document and record the

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populations' cultural manifestations (Gallois, 2006). Social and cultural transformations experienced by them will also show that the maintenance of ethnographic collections, principally in anthropological museums, is a highly important task not merely for the institutions' professionals but for the populations concerned. This is the motivation behind the emergence of indigenous initiatives for the construction of their own museums and collections. The Kuahí Museum for the Indigenous peoples of the Oiapoque (Vidal 2008), the Magüta Museum of the Ticuna Indians of the Solimões, the Mawo Museum of the Ikpeng Indians of the Xingu, the Museum of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN) in São Gabriel da Cachoeira and others are ground breaking. We are already far from the colonial and conservationist origins of ethnography. Current anthropological and museological perspectives must maintain a lively dialogue with indigenous perspectives on museums and collections. 30 Within the new modalities of museum curatorship, the embodiments of knowledge, requirements and demands of native peoples on ethnographic collections necessitate, in the first place, the acknowledgment of the importance that objects have in the process of the re-construction of identities and, in a wider sense, in their regimes of social reproduction. At the same time, there is the issue of the legitimacy of their claims on intellectual property and cultural ownership of the museum objects. There is the possibility of the subversion of power structures within the museum context when ethnographic collections leave their status as "trophies," or valuable fossils of fast vanishing worlds or prizes of Western expansion and morph into the loci of contact between different perspectives and world visions, the memories and the cultural heritage of living autonomous peoples living and producing dynamic cultures. Ethnographic museums do not merely say something about the past but are witnesses of the present and perhaps the future of indigenous peoples. 31 On one hand, researchers and museum professionals are challenged in their roles as specialists and within their scientific and institutional authority, and on the other, museological institutions acquire a space for multicultural reflections on the management of these collections. It is an opportunity for exchange and diversification of knowledge, a more symmetrical possibility for the meeting with the "Other" (Peers & Brown 2003). The meeting will provide a space for negotiation between indigenous peoples and museums so that the former may achieve their goal of cultural revitalization and self-determination especially because many objects kept in museums are still present in the daily life of different peoples (Bolton 2003). When indigenous peoples go to museums, they make it clear that the items do not evoke a lost and nostalgic past since they continue in use many of these items in everyday life and they remind them of specific and personal histories, myths, songs, dances, people and events (Cruikshank 1998; Nicks 2003; Fienup-Riordan 2003; Silva & Gordon 2011a). 32 The Xikrin ethnographic collection demonstrates the indigenous life style and, at the same time, reveals our relationships with the objects and the persons who created them. In spite of the fact that non-indigenous frameworks are increasingly becoming of fundamental importance to the Xikrin Indians, the latter are not willing to abandon completely their way of life. The Xikrin collection may thus be a witness of a certain period and of the transformations of indigenous life. This is its true importance. When we look at these objects, we see the Xikrin people of the past and the present. And what about the Xikrin? We hope that they look at these objects and see through them the everlasting Xikrin spirit.

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Xikrin Collection selected pieces

Large occipital circular headpiece (Àkparidjê rajx)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Large occipital circular headpiece (Àkparidjê rajx)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Dorsal pendente made from Macaw feathers (Màt jamy jakrô)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Armbard of woven feathers (Padjê kajêti pin kà kam yry)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Case for feathers (Potikpu)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

Globe-shaped maraca rattle (Ngôkon)

Photos by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Rope belt (Ãpredjà)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

Feathered armbands (Padjê kajêti)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Scarifying equipment (Djwa)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Feather armband woven with a snake motif (Padjê krã kangatl’ôk)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Rattling belt made with tapir claws (kraj predjà mry nhy ty)

Photos by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Woven zoomorphic toy with a monkey motif (kukonh karon)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Anthropomorphic mask toy (Mekaron)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Shaft of a feathered arrow (Buri)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

Tipití (krin’ô)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Bag-like basket (Mokà)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Bandolier with feathers and fruit seeds (kamôkti arapê jabu)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Occipital disc for headdress (kêjkry)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

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Vanity set with Oropendola (japu) feathers (Pejàti jamy meàkà)

Photo by Wagner Souza e Silva MAE-USP, 2011

VIDAL, Lux B. 2008. "O museu dos povos indígenas do Oiapoque Kuahí: gestão do patrimônio cultural pelos povos indígenas do Oiapoque, Amapá". Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Suplemento, 7:109-115.

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NOTES

1. Several authors attribute the origin of museums and other modern anthropological institutions to Curiosity Cabinets. The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University was established in 1683 from donations of objects kept by John Tradescant and donated by Elias Ashmole to the University of Oxford in the UK (Fowler 2003:13). 2. Stewardship project was funded by FAPESP (2003/12316-0). 3. Researchers who collaborated in current investigation wrote monographs on the same indigenous population (Vidal 1977; Gianinni 1991; Silva 2000; Cohn 2000; Gordon 2003; Paes 2006). 4. DAP - Departamento de Apoio à Pesquisa (Department for Research). Project of Research Infrastructure (FAPESP - Process 96/10598-3). 5. Kengore Xikrin had already worked in the curatorship of Xikrin objects together with René Fuerst, a researcher of the Xikrin people, affiliated with the Musée d'Ethnographie de la Ville de Genéve (Fuerst 2006). 6. Besides Tamakware and Kengore Kirin, there were: Researchers (Lux B. Vidal, Cesar Gordon, Fabíola Andréa Silva, Clarice Cohn, Francisco Paes, Isabelle Vidal Giannini, Ester Castro); students (Bruno Marcos Moraes, Daniel Tibério Luz, Chen Chih Cheng); technicians (Gedley Belchior Braga, Sandra Lacerda, Regivaldo); photographer (Wagner Souza e Silva).

ABSTRACTS

This article reflects upon the curatorial management process of the Xikrin ethnographic collection and proposes the importance of anthropological interest in the deepening collaboration amongst anthropologists, indigenous peoples and museums, with particular attention to the anthropological study of ethnographic collections. This is true for the anthropological study of objects (and their various meanings and interpretations by the social actors who utilize and appropriate them) and for the understanding of the formation and conservation of ethnographic collections (with their diverse motivations and contexts). Since this type of shared curatorial management style is only now spreading throughout Brazil, the experience is a timely opportunity to develop nuanced perspectives on the anthropological significance of ethnographic collections.

Neste artigo pretendemos apresentar algumas reflexões em torno do processo curatorial da coleção etnográfica Xikrin, evidenciando as potencialidades das relações entre antropólogos, povos indígenas e museus, especialmente, no que se refere ao estudo antropológico das coleções etnográficas, tanto em termos da compreensão dos objetos (e de seus múltiplos níveis de significação para os diferentes sujeitos que deles se apropriam), quanto em termos do entendimento da formação e preservação das coleções etnográficas (com suas múltiplas motivações e contextos). Este tipo de curadoria compartilhada começa a se difundir em nosso

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país, de sorte que o relato dessa experiência é uma oportunidade de estimular estes novos olhares sobre as coleções etnográficas.

INDEX

Keywords: museums, indigenous peoples, ethnographic collections, objects, material culture, knowledge and recognition Palavras-chave: museus, povos indígenas, coleções etnográficas, objetos, cultura material, conhecimento e reconhecimento

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Visible art, invisible artists? The incorporation of aboriginal objects and knowledge in Australian museums

Ilana Seltzer Goldstein Translation : David Rogers

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This article is an enhanced version of a paper presented at the 28th Brazilian Anthropology Meeting, held between the 2nd and 5th of July 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil.

Introduction: from artefacts to artworks

1 Activities more or less similar to what we call artistic practices were traditionally omnipresent among Indigenous peoples living in the continent today known as Australia. These activities were associated with an intense ritual life: dance, body painting, rock paiting, earth drawings and music. However the adaptation and recreation of some of these practices for the appreciation and consumption of white people are historically and socially situated processes. The construction of the contemporary Indigenous art system in Australia is the outcome of diverse agencies over the course of the twentieth century. And although it engenders a series of unresolved tensions, it has attained institutional and commercial levels unimaginable to many readers from other countries.

2 It may be useful to provide some quick examples. A painting by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, from the Anmatyerre language group, who live in the Australian desert, reached the final selling price of 2.4 million Australian dollars at an auction held by

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Sotheby's in July 2007. The work was purchased by one of the country's most important fine art institutions, the National Gallery of Australia. Made in 1977, the large canvas painting condenses various mythic fragments called Dreamings in the Aboriginal English. Between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, also from the Anmatyerre people, known for her large brush strokes and her refined sense of colour, were shown next to paintings by Mondrian, Miró and Kandinsky in the exhibition 'On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century,' at MoMa in New York. 3 The anthropologist James Clifford (1998: 224) developed a model that allows objects from traditional societies to be positioned in four 'zones,' based on the utilitarian or aesthetic purpose attributed to them, and on the degree of proximity to their original context of production. The 'zone' of 'authentic artworks' includes items valued by artists, curators and collectors; the 'zone' of 'authentic artefacts' comprises examples collected by researchers, held in historical and ethnographic museums; the 'zone' of the 'inauthentic artworks' includes falsifications; and finally the 'zone' of 'inauthentic artefacts' comprehends tourist souvenirs and mass-produced objects for everyday use. Clifford argues that an object can shift from one 'zone' to another, changing its value and status, which increase as it moves from 'cultural artefact' to 'artistic object' and from 'inauthentic' to 'authentic.' 4 The sociologist Roberta Shapiro (2007: 137) proposes a similar approach with her concept of 'artification,' refering to the potentially infinite transformation of objects and practices previously considered non-artistic into art. The producer starts to be called an artist, fabrication becomes creation and observers are turned into audience. This is not just a discursive strategy: these reclassifications lead to the emergence of exhibition spaces, new forms of legitimization, new artistic forms and the broadening of the criteria used for acquiring works for collections. 5 Such processes can be very clearly observed in the case of Australian Indigenous arts. A change of 'zone' occurs, for example, when the same traditional iconography that populates desert traditional paintings is used to decorate sandals and keyrings in souvenir shops, or waste bins and cash machines in Australian big cities. Or when paintings made with natural pigments on tree bark, collected as 'authentic artefacts' by Baldwin Spencer in his field work in Arnhem Land, between 1911 and 1920, are exhibited in fine art museums. The process of 'artification' is also revealed when we realize that the same works by Indigenous Australian painters rejected in the 1990s by the Cologne Art Fair, whose organizers refused to accept that an Aborigine could use acrylic paint and brushes, are today present in this kind of event without any problem.1 6 Departing from the reflection on changes in the meanings of objects, associated with their circulation in new spaces and networks, the first part of this text describes the history of how objects produced by Aboriginal2 peoples in Australia have been received by the white population, as well as the mediations that have enabled the circulation of Indigenous arts in the country. The second part, based on my own field work experience,3 explores the ways in which the artistic production of Aboriginal peoples makes its presence felt in white Australia today.

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1 The legitimization and institutionalization of Indigenous arts in Australia

7 From the start of colonization4 until the First World War, ethnographic collectionism reigned in Australia: weapons, adornments and other utensils collected by travellers were used to represent the material culture of the Indigenous peoples in ethnographic collections and anthropological books. Among the items collected at the end of the nineteenth century are the first records of eucalyptus bark paintings.

8 From 1920 to 1940, traditional Aboriginal iconography was incorporated by the Australian modernist movement, somewhat similarly to what happened in Brazil. White Australian artists and designers, led by Margaret Preston, were inspired by the Aboriginal visual repertoire to forge an Australian national identity, incorporating the native iconography into their objects, prints and paintings - without, though, being interested in their traditional meanings (Edwards & Peel 2005). 9 The 1950s saw the first inclusion of an Aborigine painter in the Euro-American art system: Albert Namatjira successfully sold his watercolours depicting the desert landscape. He was also the first Indigenous person to obtain Australian citizenship, after becoming famous. While Namatjira's work provoked criticisms because of its use of a technique and a style popular among whites, he only painted trees and mountains symbolically important to his family and his clan. The so-called Hermansburg School started by Namatjira perpetuates his style even today (French et al. 2008). 10 In 1958 the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney acquired and displayed a collection of sculpted funeral hollow logs made in Arnhem Land in the tropical north. The fact generated controversy in the press, for it was the first time that an Australian art museum included Indigenous works in its collection. 11 At the beginning of the 1970s the foundation of Papunya Tula Indigenous cooperative led to the emergence of a new artistic movement in the desert. This took place one year after the white art teacher Geoff Bardon had encouraged his Indigenous pupils and their relatives to use acrylic paint on paper and canvas to reproduce designs traditionally applied on the earth and the body (Myers 2002, Johnson 2006). At first the cooperative was ignored and it encountered considerable resistance, taking around ten years to establish itself on the art market. Later, however, the success of Papunya Tula led to the proliferation of Indigenous arts and crafts cooperatives and to the multiplication of regional substyles over the ensuing decades. 12 Still in the 1970s, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labour Party launched a campaign supporting the 'self-determination' of Indigenous peoples - instead of their "assimilation", which was the former official ideology. In 1973 the Aboriginal Arts Board was created by the government. Composed also of Indigenous representatives, this entity regularly bought works for public collections over a twenty- year period, some of them presented to embassies and museums around the world, others included in national and international exhibitions. The objective was to open up the market for this kind of production, while educating the gaze of the public, curators and collectors. 13 The 1980s were marked by the inauguration of new wings exhibiting Indigenous art in Australia's leading public museums. Little by little they began to dedicate some rooms to permanent exhibitions or temporary shows of Indigenous art and set up specific

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departments and curators for this type of production. The influx of Aboriginal painting into commercial galleries in the big cities during the 1980s was another watershed. Gabriele Pizzi opened the first gallery of this kind in 1982 and sealed a contract to represent the Papunya Tula cooperative in Melbourne. In 1987 she also began to sell the work of artists from the Yuendumu community. In 1991 Pizzi organized shows of Aboriginal artists in various countries like the Soviet Union, Italy, India, Spain and South Korea. She revealed names that are nowadays famous, like John Marwurndjul and Emily Kngwarreye. Other commercial galleries subsequently opened: Alcaston, also in Melbourne, and Hoggart in Sydney, for example. 14 An event in New York in 1988 was the first landmark in the international diffusion of Australian Aboriginal art: the show 'Dreamings: the art of Aboriginal Australia' united 103 sculptures and paintings. Enthused by the show, the entrepreneur John Kluge began a private collection that over the course of the 1990s became one of the most important in the world and today belongs to the University of Virginia (Peterson et al. 2008). 15 In the 1990s and 2000s Aboriginal curators and 'urban' artists appeared on the scene. Artists and curators of Indigenous origin, raised in the cities, fluent in English, aware of their rights and often educated at universities, started to produce works and critical discourses with a political tone, influenced by the post-colonial debate. In the mid-1990s Sotheby's held an exclusive auction of Australian Aboriginal art. At the same moment the first legal disputes emerged in which gift and textile companies were accused of using images produced by Aboriginal artists without permission and without due remuneration (Janke 2003). 16 It was also at the end of the twentieth century that Aboriginal art established itself internationally. In Europe the exhibition 'Aratjara' was inaugurated in Germany and later taken to England and Denmark between 1993 and 1994. In 2001 and 2002 a show of bark paintings, 'The Native Born,' organized by the Aboriginal curator Djon Mundine, toured throughout the world, including Brazil. In 2006, the Musée du Quai Branly was inaugurated in Paris with permanent interventions by eight Aboriginal artists from Australia included in its edifice. The commission responsible for curating this project also included two professionals of Aboriginal descent, Hetti Perkins and Brenda Croft (Australia Council for the Arts 2006). In 2008 an individual show by Emily Kngwarreye, organized by Margo Neale, an Aboriginal curator, attracted large crowds in Osaka and Tokyo.

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17 Today there are more than 100 cooperatives of Indigenous artists spread across Australia, and a similar number of commercial galleries in the state capitals and tourist cities. The indigenous segment corresponds to 15% of the total art market sales in Australia, moving 300 million Australian dollars per year (Altman 2005). The number of Indigenous artists who define themselves as such in Australia is estimated to exceed 7000. There are also dozens of distinct regional and individual styles (Mundine 2005, Healy 2005, Myers 2002, Könnig 2002, Mclean 1988 and Morphy 2008).

1.1 The diverse agents involved and the mediations required

18 Among the main social actors helping to maintain what is called the Indigenous Arts Industry in Australia we find the arts centres, cooperatives directed by representatives from Aboriginal communities and often run by outside staff hired by them. In addition to promoting local artistic production, the arts centres which I visited,5 as well as those on which ethnographic accounts exist, not only store and publicize artworks produced by community members, but they also perform the role of health centres, schools and political venues where meetings are held, demands are formulated and trips organized. Sometimes, it is true, the coordinator of an arts centre - normally white - may interfere too much in what the artists produce, making recommendations based on what pleases the market and ignoring local cultural questions. But in principle the Aboriginal directorate can dismiss the coordinator if the associated artists are unhappy.

19 Two regional associations were set up to represent, advise and train indigenous artists and arts centres. The Association of Northern, Kimberley and Arnhem Aboriginal Artists was founded in 1987. Based in Darwin, ANKAAA's members include 5000 individual artists. Its statute defines its objectives as strengthening indigenous cultures, supporting the development of the art production chain, fomenting new talent, and training young professionals to work in the sector. Meanwhile the

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Association of Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Centres, Desart, was founded in 1990 to provide assistance to arts centres in the Central Desert. Based in Alice Springs, it supports initiatives that certify the origin of artworks, pass on most revenue to the Aboriginal population, support the sector's professionalization and promote ethics in commercial relations. The strategies of both organizations, which receive direct public support, range from the organization of art fairs to the provision of management training courses, including the organization of a national network and the creation of communication channels. 20 Neither can the role of anthropologists be ignored. They have participated and still participate actively in the process of consolidating the recognition of Aboriginal art as fine art, working as curators, writing essays for catalogues, producing documentaries and biographies of individual artists, and publishing critiques in the press - the case, for example, of Christine Nicholls, Fred Myers, John Altman, Howard Morphy and Marcia Langton (Fisher, 2012). 21 Moreover Indigenous art has become an arena in which forms of individual and collective emancipation can be experienced and political positions expressed. Eloquent examples include the bark petition typed and then elaborately painted by Yolngu leaders in 1963 in protest against the installation of a mining company in the northeast of Arnhem Land (Morphy 2008); the batiks made by the women of Utopia between 1976 and 1978 to prove that their community was economically viable and capable of surviving autonomously when they received the right to land (which came in 1979); or the irony of the urban artist Richard Bell, who won the Telstra Award, Australia's most important prize for Indigenous art, with a painting sarcastically entitled 'Aboriginal art is a white thing' (2003).

22 Although Richard Bell's theorem is exaggerated - since contemporary Aboriginal art is also a white thing but notonly a white thing - the artist raises a genuinely paradoxical issue. The works of Aboriginal artists are bought, studied and displayed by whites, while motifs from the traditional iconography decorate tourist souvenirs and even the

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airplanes of the national airline, Quantas. Yet the indigenous communities continue to face serious housing and health problems: their average life expectancy, for example, is 17 years less than that of the white population, and black people are practically unseen in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. In the next section I shall look to how the presence of people of Indigenous descent in the Australian public sphere is inversely proportional to the importance of Indigenous artworks in Australian collections and museums.

2 Indigenous works and values in the Australian exhibition circuit

23 As mentioned in the previous section, the process of Australian museological institutions acquiring works by Aboriginal artists was slow, becoming visible only at the beginning of the 1990s. The collector and curator Wally Caruana recalls that in 1984 so little was known about Aboriginal communities and their artistic productions that a Sydney newspaper published a lengthy report on "a painter called Oenpelli" - when, in fact, this is the name of an entire community in Arnhem Land.6 Also in the 1980s, the National Gallery of Australia refused to purchase Aboriginal acrylic paintings made in the Western Desert, alleging that it "already possesses an example of that kind of technique" (Johnson 2006: 39).

24 Today the main Australian museums have a department of Indigenous affairs. In the art museums and science museums alike, the Aboriginal viewpoint is now usually taken into consideration in different ways. In Melbourne, for example, the entire ground floor of the Ian Potter Centre, an annex of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria, is dedicated to the Indigenous peoples of continental Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Diverse media, languages and artistic regions are represented in both traditional and unusual formats. There are video projections with statements from Indigenous artists about their creative process and the meaning of the works. The labels contain detailed information, including the artist's name and ethnic group, the region where he/she lives, date of birth and the date the work was acquired. 25 At the Melbourne Museum, which specializes in history and science, Aboriginal societies are considered as producers of knowledge. Displayed on the wall of one of the lobbies are two gigantic tapestries, called Federation Tapestries, designed and embroidered collectively by whites and Aborigines. Next to them a video is shown explaining how the tapestries were made, a kind of "book of images with relevant passages of the nation's history." Inside the museum the Bunjilaka space is exclusively dedicated to the Aboriginal societies of Victoria state, with exhibitions selected through public competitions aimed at Indigenous artists. Bunjilaka´s opening was preceded by six years of discussion with Aboriginal representatives from the region and marked by a smoking ceremony, traditionally important in events such as births and funerals. 26 In the 'Forest Gallery' of the same Melbourne Museum a text explains: "Aboriginal peoples and scientists both describe the role of water in modelling our landscape." Next to the graphics on the water evaporation cycle from the physical viewpoint, there is a video with an elder from the Wurunjderi ethnic group telling how the Yarra river was created by ancestors. In the section on the seasons of the year, both the Euro-American

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and the Aboriginal divisions are explained - the latter comprising between five and seven seasons, linked to floods, dry spells and the presence of particular plant and animal species. 27 The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, for its part, inaugurated a new wing in 2010 to hold its collection of Australian Indigenous art, announced as the largest in the world. There are 11 galleries with natural lighting - similar to the light in which the paintings are made - where 600 works are on permanent display. In contrast to the rest of the museum, entry to the Indigenous art wing is free. According to Franchesca Cubillo, former curator of the National Gallery of Australia, visits have increased by 20% since the opening of the new wing (personal communication 2011). Interestingly when I visited the National Gallery, Aboriginal paintings were also on display in the abstract minimalism room. This was the case of John Marwurndjul [c. 1952], of the Kuninjku ethnic group, displayed next to Ian Fairweather [1891-1974], a white Australian. Figures 3a and 3b, shown on page 12, are not exactly the same ones I saw in the museum, but they give an idea of the type of dialogue intended.

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28 The National Gallery of Australia also hosts an Indigenous Art Triennial, the first version of which presented the work of 30 artists from all Australian states, encompassing a variety of languages and media, such as acrylic on canvas, natural ochre on bark, textile works, sculpture, basketry, multimedia works, photography, printing and installations. The theme chosen by the curator Brenda Croft, herself of Aboriginal origin, was 'Culture Warriors.' The show, exhibited between October 2007 and February 2008, was accompanied by the publication of a catalogue with critical texts. The works displayed were acquired by the museum. 29 The National Gallery of Australia is a signatory and promoter of a set of guidelines for public collections of Indigenous art, the Indigenous Australian Charter of Principles for Publicly Funded Collecting Institutions (2009), which among other precepts establishes the following: 1. When undertaking any dealing with an Indigenous artist or his or her representative or community, a publicly funded collecting institution has regard to relevant domestic and international laws, studies existing codes of ethics, and consults the parties involved at all stages. 2. Public collections respect not only the moral and intellectual property rights established by law, but also the specific cultural rights, in order to determine and implement the appropriate treatment of any culturally sensitive information, including the citation of a deceased person's name. This applies to exhibitions, promotional material, websites, catalogues and so on. 3. When acquiring or commissioning a work of art from an Indigenous artist or collective, the terms of the contract must be clearly explained and recorded in the way that contracted party wishes. These records must contain the sum paid and form of payment, the purpose, the type of work acquired or commissioned, etc.

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4. The institutions commit to avoid becoming involved in anti-ethical initiatives or those harmful to Indigenous individuals and communities, such as the divulgation of inappropriate information and representations. 5. Public collections should only acquire Indigenous artworks when the origin has been verified and after certifying that the rights of the artists have been and are being respected.7

30 In addition, smoking ceremonies (Fig. 4) were held at the exhibition openings which I attended at various institutions.8 Green leaves chosen by the host group - responsible for the local Dreamings - are burnt, the smoke covers those present to purify and strengthen their bodies, also clearing the negative energies from the place. At the end the reasons for the smoking may be mentioned, and then the ceremony is usually closed with songs and percussion (produced by beating boomerangs and clapsticks).

31 At the Sydney Biennale, it was only in the 1980s that the presence of Indigenous artists began to increase. At the penultimate version of the event, there were works by 'remote' Aboriginal artists, i.e. who live in communities far from the major cities, as well as by 'urban' artists of Indigenous descent raised in big cities. 32 Figure 5, above, shows an installation by an artist living in Melbourne, who is also a university professor and editor. Produced especially for the 17th Sydney Biennale, it involved an inflatable castle, an allusion to the aristocratic European monuments, decorated though with designs from the Wiradjuri - the artist's ethnic group.

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33 One provocative detail was that only adults over the age of 16 could play on this kind of trampoline, suggesting that responsibility and a fully-formed spirit were needed to face the challenge. The inflatable walls were encrusted with replicas of Aborigine heads, often decapitated by the English colonizers and sent back to Britain as trophies. 34 There are also specific awards in Australia for Indigenous arts, which help legitimize Aboriginal artefacts as artand end up dictating trends and influencing the work of new artists. For the past 27 years the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin has held the most important event of the kind, the 'Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards' (NATSIAA). Sponsored by a telecommunications company, the Telstra award serves as a stage for new artists and may launch individual careers. Around one hundred works are pre-selected. The award categories are: painting, tree bark painting, work on paper and three-dimensional work. The winners receive $30,000 each. The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth also promotes a 'Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards,' worth $45,000. In the state of Queensland the 'National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS) Northern Rivers Region Aboriginal Art Awards' takes place and in Victoria the 'Victorian Indigenous Art Awards.' 35 Meanwhile the Araluen Cultural Precinct, in Alice Springs, hosts a large event each September called 'Desert Mob'. It comprises an exhibition of artists affiliated to Indigenous art centres, accompanied by a catalogue. Each art centre chooses ten works to send to the exhibition and, at the end, the Araluen Cultural Precint acquires some of them for its collection. An open-air art fair and a symposium of artists and art centre representatives, with simultaneous translation, are organized in parallel. Since 1990 the 'Desert Mob' functions as an opportunity for the face-to-face interaction between Aboriginal artists, researchers, curators, commercial gallery owners and private collectors. 36 Canberra's National Museum of Australia, for its part, recently supported an interesting initiative combining artistic production, oral history and job generation. The 'Canning Stock Route Project' reconstructed memories around an old and remote Australian road and, at the same time, generated professional training opportunities for

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Aboriginal photographers, filmmakers, curators and administrative assistants, culminating in an exhibition. The Canning Stock Route was constructed between 1908 and 1910 in the north of Australia to enable cattle to be transported across desertic regions. Using forced Aboriginal labour, water sources were identified and wells built along a 1850 kilometre stretch of road, cutting across the territories of nine ethnic groups. The road ended up being seldom used because the wells that had been built on sacred water sources were later destroyed by the Aborigines of the region and cattle hands were killed during the first crossings. The government rebuilt some wells in the 1930s and carried out maintenance on the road during Second World War in case an evacuation from the north was required. Today the Canning Stock Route is only used by adventure expeditions with 4WD vehicles. But for groups who lived in the area, the construction had tragic consequences - including slave labour, forced change of homeland and violent police reprisals. 37 In order to recuperate these experiences, even today absent from official history, a non-government entity from Perth called FORM organized, in 2007, trips from representatives of the nine ethnic groups affected by the construction of the Canning Stock Route to areas close to the road, encouraging them to tell the stories that they know and to paint them. Aboriginal consultants and translators were hired to help with logistical, geographic and cultural issues. Aboriginal apprentices in photography and video documented the entire process under the supervision of experienced professionals. Well-known Aboriginal artists were invited to run workshops with the painting apprentices who took part in the project. Nine art centres and an anthropologist were also involved (Webster 2009). Together with the National Museum of Australia, the sponsors were the Aboriginal Lands Trust of the Federal Government, an aluminium and bauxite company, and the Western Australia State Lottery. The museum bought the 100 pictures produced during the project and produced an exhibition, which later travelled from Canberra to Beijing. 38 In the photo above (Figure 6), the line marked in the centre of the warehouse is a way for the curators, while organizing the exhibition, to represent the road and thereby situate where each painting was made (Webster 2009).

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39 Some other facts deserve mention. In the city of Alice Springs, the capital of the desert, I have found around 40 commercial galleries selling Aboriginal paintings from the most quick-made to the most impressive and sophisticated ones. The New Parliament in Canberra is located in front of a mosaic designed by Michael Jagamara Nelson, a member of the Walpiri people from the Central Desert. According to the artist, the colourful mosaic, structured in concentric circles, indicates that it is a site for important meetings. Inside the Parliament building Aboriginal paintings hang on the walls, too. During the celebrations for the opening of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Leitmotiv was Aboriginal dance and songs. The benches along the famous Bondi Beach, in Sydney, are decorated with traditional Indigenous motifs. Finally, Vibe, one of Darwin's most chic hotels, located on the seafront, has Aboriginal paintings on its walls, as it can be seen in the image above (Figure 7).

40 All the forms depicted above through which Aboriginal arts and cultures are inserted in the exhibition circuit, in public spaces and in the market in Australia help to construct the national imaginary and reflect - even if upside-down - the nature of the relations between the national society and its Others (Robins cited in Peterson 2008). 41 According to Ivan Karp (1991), two strategies are typically used to represent other societies and their respective artistic productions: exoticization, which emphasizes differences; and assimilation, which approximates the Other of the spectator through idealization. The first strategy (exoticization) tends to deny rational calculation to nonliterate societies, while the second (romanticized assimilation) usually projects virtues valued by ourselves onto these societies, such as ecological awareness. 42 The museological approaches observable in Australia do not fit well into either of these poles. Instead they seem to combine logics and elements of diverse societies, at least at a symbolic and discursive level. In fact this is a tendency shared by other post-colonial museums in search of reflexivity, aware that the ways of displaying objects are not neutral and that the museological discourse must be multivocal, without ignoring the political questions involving the collections (Duarte 1998). This new theoretical and ideological approach of those responsible for museums and exhibitions inspires the adoption of innovations, among which the expansion in the commissions responsible for organizing exhibitions. They tend to be formed

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by multidisciplinary teams that include not only different professionals from the museum, along with the conservation staff and anthropologists, but also in some cases members of the ethnic groups to whom the displayed objects belong (Duarte 1998: 21). 43 In fact there exist between 20 and 40 Indigenous curators working in Australia today at public institutions or as independent consultants. According to Hetti Perkins, former curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the only comparable situations are in Africa and the United States. At first the Indigenous curators in Australia were voluntary, but now they have succeeded in getting equal pay and have earned respect from their colleagues.9

44 Margo Neale, curator of the Aboriginal Department of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, told me that Australia's Indigenous curators can come from different backgrounds, having begun their careers either in art centres in remote communities, which is the case of Djon Mundine; in commercial galleries, like Hetti Perkins; giving art classes in schools, like herself; or in ethnographic museums, as occurred with Franchesca Cubillo. 45 Franchesca Cubillo, a former curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, narrated to me her family and personal trajectory, which I shall summarize here since it strikes me as emblematic. Her grandmother, who lived in the Borrooloola community in the Northern Territory, was taken to a mixed shelter for children where she studied up to basic primary school level. She learnt how to clean and cook and was then sent to a white family. She married and had a daughter, Franchesca's mother, who lived most of her life in Darwin, studied up to advanced primary school level, became an auxiliary nurse in a hospital and, at the age of 40, gained a degree with support from a university program for Aborigines. Franchesca, in the third generation, studied anthropology in Adelaide. She began her career as a volunteer at the South Australian Museum where she discovered her vocation. She moved to Canberra to work at the National Museum where she was responsible for repatriation requests. In Darwin she became the senior curator of the city's main art museum. Later she received an invitation to assume the post at the National Gallery of Australia, in 2009, where I have met her. In 2012 the last news I had was that she had left her position in order to undertake her doctorate. 46 Franchesca Cubillo explains her double position as curator and Aborigine as follows: "An Indigenous curator always considers an artwork within its cultural context. I see Aboriginal art within Aboriginal culture. I try to convince museums to make acquisitions on the basis of the meaning of the pieces" (Cubillo, personal communication, 2010). Margo Neale, for her part, told me that the space for them is increasing because, today, "the Australian museological institutions must have Aboriginal curators. It is the protocol, it is also politically correct" (Neale, personal communication, 2010).

Conclusion

47 The valorization of the Indigenous artistic production in Australia reveals an attempt at 'Reconciliation' - the official term used by the federal government - between white Australia and Aboriginal Australia. Contemporary Australian Indigenous art seems to be a channel of negotiation between colonizers and colonized. However, it is worth

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remembering that from the start of English occupation until the mid-twentieth century, Indigenous children, especially the 'half cast' (considered more capable of assimilation), were forcibly removed from their families. It was believed that they would have more chances for development in reformatories or when adopted by white families. Australian colonial laws like the 1816 Martial Law in New South Wales, allowed white men to shoot if they saw Aborigines carrying bows and arrows or too close to their houses. In addition, the 'Citizenship certificates' for Indigenous peoples that came out in the 1940s were given only to those who promised to abandon traditional life completely and to keep a distance from other Aborigines (Cameron 2000).

48 If the visibility and the support for Indigenous arts in Australia enable the intercultural dialogue and, above all, make national society more aware than before of the cultural wealth and the rights of Indigenous populations, they cannot erase tragic events of the past or even solve some of the problems of the present. One of these is the abusive consumption of toxic substances, especially alcohol and petrol, which leads to complications like diabetes, high blood pressure and neurological damage. This situation - tragically similar to that of other national post-colonial contexts - arises from the 'social suffering' generated by the lack of meaning in everyday activities and the sensation of permanent outside control (Schmidt 2005). A large part of Indigenous lives became regulated by laws and mechanisms imposed by the whites. And although Social Welfare funds allow the purchase of food, medicines, blankets and so on, they end up worsening the vacuum left by the steady abandonment of traditional activities as hunting and ceremonial life. Chrischona Schmidt (2005) uses the term boredom to describe the state of mind that leads Aborigines to intensify the consumption of drugs. In these altered states, they may become violent and engage in acts of vandalism, which trigger more control measures from the government, generating a vicious circle. 49 As a specialist in human rights of Indigenous descent aptly summarized, "whites can see Aboriginal art, however they are incapable of seeing Aboriginal peoples. They like Aboriginal painting, but do not want to protect the artists (...). We are at risk of being seen as something merely symbolic" (Berendt cited in Carvalho 2012: n.p.). 50 'Samson and Delilah' (Thornton 2009), an Australian film that won awards at the Cannes and Dublin film festivals, shows precisely how the day-to-day life of Aborigines can be difficult. The film's protagonists are Warlpiri and Arrernte young people without previous experience in acting, but they perform surprisingly well. In the storyline, Delilah and her grandmother live together in a remote community of Central Australia, in a relation of affection and respect. A white trader appears occasionally, bringing canvases and paints. He takes away the ready paintings and hands over a tiny percentage to the elderly artist. When the grandmother dies, the girl decides to flee from the desert to the city with her boyfriend Samson. The young couple end up living under a viaduct, close to a stream, in Alice Springs. Delilah tries to sell street drawings for the two of them to survive but fails. She starts to steal. Samson begins to sniff petrol the whole time. The health of both deteriorates. They hardly exchange a word, communicating by gestures and looks. The film is at once beautiful and sad, like the reality that inspires it. 51 It is true that the creativity of Australia's Aboriginal peoples, along with their capacity to give fresh meanings to traditional objects and practices, signalize that to some extent a two-way relation exists between Indigenous artists and the national society. It is also true that the visibility of the artistic creations of Australia's Aboriginal peoples

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attracts sympathy from a section of the white population to the Indigenous cause, and stimulates Indigenous communities to invest time and energy in a culturally significant and economically profitable activity. 52 At the same time it is important to keep in mind that the nation that now implements initiatives aimed at the cultural valorization of Aborigines also works to make their lives meaningless.10 Neither can it be forgotten that whites' economic interests move the Indigenous art market and influence the public policies concerning this artistic production. 53 In sum, the forms, designs, colours and even fragments of the worldview of Indigenous peoples find themselves dispersed throughout the museums, the art market and shops of Australia. But this phenomenon amounts above all to the aesthetic appreciation of objects and to the museological presentation of cultural fragments. Flesh-and-blood Aborigines are still seldom visible or influential in Australian society. It remains to see whether their incorporation in the art system and in the exhibition circuit will be a first step to enabling new forms of participation and exchange, or whether it will function merely as a balm.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALTMAN, John. 2005. Brokering Aboriginal art. A critical perspective on marketing, institutions and the state.Melbourne: Deakin University/Melbourne Museum.

AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS. 2006. Australian Indigenous Art Commission. Commande publique d´art aborigine: Musée du Quai Branly. Paddington, N.S.W.: Art & Australia.

CAMERON, Kate. 2000. Aboriginal struggle for citizenship. Discussion papers. Sydney: New South Wales Discovering Democracy Professional Development Committee. Available at:http:// www.abc.net.au/civics/democracy/struggle.htm. Consulted on 18/01/2012.

CARVALHO, Elizabeth (script and editing). 2012. "Larissa Behrendt fala dos desafios para a inclusão dos aborígenes na Austrália." Interview for the Globo News channel, 24 min. Available at:http://g1.globo.com/videos/globo-news/milenio/t/programas/v/larissa-behrendt-fala-dos- desafios-para-a-inclusao-dos-aborigenes-na-australia/1761538/. Consulted on 14/01/2012.

CLIFFORD, James. 1998. The predicament of culture. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

DAVISON, Graeme; HIRST, John; MACINTYRE, Stuart (eds.). 2001. The Oxford companion to Australian history. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

DENNON, Donald et al. 2000. A history of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Oxford: Blackwell.

DUARTE, Alice. 1998. "O museu como lugar de representação do outro". Antropológicas, 2: 121-140.

EDWARDS, Deborah; PEEL, Rose. 2005. Margaret Preston. Sydney: AGNSW.

FISCHER, Laura. 2012. "The art/ethnography binary: post-colonial tensions within the field of Australian Aboriginal art". Cultural Sociology, 6(2): 251-270.

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FRENCH, Rachel; FRENCH, Alisson; McKENZIE, Anna. 2008. The legacy of Albert Namatjira today: contemporary Aboriginal watercolours from Central Australia. Alice Springs: Ngurratjuta Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands Art Centre).

GOLDSTEIN, Ilana Seltzer. 2006. Do tempo dos sonhos à galeria: pintura aborígine australiana como espaço de tensões e diálogos interculturais. Ph.D. thesis at the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology of UNICAMP.

KÖNNIG, Kasper; EVANS, Emily; WOLF, Falk. 2011. Remembering forward. Australian Aboriginal painting since 1960 [catalogue]. Cologne/London: Museum Ludwig /Paul Holberton Publishing.

HEALY, Jacqueline. 2005. A fragile thing: marketing aboriginal art from remote areas. Ph.D. thesis presented at the School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology of the University of Melbourne.

JANKE, Terri. Bulun Bulun & Anor versus R & T Textiles Pty Ltd. 2003. Minding culture: case studies on intellectual property and traditional cultural expressions. OMPI. Available at: http:// www.google.de/#hl=pt- BR&source=hp&q=Bulun+Bulun&oq=Bulun+Bulun&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=809l3264l0l3576l11l11l0l5l5l0l321l1246l0.2.3.1l6l0&bav=on. 2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=95099847ad02929&biw=1274&bih=814. Consulted on 19/08/2011.

JOHNSON, Vivien. 2006. Papunya painting out of the desert. Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press.

KARP, Ivan. 1991. "How museums define other cultures". American Art, 5(1/2): 10-15.

McDONALD, John. 1994. "A snub for Aboriginal art" [on-line]. Sydney Morning Herald Archive. Available at:http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/images/history/news/smh5aug1994.html. Consulted on 20/05/2013.

McLEAN, Bruce. 2010. "Richard Bell. Matter of fact". Artlink.Contemporary Art of Australia and the Asia-Pacific, 30(1):40-43.

MORPHY, Howard. 2008. Becoming art. Exploring cross cultural categories. Sydney: University of South Australia Press.

MUNDINE, Djon. 2005. "White face/black mask". Artlink, 25(3):17-22.

MYERS, Fred. 2002. Painting culture: the making of an aboriginal high art. Durham: Duke University Press.

PASCOE, Bruce. 2008. The little red yellow black book. An introduction to Indigenous Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands Studies – AIATSIS.

PETERSON, Nicolas; ALLEN, Lindy; HAMBY, Louise. 2008. The makers and making of indigenous Australian museum collections. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

SHAPIRO, Roberta. 2007. "Que é artificação?". Sociedade e Estado, 22(1): 135-151. Available at:www.scielo.br/pdf/se/v22n1/v22n1a06.pdf. Consulted on 05/05/2012.

SCHMIDT, Chrischona. 2005. Beyond suffering: the significance of productive activity for Aboriginal Australians.Honour Thesis presented at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Sydney.

TEO, Hsu-Ming; WHITE, Richard. 2003. Cultural history in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

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THORNTON, Warwick (director). 2009. Samson and Delilah. Australia: Scarlett Pictures, Caama Productions, Screen Australia Indigenous Branch and New South Wales Film & Television Office. Filmed in Dolby Digital. 101 minutes.

WEBSTER, Mags. 2009. Ngurra Kuju Walyija/Canning Stock Route Project. One country, one people. Perth: Form.

NOTES

1. At the Cologne Art Fair in 1994 the participation of the gallery owner Gabrielle Pizzi was vetoed with the following argument: "you do not exhibit authentic Aboriginal art" (McDONALD 1994: n.p.). At this time, ´authentic primitive' art was supposed to be created only in order to meet the artist's own spiritual needs without any relation to the surrounding society. 2. In Australia, the term Indigenous is used to encompass all the traditional peoples living both on the continent and on the Torres Strait Islands. The term Aborigine, in turn, refers specifically to those groups inhabiting the continent. Despite the huge linguistic variety, the Aborigines of the continent share a mythic complex called the Dreaming, as well as various similarities in their kinship systems. The Torres Strait groups, on the other hand, located in the far northeast of the country, are culturally closer to the peoples of Melanesia. I adopt this terminology in my own work. 3. I stayed in Australia between January and April 2010, funded by a scholarship from CNPq, as a visiting student at the Australian National University, under the kind supervision of Howard Morphy. The trip formed part of the research culminating in my doctoral thesis, presented at UNICAMP (Goldstein 2012). 4. The European colonization of Australia is relatively recent. On 29th April 1770, Captain Cook of the British Royal Navy anchored at the location where Sydney lies today. Systematic colonization would begin after the independence of the North American colonies in 1783. The British wanted to make clear that the newfound southern land already had an owner. But above all it needed a solution to its large prison population: in 1787 the British Parliament approved the deportation of 200 convicts to Australia. Many other waves followed. From 1851 onwards the colony experienced a burst of economic growth with the discovery of gold, which supplemented sheep breeding, introduced in 1797. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901, uniting six independent states and a territory under a single Constitution. On the history of Australia, consult among others Teo & White 2003, Dennon et al. 2000, Davison, Hirst & Macintyre 2001. 5. I have been to the Warlukurlangu Arts Centre, in the Yuendumu settlement, in the arid region of the Central Desert, where artists use colourful acrylic paint on canvas, and the paintings usually function like a sort of aerial map of the region, highlighting sacred places, as well as the deeds of the ancestors in those places. I also visited Buku Larrngay Mulka, in the Yirrkala settlement, in the tropical region of Arnhem Land, where artists make bark paintings, wooden sculptures, paper prints and pieces woven from fibre. At Yirrkala, besides its spiritual dimension, artistic production sometimes assumes an eminently political role. At Yuendumu, the predominant ethnic group is Warlpiri, while Yirrkala is traditionally Yolngu land. My stay at both art centres was short due to visa problems, but before, during and after the trip I was lucky to have valuable and generous interlocutors, some of whom I take this opportunity to thank publicly: Howard Morphy, Adrian Newstead, Alison French, Beverly Knight, Bryan Hooper, Cath Bowdler, Cecília Alfonso, Chrischona Schmidt, Christina Davidson, Christine Godden, Diana James, Franchesca Cubillo, Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie, Helen Hansen, Hetti Perkins, John Altman, John Carty, Laura Fischer, Margo Neale, Merryn Gates, Otto Jungarrayi Sims, Philippe Peltier, Robyn Mckenzie, Wally Caruana, Will Stubbs and Wukun Wanambi.

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6. Interview with Wally Caruana conducted by the author on 08/03/2010, in Canberra. 7. The complete charter is available at: http://nga.gov.au/ATSIART. Consulted on 13/05/2011. Two other documents contain guidelines for museums in Australia: 'Taking the time: Museums and galleries, cultural protocols and communities. A resource guide,' and 'Previous possessions, new obligations.' 8. Smoking is common to various ethnic groups in Australia. The smoke is produced by burning plants native to the region. At funerals the deceased person's siblings are responsible for the smoking. On other occasions the elders lead it. Smoking is also a way of welcoming visitors. This became recently recurrent at civil and commemorative events in Australia (Pascoe 2009). 9. Information obtained in individual interviews with three Aboriginal curators: Franchesca Cubillo (Canberra, 08/03/2010), Margo Neale (Canberra, 15/03/2010) and Hetti Perkins (Sydney, 26/03/2010). 10. In 2007, for example, the implantation of a policy called the Northern Territory Emergency Response caused revolt among anthropologists and activists. Based on rumours of mistreatment of children in communities in the north of Australia, this policy established interventionist measures, such as: increasing the police contingent in the region, restricting alcoholic drink, directing the funds for social programs to purchasing goods that the government deems to be priorities, lessening the autonomy of the recipients, and rescinding the need for permission to enter Indigenous land.

ABSTRACTS

The creative power and the economic valorization of Indigenous Australian arts tend to surprise outsiders who come into contact with it. Since the 1970s Australia has seen the development of a system connecting artist cooperatives, support policies and commercial galleries. This article focuses on one particular aspect of this system: the gradual incorporation of Aboriginal objects and knowledge by the country's museums. Based on the available bibliography and my own fieldwork in 2010, I present some concrete examples and discuss the paradox of the omnipresence of Aboriginal art in Australian public space. After all this is a country that as late as the nineteenth century allowed any Aborigine close to a white residence to be shot, and which until the 1970s removed Indigenous children from their families for them to be raised by nuns or adopted by white people. Even today the same public enchanted by the indigenous paintings held in the art galleries of Sydney or Melbourne has little actual contact with people of Indigenous descent.

A pujança criativa e a valorização econômica da arte indígena australiana surpreendem os estrangeiros que dela se aproximam. Desde os anos 1970, vem se constituindo, na Austrália, um sistema que compreende cooperativas de artistas, políticas de fomento e galerias comerciais. O foco do presente artigo recai sobre um aspecto particular desse sistema: a gradual incorporação de objetos e conhecimentos aborígines pelos museus. Com base na bibliografia existente e em pesquisa de campo realizada em 2010, apresentarei exemplos concretos e discutirei o paradoxo da onipresença da arte aborígine no espaço público australiano. Afinal, trata-se de um país que, no século XIX, permitia atirar em qualquer aborígine próximo a uma residência de brancos e que, até os anos 1970, removia crianças indígenas, para que fossem criadas por freiras ou adotadas por

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brancos. Até hoje, o mesmo público que se deleita com pinturas indígenas em museus de Sydney ou Melbourne tem pouco contato com pessoas de ascendência indígena.

INDEX

Keywords: Australian Aboriginal art, Indigenous art, anthropology and museums, 'artification' Palavras-chave: arte aborígene australiana, arte indígena, antropologia e museus, 'artificação'

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Dossier: Cultural heritage and museums

Part 4: Safeguarding the intangible

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Heritage, knowledge and (a)symmetries on the Uaupés river Origin narratives, transformation routes

Geraldo Andrello Translation : David Rodgers

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This article partly reproduces arguments developed in an earlier work of collective authorship (see Andrello et al. 2012) with additional comments in its final section. My thanks to Ana Gita de Oliveira, Renata Alves and André Martini (in memoriam) for sharing their ideas.

1 This article describes a set of activities and discussions surrounding the identification of sacred sites in the locality of Iauaretê, situated in the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Land on the shores of the middle Uaupés River, between 2004 and 2011. The activities of identifying these sites began with the visit by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) to the region in 2004 and the partnership established by the institute with the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN) and the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA). The aim of this action was to develop a pilot experience involving indigenous groups in the new policy of intangible cultural heritage with which IPHAN had been working since 2000. The experience produced various outcomes, including the recognition of the Iauaretê Falls as intangible heritage. At local level this event was absorbed into another set of ongoing actions and discussions, including key themes such as mythic narratives, participative mapping and the production and circulation of knowledge. The article looks to construct the general scenario formed by these connections, as well as explore some aspects of the new collaborative dynamics between anthropologists and indigenous researchers/ intellectuals which the experience brought to the fore. Various people from Iauaretê participated in the process, among whom I should like to mention Adriano de Jesus, Pedro de Jesus, Miguel de Jesus and Luis Aguiar (Tariano) and Guilherme Maia Laureano

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Maia, Moisés Maia and Arlindo Maia (Tukano). Much of what follows has been authored by them too.

The Iauaretê Falls as Intangible Heritage

2 The discussions concerning the drafting of Decree 3551 - promulgated in 2000, instituting the Intangible Cultural Heritage Register and creating the National Intangible Heritage Program - were based around the extensive accumulation of experiences of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) relating to its preservation and protection of Brazil's cultural heritage. Amplifying the field of heritage work to contexts very different from those already consolidated posed a challenge, considering merely the questions covered by Law Decree n. 25/1937, which instituted the registration of material assets in Brazil.1

3 From 2004 onwards, the upper Rio Negro region effectively became one of these contexts. For IPHAN the upper Rio Negro posed a challenging and almost paradigmatic case. Firstly it involved putting into practice the guidelines established by the Department of Intangible Heritage for surveying the cultural references of indigenous peoples and expanding its institutional activities to regions historically situated on the margins of (or even outside) its range of preservation work. Secondly it involved confronting underlying problems like the very transposition of the notion of cultural heritage, as understood by the institution, to diverse cultural contexts. From IPHAN's viewpoint, other questions relating to the construction of the object to be preserved also loomed large. These included: how to approach the complex system of ritual exchanges already documented extensively in countless ethnographic texts? What domains of social life are immediately identifiable for preservation purposes? What approach would be best: work with one of the twenty-two ethnic groups found in the region or approach the set of shared 'cultural assets' also richly documented in the ethnographic literature? What parameters should be used to identify and delimit a 'historical site' (a concept central to heritage work) when implementing the actions to safeguard it? What are the most important references of the cultural context in question? And finally, but crucially, how to resolve the logistical problems involved in visiting the region's basins and rivers?2 Whatever the answers, the upper Rio Negro was chosen for a variety of motives, including the existence of FOIRN, perhaps the most prominent indigenous organization in Amazonia, whose partnership with ISA (Instituto Socioambiental) was initiated over fifteen years ago. 4 In fact the partnership established by IPHAN, FOIRN, ISA and local indigenous associations was essential for the proposal to become minimally viable in terms of the anticipated issues and initial challenges. Hence between May 2004 when the project began and August 2006 when the Iauaretê Falls were declared part of Brazil's cultural heritage by the Cultural Heritage Consultative Committee, various actions supporting 'cultural revitalization' processes were implemented.3 But the start of the process was marked by the meeting solicited by IPHAN and organized by FOIRN in May 2004 in the maloca located at its headquarters in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM). As the meeting was about 'culture,' the organizers invited those groups who had been working on the implantation of differentiated indigenous schools in the region, such as the Tukano and the Tuyuka of the Tiquié River and the Baniwa of the upper Içana River. Additionally, though, the meeting was also attended by the Tariano of Iauaretê, who,

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though not participating in a formal indigenous education project, had shown a lively interest in registering their origin histories, building a maloca and resuming past ritual practices. 5 The meeting basically involved presenting the policy for listing 'intangible cultural assets' - classified for this purpose as 'bodies of knowledge,' 'celebrations,' 'forms of expression' and 'places.' Although the subject included some legal aspects alien to the indigenous audience, the groups present demonstrated a keen interest in the topic. Overall the positive response to IPHAN's proposal reflected a wider concern on the part of the indigenous groups of the Uaupés and Içana Rivers to document the 'culture of the ancestors' for the new generations, who seemed to them increasingly drawn to things of the city and the whites. Indeed some of the experiences supported by FOIRN seek to counter this trend, especially the publication of the Collection Indigenous Narrators of the Rio Negro (which to date amounts to eight published volumes of Desana, Tariano, Baniwa and Tukano mythology). This material adds to the numerous primers and textbooks that have also been published. These experiences can be seen to provide the key to interpreting the response to the presentation made by IPHAN's officers to the indigenous audience assembled in the FOIRN maloca. As the Tariano put it, "now the government too wants to support the work we have already been doing," demonstrating considerable interest in IPHAN's proposal and interpreting it as an official initiative designed to support and strengthen their own initiatives. However the form in which IPHAN explained its work methodology suggested new ideas to them, since soon after the meeting they began to ponder the idea of registering their 'sacred places' as cultural heritage to be recognized by the government. But what were their precise reasons? 6 The Tariano, though part of the system of linguistic exogamy connecting the different peoples of the Uaupés River, occupy a peculiar position within it. Unlike the other groups, they originate from the Içana basin to the north, having moved to settle on the Uaupés in the pre-colonial period. They ended up occupying an extensive area within the territory of the Tukano groups from whom they not only obtained wives in exchange for sisters but also gradually adopted their language. The Tariano area on the Uaupés centres on the Iauaretê Falls, a location that forms part of the origin histories of various groups living there today. In these extended narratives, the emergence and growth of the different groups of the Uaupés are conceptualized in the form of successive spatial-temporal migrations of their ancestors, a process that also defines their respective territories. 7 According to the Tariano, Iauaretê is the place where their ancestors settled after leaving the upper Aiari, an affluent of the Içana River where they originated along with other Arawak-speaking groups. In Iauaretê the Tariano population today number around 850 people. The rest of the settlement's population, around two thousand people, is composed of representatives of Tukano-speaking peoples from the Uaupés: the Tukano, Desana, Pira-Tapuia, Wanano, Tuyuka and others. For these groups the Iauaretê Falls comprise one of various stopover points of the anaconda-canoe, who brought their ancestors to the Uaupés in its wake. 8 Iauaretê is today virtually a town with high schools, a hospital, electricity, a post office, television, an airstrip, an Army platoon and an active indigenous commerce. Until the mid-1980s, there were four Tariano communities living around the Salesian mission, founded there in 1930. Today there are ten 'districts' or 'villages.' It is generally

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considered that the closure of the boarding school run by the Salesians there for decades was the main cause behind this demographic concentration. Without the usual means of ensuring that their children frequented school classes, many families started to live in Iauaretê on a permanent basis. At first this led to the expansion of the old Tariano communities, forced to allow residential space, as well as areas for swidden planting, to their brothers-in-law from the Tukano, Pira-Tapuia, Wanano and so on. Next the priests began to allow the areas previously occupied by their pastures and plantations to be used to form new communities. In this context, the management of community issues became increasingly immersed in new difficulties. Families from the same original community tend to be dispersed among different districts, a fact reflecting the specific circumstances involved in each family's arrival in the settlement. Children and young adults spend much of their time at school and have a far less intense interaction with parents and grandparents. Much of their day is spent in front of the TV. Consequently the most frequently heard comment in terms of the difficulties faced in Iauaretê concerns the 'unruly youths,' which manifests as numerous quarrels over festivals and teenage pregnancies. 9 However another line of tension is perceptible in the day-to-day life of Iauaretê, one related, precisely, to an often implicit debate on the prerogatives claimed by the Tariano and other Tukano-speaking groups over who constitutes the 'legitimate residents' of the locality. This debate relates directly to the urbanization process and the kind of compulsory coexistence that the new situation imposes on these groups. The indisputable fact is that Iauaretê located at a point on the Uaupés River where the trajectories of two of the main indigenous groups of the region, the Tariano and Tukano, intersect. As well as its strategic geographic position, the prerogatives for establishing new communities in Iauaretê are disputed by the Tukano and the Tariano, who have distinct and opposing interpretations of their respective mytho-historic narratives. Though difficult to evaluate, we can venture that the demographic concentration and hence the ongoing process of urbanization also result from this particular characteristic: in addition to the easier access to education, healthcare and income, many people seem to judge that they are fully entitled to live and raise their children there. For all these reasons, Iauaretê comprises a unique locality within the regional context. 10 This was another circumstance that enabled the Tariano present at the meeting at the FOIRN maloca to learn about the intangible heritage policy proposed by IPHAN. According to the legal framework instituted by Decree 3551, places can also be listed as cultural heritage. For the Tariano, Tukano and other groups from the upper Rio Negro this is certainly no novelty. Only that the decree spoke of markets, fairs, sanctuaries and squares. Meanwhile the Tariano were thinking of their own home. Since, as they tried to demonstrate in the following months: "our history is written in the rocks of the Iauaretê Falls." These were the sacred places that they intended to register. IPHAN, in principle, accepted their proposal. We can recall that during the demarcation of the Indigenous Lands in the region between 1997 and 1998, various leaders had already said that "our area is already marked, the demarcation is one more confirmation." They thereby referred to a vast range of mythic meanings attributed to the rocks forming the innumerable rapids along the area's rivers, many of them presenting petroglyphs (on this topic, see Ricardo 2001).

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11 A detailed map of the settlement in hand, we visited Iauaretê very quickly in November 2004. On this occasion, we agreed with them a set of more than twenty points to be visited in February or March the following year when the Uaupés River would be at its lowest level (see the map below). They insisted that we should come equipped with instruments allowing us to register what we would come to see: in parallel with the narrative to be recounted in situ, it would be essential to photograph and, where possible, film the rocks along with the Tariano themselves describing what each one signified. This would amount to a visible testimony of the prerogatives that they claimed over the site. Then in February 2005 we were in Iauaretê once again (Geraldo Andrello for ISA, Ana Gita de Oliveira for IPHAN and Vincent Carelli, video documentary maker from Vídeo nas Aldeias). Over a ten-day period, the Tariano of the Koivathe clan placed themselves entirely at the disposition of the project. During this time, they made considerable effort to debate the issues among themselves and formally and solemnly recounted a history that took place in Iauaretê a long time before the emergence of contemporary humankind (formed by the Tariano, Tukano, other indigenous groups and the whites). Using GPS, we located on a prepared base map the places relating to the ancient history of their mythic ancestor, whose successive transformations were responsible for the origin of some of the rocks of the Iauaretê Falls. The narrative concerned the primordial time of pre-humanity, a world peopled by creator divinities who sought to provoke the emergence of rivers, animals, plants and true human beings.

12 This Tariano history takes places in a world still in formation and explains how the Iauaretê Falls came into being. The word Iauaretê, 'waterfall of the jaguar,' is a toponym that alludes to a 'jaguar-people' who inhabited the place in the remote past. It is on this mythic narrative that the Tariano base their claims to be the legitimate residents of Iauaretê, since it recounts the origin of various outcrops, rapids, islands and channels of these falls from successive transformations of a demiurge called

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Ohkomi. According to the narrative, the jaguar-people already knew that Ohkomi would create a populous group who would come to dominate the Uaupés River: the Tariano. For this reason, he was captured in his own house (located in what is today an upland area where Cruzeiro district is situated), sacrificed, killed and devoured by the jaguars. With the jaguars in pursuit, Ohkomi tried to throw them off his trail by transforming himself into animals and plants. All the forms that he assumed prior to being killed turned into rocks along the falls that are today used to set fishing traps. These are the 'sacred places' that the Tariano took us to visit and wished to register with IPHAN's support. The three small bones left from Ohkomi's right hand would form the origin of the Tariano ancestors, responsible for wiping out the jaguar-people and turning the Uaupés River into an appropriate place for the settlement and growth of true humankind. Hence from the Tariano viewpoint, the Iauaretê area itself comprises a record of their history, knowledge of which includes a detailed map of the ideal points for setting fishing traps and thus for obtaining essential food resources in the human era. 13 According to the Tariano, it was thanks to the extermination of the jaguar-people by their ancestors that the anaconda-canoe of the Tukano ancestors was able to journey up the Uaupés River and populate it. In fact the Tukano and other groups did not tarry in becoming involved in the process of registering the Iauaretê Falls, arguing, however, that their histories are equally marked on other rocks there. Their argument centres on a recess found on a large flat outcrop located just below the most rugged section of the falls. According to them, this element was the unequivocal sign that the giant anaconda-canoe of their ancestors had beached at this spot, from where it would subsequently open a channel between the waterfall's rocks before submerging forever upriver on the Uaupés. In other words, while from the Tariano viewpoint there was a large cluster of rocks dispersed across the area that testified to the history of the sacrifice of their 'grandfather' Ohkomi, for the Tukano there was at least one rock that provides the evidence and grounds for their claims, as well as the existence of the channel which still today allows canoes and other river craft to navigate along the Uaupés, upriver and downriver of Iauaretê. In addition many people question the monopoly claimed by the Tariano over the history of the jaguar-people. For them, the episodes that led to their extermination fit into various other versions of the narratives that describe the pre-human phase of the universe (for details of these other versions, see Andrello 2012). 14 The eventual outcome was that the request to register the falls in the book of places signed by Tariano and Tukano leaders had to be sent in the name of all the ethnic groups living in Iauaretê today. IPHAN's Consultative Council approved the request on August 4th 2006. The democratization of the request to register the falls and its implementation had a direct effect on the format of the 'preservation actions' implemented by IPHAN after the listing, specifically in terms of expanding the mapping work referring to the mythic places in the middle Uaupés and Papuri region around Iauaretê. The subsequent process involved the organization of cartography workshops with the participation of the Tariano of the Koivathe clan and various other groups.

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Cartography of Sacred Places

15 The use of map images and base maps (with a hydrography and toponymy of the contemporary and past community and sites) in the first surveys of the Iauaretê Falls and in subsequent workshops represented both the introduction of new techniques and the simultaneous expansion of the social network involved in developing the activities, which included the localization of other sacred sites on the Uaupés and Papuri Rivers. Coordinated by technical staff from ISA's Geoprocessing Laboratory, the two workshops held in 2007 and 2008 showed the potential in terms of narrative content that each of these named places evokes, based on the informed observation of elements of the landscape.

16 The first workshop on mapping the sacred sites was held over a five-day period in May 2007 in Iauaretê. Approximately one hundred people took part, ranging from students to elders and belonging to five Tariano clans (Koivathe, Pukurana, Wamialikune, Malyeda and Kumada Kurubi), two Tukano clans (Oyé and Kimâro Porã), as well as members of the Desana and Arapasso groups. The Koivathe's project of registering the toponymy referring to the Iauaretê Falls on maps was already well-known, stimulating the participation of these other groups. During the workshop each group concentrated on their region of origin, looking to identify the sacred places existing in each of these areas. The support material for the workshop was produced beforehand at ISA's Geoprocessing Laboratory in São Paulo, and basically involved the preparation of base maps (with detailed information on the river courses and the localization of the communities on their shores) and map images (from the Landsat satellite) of the Iauaretê settlement and the region of the upper Uaupés and Papuri Rivers as a whole. All this material was printed in 100 x 70cm format, thereby allowing the identified sites to be plotted directly by the groups. The plotting work was preceded by an internal discussion within each group on which points were to be marked on the maps, i.e. those they really wished to make public. 17 Most of the groups decided, in parallel with the plotting work, to register in writing fragments of the narratives related to each point. In some cases they used numerical captions correlating points on the maps with these texts since, with the exception of the Iauaretê maps, the scale used prevented any precise plotting. In fact the scale of the maps available proved to be a limiting factor for much of the work produced. This is demonstrated by comparing what could be registered for Iauaretê, a locality for which a high definition Ikonos satellite image was available, enabling a 1:3000 scale map, and what was obtained with the other maps, all at the 1:100,000 scale. The first mapping of the Iauaretê Falls with the group from the Koiwathe clan in 2005 identified 20 points mentioned in the mythic narratives, while in 2008, as a result of two workshops, there were 75 points. In this second stage, twenty people from two Tariano clans took part. This more extensive toponymy relates to a more diverse set of mythic narratives, various of which have yet to be recorded. Meanwhile the other five groups (three Tariano clans, one Tukano and one Desana) who worked with maps of various parts of the Uaupés and Papuri identified a total of two hundred and thirty places, mentioned in a variety of mythic narratives. 18 Maps 2 and 3 represent the current phase of a process in which the Tariano and the Tukano are recalling their places and histories, attempting to coalesce these memories into a map form with the help of technical advisors.

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19 The set of points identified on the maps refers to various types of geographic features, such as islands, marsh areas, creek mouths, shallows, outcrops, rocks and ridges, as well as the sites of old malocas and the 'transformation houses,' stopover points on the journey of the giant anaconda who brought the ancestors of the current groups to the Uaupés. All of them were identified on the basis of narratives referring to episodes from mythic time, involving diverse figures, and the origin of a series of precautions

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related to the present-day management of natural resources and people's health. The data from the eight maps produced during the first workshop were fed into a Geographic Information System, which allowed the elaboration of new workmaps for ongoing revisions. In 2008 another, smaller five-day workshop was held with approximately thirty people to revise the places mapped in the first workshop, including several discussions on the use of the Tukano language by the Tariano and their effort to discover the name of various places in their own language. On this occasion visits were made to some elders, as well as some of the places unidentifiable on the scale of the available maps, where GPS points and photographs were taken. The overall map of the Uaupés and Papuri region shown above is the provisional result of the initial work undertaken during these workshops. 20 The lesson acquired from these two workshops is that the maps slowly acquire new elements in response to the narrative details that emerge on each occasion. The resulting impression is that the process of elaborating these maps is virtually infinite, especially if the scale can be amplified at each stage, and if this exercise is combined with more time for visits to the mapped locations. In fact there is a striking variation in terms of details seen between the map of the Iauaretê urban settlement (1:3000 scale) and the more general map of the region (1:100000). Additionally the possibility of visiting the points cited in the narratives referring to the Iauaretê Falls and their vicinity allows a highly detailed mapping of this subregion unthinkable for other parts of the area. The map below is perhaps the best example currently available of what can be recorded through the adopted procedures. In other words, as part of the area surrounding the location where the workshops were held - which a number of the Tariano participants journey through in their day-to-day activities - it was possible to interpret or elucidate in situ some of the references to the local landscape found in the narratives being recounted. 21 As the Tariano-Koivathe said at the outset of the process, "our history is written in these stones." As we have seen, though, in the context of the Iauaretê district, this clan shows a very particular trajectory. It is perhaps one of the few whose members recognize in the waterfall itself where they settled many generations ago the marks of the pre-human era related to their own emergence and their present-day attributes. Moreover, like the other Tariano clans settled near to the Iauaretê Falls, they describe the borders of the Tariano territory as a triangle with its three points situated in Campo Alto (Uaupés downriver of Iauaretê), Miriti (Uaupés upriver of Iauaretê) and Aracapá (entering via the Papuri river).From the viewpoint of other groups, this area - approximately covered by the map abovove (map 4) - is considered an Arawak enclave in the heart of Tukano territory. It is certain, therefore, that had the Tukano clans present in the workshops enjoyed similar conditions for producing their maps, the resulting cartography would be very different. Hence despite the increasing inclusion of other groups from Iauaretê in the overall process, the importance attributed by the Tariano to the Iauaretê Falls in their origin narrative assured them a privileged position in the context of holding the workshops and elaborating the maps.

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22 Put otherwise, the Iauaretê Falls are clearly an important place for the Tariano and for the Tukano, Desana, Arapasso and others, albeit to different degrees, since the mythic transformations registered there are, for the Tariano, equivalent to what the Tukano narrative distributes along almost the entire trajectory of their ancestral anaconda. In fact this generated a methodological problem that became evident in the mapping workshops in Iauaretê: how to go about making the local maps if the narratives from which they derive mostly refer to a succession of movements and stopovers? How could these elements be registered in cartograms without re-enacting these very same movements? It was the Tariano-Koivathe themselves, in fact, who assumed the task of requesting the resources needed to travel the route taken by their ancestors from the Içana river to the Uaupés. This would be another of the actions involved in the listing of the Iauaretê Falls as a heritage site, since although they could demonstrate their ancestral connection to the landscape, they still needed to map the path taken to arrive there. 23 The interesting question that the overall experience raises is, therefore, that of the connection between landscape and narrative. It does not seem fortuitous that before engaging in the plotting work, the groups present in the workshops devoted themselves to writing sections of narratives. These provided the source details of what was seen and experienced on past voyages: their enunciation is itself a repeated form of mapping, just as the constant journeys up and down river today are also journeys of reflection on events of the more or less distant past. The fixation of features of the landscape onto the geographic maps produced for the workshops could not, therefore, do without this work of memory. The (im)possibility of retracing some routes led to differences in the level of detail in the maps. Indeed the density of the partial map shown above, which centres on the Iauaretê Falls and registers the extensive toponymy of the adjacent zones, suggests that this exercise itself should ideally be undertaken while moving. If not we risk producing what anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000: 234) calls

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a 'cartographic illusion': the presumption that the structure of the world represented on maps is fixed independently of the movements of their inhabitants. A map filled by an indigenous toponymy is likewise merely a pale and codified image of the landscape intensely projected by the migration narratives. 24 The origin narratives told by the Tukano peoples of the Uaupés are unanimous in affirming that the very course of the Negro River and its affluents, and in general the course of all the Amazonian basin's rivers, acquired existence thanks to the upriver movement of the ancestral anaconda from the from the portal of the waters, situated at the mouth of the Amazon. It was not a random movement, however, since the arborescent structure of these rivers is due precisely to the felling of the great tree encountered there by the ancestors. After the great flood that followed, the travellers headed westwards, tracing a route that corresponding to the trunk of this tree and its branches, i.e. moving up the Amazon and entering its affluents and sub-affluents until finding the centre of the universe. An important point to emphasize is that this journey-gestation of humanity was conducted by the ancestors of all the current groups. People usually point out that the same history is involved, though told from different points of view. Consequently the same stopover point or episode may be situated in different localities, depending on the current position of the narrator's group within the regional context, making the situation even more problematic for the cartographer. 25 In attempting to produce cartograms based on conventional cartography, therefore, other problems will inevitably emerge. Each narrative is a particular exercise in mapping, which means that the continuous endeavour to condense multiple narratives into the same mapmaking process4 may lead to insurmountable dilemmas. This problem raises the question of what type of map could in fact do justice to this dynamic. Such dilemmas echo the kinds of questions explored in striking form in the beautiful book by Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Place (1996), itself the outcome of an extensive project of mapping cultural geography among the Western Apache within a twenty mile radius of the community of Cibecue in Arizona, USA. Although the Apache themselves had conceived the project, the idea of publishing an atlas with the names of places identified in their own language to replace the countless maps of the region produced by the whites seemed to them somewhat absurd. As one person said: "White men need paper maps, we have maps in our minds" (Basso 1996:43). 26 Just as in Iauaretê, in the Apache community in question the interest in mapping seemed to reflect first and foremost a certain dissatisfaction with the limitations of conventional cartography, which, in Basso's words, basically constitutes a 'charted territory.' In this particular case, the solution encountered by the ethnographer was to draw from writings that shed some light on this impasse, such as, surprisingly, the account of the visit by the physicist Niels Bohr to Kronborg Castle in Denmark: just the idea of Hamlet having lived there, perhaps, was enough for the castle to become for the physicist something very different to the image projected by its architectural features as a whole, though specific details, such as a dark corner or wooden carving, might evoke the character's famous phrase - to be or not to be - in a new guise. For the informed visitor, the experience induced what Basso called a 'retrospective world- building,' more specifically in the form of 'place-making,' an act in which memory and imagination are implicated. Transposing this experience to the Apache universe, the author came to observe that the set of place names - as well as their structure,

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inextricably associated with elements of the landscape - codify narratives about the past; more specifically, about the events that occurred in specifically named places. In this sense the histories suggested by the local toponymy are equally specific: episodic, local, personal, subjective and above all highly variable in terms of the actors potentially involved in their production. 27 In sum, a history 'without authorities,' without any pretension to generate definitive narratives. More than general theories or models, a history that can "fashion possible worlds, give them expressive shape, and present them for contemplation as images of the past that can deepen and enlarge awareness of the present" (Basso 1996: 32). Still influenced by Bohr's words, the ethnographer observes that this does not involve "a small or uninteresting truth," but "a common response to common curiosities," such as "what happened here? who was involved? [...] why should it matter?" (Basso 1996: 5). Responses, then, that presume cultivated sensibilities and knowledge. Nothing very different therefore from the situation that we have been observing during the activities undertaken in Iauaretê by IPHAN and its partners. 28 These suggestions in mind, the following section explores a number of points relating to the dynamic of knowledge generation and circulation on the upper Rio Negro, a dynamic that the experience of registering the Iauaretê Falls as a heritage site allowed to some extent to be glimpsed.

Registering Heritage, Registering Knowledge

29 The above-mentioned experience in fact points to a theme of enormous relevance in the life of the region's indigenous peoples: the inscription of their origin histories in the natural landscape. More precisely, the entire process indicates a fundamental association between history, as conceived locally, and geography, a social memory stored along the river courses, at the waterfalls, shallows, beaches, long stretches, areas of still water, channels and so on, which we saw as we navigated these routes. In this sense the journeys today re-enact the primordial movements and evoke the differentiations internal to humanity that came to populate the course of the Rio Negro and its tributaries, all of them recorded in the features of the landscapes and in their toponymy. In sum, while we can readily identify the motives for people travelling through the area - visiting kin, planning fishing expeditions, going downriver to the towns to obtain money and goods, seeking out schools and healthcare, etc., - it is less evident that during these same journeys, as well as what happens over its course, people also travel through time, and thus both acquire and produce knowledge. We could say, therefore, that on the upper Rio Negro, the sacred sites - these potential intangible heritage sites -themselves form a substrate of recorded knowledge. The narratives that they evoke thus refer to what we could call 'transformation routes.' These are the paths that, by circumscribing the movements and cycles of today's world - generally recorded in the so-called ecological-cultural calendars (see below) - comprise evidence of the process that led in the mythic past to the appearance of a true humanity, usually conceived as a slow transformation, or passage, from the subaquatic world of 'fish people' to the properly human world (I shall also return to this point below).

30 But, as I stated at the start, from the indigenous viewpoint the institutional experience of registering the Iauaretê Falls as intangible heritage formed part of a wider set of

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activities being developed through the partnership between FOIRN and ISA, and of the diverse projects involving indigenous leaders linked to the former and technical officers linked to the latter. Since the 1990s, a diverse set of local projects has been put into practice.5 Here special emphasis can be given to the implantation of schools with differentiated education on the Tiquié, Içana and Uaupés Rivers, among the Tuyuka, Baniwa, Tukano and Wanano. These nuclei implemented systematic experiences designed to reverse a historical tendency linked to the introduction of school education on the Rio Negro: the concentration of school-age students in the large Salesian boarding schools in São Gabriel, Taracuá, Iauaretê and Pari-Cachoeira since the start of the 20th century, whose closure was only concluded in the 1980s. The experience of the boarding schools can be said to have supplied a negative reference point for the implantation of these new schools. While indigenous languages had been prohibited in the Salesian schools, in these recent experiences everything took place 'in the native languages,' from literacy classes to the elaboration of research and monographs; while in the boarding schools the priests taught the language, maths and trades of the whites, it was now a question of assembling curricular and didactic material based on local cultural meanings. The base methodology involves the development of research on the indigenous culture itself, for which western techniques and knowledge can and should be employed. The overall premise is that this will allow the absorption of new knowledge and value traditional knowledge simultaneously. Despite the extensive range of work needed to make such a program viable (constant pedagogical supervision, training of indigenous teachers, workshops with different types of indigenous and non-indigenous specialists, the production and publication of didactic material in different languages), the differentiated education model of school was incorporated by the São Gabriel da Cachoeira Local Council in 2007, at least in discourse. 31 These schools made use of and to a certain extent guided the start of other parallel projects, in particular a project for managing fishing and agroforestry resources. Along with the schools, plans were made for the implantation of fish farms, which were used to develop methods adapted to local ecological and logistical conditions. Breeding of native fish species was introduced in the region with technical assistance. Domestic fishponds, combined with an agroforesty system located nearby to supply feed for the fish, began to appear in some communities closer to the schools. The fish farm activities fed back into the educational activities, so that most of the research developed in the schools began to concentrate on knowledge related to plants, animals and their reproductive cycles, the so-called ecological-cultural calendars. Fishing monitoring programs were also begun at the same time, focusing on both fishing production and the use of different technologies, both traditional and recently adopted, which involved an assessment of the impacts of the recent introduction of fishing nets.6 At the same time, the schools also invested in a survey of the ancient origin narratives, documentation of the chants associated with them, and attempts to revive ritual practices that had fallen into disuse. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the mapping workshops described above have been incorporated as activities in an indigenous school recently implanted in Iauaretê. In addition, many of the resources available to these new school experiences were directed towards the reconstruction of large malocas. Likewise over the course of the documentation process for the Iauaretê Falls, IPHAN provided funds for the Tariano-Koivathe to be able to rebuild the former maloca of Leopoldino, the famous tuxáua or leader of the Uaupés who welcomed the

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Salesian missionaries in Iauaretê in 1929. In sum, practically all the actions suggested to IPHAN as part of the Preservation Plan for the Iauaretê Falls coincided with experiences being developed within the differentiated education schools implanted in the region over the last decade. 32 In addition to evaluating the successes and failures of this set of activities - which may be present or absent depending on the criteria and scales adopted - the important fact to emphasize is that these nuclei of education-research became the centre of the community or set of communities in which they were located, just as the listing of the Iauaretê Falls as a heritage site animated many of the local conversations between the Tariano and their neighbours between 2005 and 2010. These initiatives formed the base on which new associations were built, creating new spaces for discussion and debate, and establishing new connections with the outside, including cooperation agencies, government and non-government programs for supporting community projects, research institutes and even artists. In addition they reconnected, so to speak, with their relatives from Colombia, as attested by the exchange visits between the Tuyuka and the Barasana, Yeba-Masa, Tatuyo and other groups from the Pira-Paraná River, where much of the ritual life already abandoned on the Brazilian side is still alive. Through these relations they were able to glimpse new possibilities for life in the communities, allowing them to acquire new routines and encouraging young people, always highly sensitive to the signals coming from the city and the white world, to continue living there. Obviously this process involves the appropriation of new technologies and equipment through which information can be accessed and made readily available - needless to say, the internet is a powerful tool in this context. Overall, then, the schools and their experiences created a space from which a new collective spirit emanates, stimulating a continuous reflection on the options and impasses now facing local people, including the new possibilities afforded by the official (and unofficial) tools for preserving heritage and the research that these stimulate. One of these issues, highly symptomatic of this new state of affairs, is expressed by Higino Tuyuka: are we just researchers or do we really live this culture we are rediscovering? Or as André Baniwa, the founder of the Pamaali School on the Içana, put it: we need to think clearly about the type of education that the new Baniwa person needs. 33 A particularly complex point in these processes - to a certain extent present in the case of the Iauaretê Falls and in the mapping workshops that took place after its listing - concerns the need to achieve a balance between the knowledge and techniques of the whites and indigenous knowledge. In the experiences developed thus far in the differentiated education schools, indigenous knowledge can be said to have converted into an object of study, that is, one type of knowledge turned into the object of another type. Though difficult to be sure, based on what took place in the mapping workshops described above, it may be that certain indigenous conceptual schemas have been objectified in the schools too, as if it were possible to separate their content from the form that they take, or the form in which they are produced. The question in reality is not new, since much of the discussion concerning the protection of traditional knowledge is unanimous in pointing out that its preservation involves above all the preservation of the conditions through which this knowledge is continually produced (see, among others, Carneiro da Cunha 2009 and Viveiros de Castro 2008).

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34 But here perhaps resides an important specificity of the Rio Negro. Speculating somewhat, the conditions for the production and transmission of knowledge have undoubtedly varied significantly over the course of recent history. Moreover, the systematic efforts of the Salesian missionaries to destroy the malocas and expropriate the traditional wealth of the region's groups (flutes and ceremonial adornments indispensable to the rituals performed in the traditional malocas) constituted, according to an assessment frequently made in the region, an almost insurmountable blow to the integrity of a canonical corpus of knowledge originating from the mythic past, insofar as songs and chants that form the basis of the ritual cycles were steadily abandoned. People say that many of the specialists of this type of esoteric knowledge (the baiaroa and the kumua, masters of the song and the chant respectively) died of sadness, and the elders known to today's generation are the children of these ritual experts: although they were born in the malocas, they grew up in an environment in which the abandonment or loss of the wisdom of the elders was a fait accompli. The initiation rituals gave way to the period in which children went to the boarding schools, and the prestige of the old kumua was further eroded by the emergence of new ritual leaders, such as the students who later returned to the communities to occupy the position of catechists and officiate at the Sunday services in the small chapels built under the direction of the priests. 35 The environment in which the elders of today grew up is, to a certain extent, known to their children and grandchildren. Their evocations of the sadness of the elders, the melancholic chanted songs that they also got to hear and, above all, certain essential magic spells that could never be abandoned (protecting children from potential diseases, giving them ancestral names, neutralizing the malevolent quality of some foods, protecting women and children from the dangers surrounding menstruation and childbirth, organizing a dabucuri for brothers-in-law to exchange sisters, among others) are very palpable indications that the knowledge inherent to certain existent practices is connected, undoubtedly in a complex fashion, to a wider intellectual system whose full expression was found in the ritual life observed in the traditional malocas and in the more austere way of life pursued then. What is the consequence of this fact? Many say that the elders were stronger and healthier, less lazy and smarter than young people today. But what was lost exactly in this process? This is a question it seems impossible to answer with any precision. Even so it is common to hear that while much was lost, much was also gained, and that to an extent the Indian today already appear like whites in many aspects. The whites, though, do not possess 'ethnic groups' or 'culture' and in a sense do not run the same risks that Indians run since their body and food are different. I return to this point later. 36 In other words, although the conditions for the production, reproduction or transmission of knowledge have come under heavy pressures over the course of history, we can observe many life situations today in which ancient knowledge is mobilized, integrated and potentially transformed. During the conversations on the topic between anthropologists and indigenous intellectuals or researchers, for example, whether inside or outside the new schools, the impression is frequently given that we are all glimpsing just the tip of the iceberg. In other words, although the "knowledge possessed by our grandparents"7 generally seems to be beyond our reach, we can perceive flickers dispersed along distant rivers and localities even today. These shared perceptions mean that at least in some contemporary cases and processes, these

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research partners - Indians and anthropologists - recognize each other as effective collaborators. Although their interests may not always converge, a base of shared motivations seems to have engendered a situation in which all research conducted in the area today is research 'with' rather than 'about' the local groups. A situation as stimulating as it is sensitive, given that sometimes what appears as a very clear example of mutual understanding can hide serious equivocations. This is not a problem as such8, but it does have a number of implications, some of which I shall examine in the following section.

Reversibility and Symmetry

37 Clearly the problem at which we arrived in the previous section lies at the heart of an important contemporary debate on what anthropology can be at the start of the 21st century, when the old distinction between empirical data gathering and theoretical speculation is beginning to be placed in doubt - i.e. when the separation between method and theory no longer appears to convince anyone. In fact it reflects a new situation in which the natives have ceased to be informants and have become real collaborators in the findings of anthropological research: "people we work with" (Ingold 2011: 243). Indeed Tim Ingold recently proposed that anthropology, rather than a comparative analysis supported by ethnographic observation, is itself "a practice of observation grounded in participatory dialogue." The author suggests something like an inversion in the usual order of our analytic procedures, situating ethnography as a moment posterior to observation when the 'field' is constituted as a retrospectively imagined world, which permits a description separate, so to speak, from the moment of observation. The latter, for its part, corresponds to an inquisitive mode of inhabiting the world, of 'being with,' marked by a comparative attitude in relation to the varied conditions and possibilities of human life in a shared world. This, in the author's view, would constitute the most recent definition of anthropology, and which, in an unparalleled way in my view, seems to characterize in fairly precise terms a series of collaborative studies that have been put into practice over the last decade in the region of the upper Rio Negro. Perhaps with one difference: according to Ingold, the anthropologist writes for him or herself, for others and for the world; on the Rio Negro we can observe numerous recent experiments that could be described as 'writing with,' as attested by the experiment in producing maps described above, as well as the production of a significant local literature over the last few years, typically generated with the support of anthropologist-advisors. Hence the field to be imagined in retrospect by these anthropologists includes a series of indigenous writings, as well as the effects that these have begun to generate in their contexts of circulation.

38 However it needs to be remembered that these recent experiments are not entirely unique in the region. The first book by one of the precursors of upper Rio Negro ethnography testifies to this fact. I refer to Amazonian Cosmosby Reichel-Dolmatoff, published in 1971, the first chapter of which consists of an account of the origin myth of the peoples of the Uaupés provided by Antonio Guzmán of the Desana people. Having lived only to the age of twelve in his community of origin, Guzmán displayed particular interest in working with an anthropologist who would help him produce this record.9 Though it would be an exaggeration to take this work as a distant and pioneering example of what we today call auto-anthropology - especially because the other

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chapters of the book offer very sui generis exegeses proposed by Reichel-Dolmatoff, in general based on a notion of sexual energy that has been subject to heavy contestation by some of the region's ethnographers - the book nonetheless suggests that since the primordial era of anthropological research in the Amazonian Northwest, the Indians themselves have, at least in part, been placing their most recurrent themes on the anthropological agenda.10 More specifically, though, the growing involvement of anthropologists in the promotion of indigenous writings seems to me to evoke some form of symmetrical anthropology, "the idea that there is no anthropology that is not an anthropology of the other, in the double sense of the preposition" (cf. Viveiros de Castro, Goldman & Almeida 2006). Symmetrical, though, not exactly in relation to the anthropologists, who in these cases work as transcribers, revisers, presenters, note takers and so on. The creative part of the initiative is once again falls to the indigenous authors. Symmetry, then, in the sense that in speaking of themselves, the indigenous writings also describe ourselves. 39 To a large extent indigenous writings feed off one another. Written versions of the origin narratives that have begun to circulate over the last two decades have stimulated each other: in other words, each new published book provokes amendments, evaluations, corrections, one or several responses (Andrello 2010, Hugh- Jones 2010), a process that I think has been equally well exemplified by the debates on the registration of the Iauaretê Falls described above. Not by chance, the books published in the collection Narradores Indígenas do Rio Negro11 have been compared to the verbal confrontations marking the exchange rituals in the exchange, when two groups exchange goods and reciprocal perspectives. As occurs in the ritual discourses, indigenous writings do not guarantee the persistence of a specific version: like a dabucuri (a ritual offering food and artefacts), they virtually suppose various others. But there is an important difference. While the dabucuris are exchanged between the Indians, the books can and should circulate between the whites too - dabucuris directed towards the whites are not uncommon, but usually take the form of 'thanks' for certain 'benefits' or 'projects' facilitated by the latter; in other words, it is never a case of one dabucuri functioning as retribution for another earlierdabucuri. At the same time as the books involve the enunciation of the relational position of their authors vis-à-vis brothers-in-law and brothers (younger and older), they equally do so vis-à-vis whites. In these narratives, the white man appears as a younger brother of the indigenous ancestors whose intrepidness and courage - derived from his childlike foolishness - managed to acquire amazing powers: industrial goods and an unquestionable capacity for multiplication. For this reason whites, despite being the younger brother, are treated like older brothers. 40 There is no space here to enter into the details of this episode, but the point worth emphasizing is that the difference between Indians is placed in continuity with the difference between Indians and whites: i.e. if the original relation between the indigenous ancestors is conceived as a difference between senior and junior siblings (some of whom became brothers-in-law at the end of the mythic era), the difference between them and the whites is understood in the same way. Symmetry, then, at least in the vision of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2012): This is how I understand the Latourian idea of a 'symmetrical anthropology.' I do not take it to be an attempt to discover equalities, similarities or identities between anthropologists and natives, scientific theories and indigenous cosmologies, or so on. Symmetricalization is simply a descriptive operation that involves making the

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differences between all analytic terms continuous: the difference between the 'culture' (or 'theory') of the anthropologist and the 'culture' (or 'life') of the native especially is not deemed to possess any ontological or epistemological advantage over the differences 'internal' to each of these 'cultures'; it is no more nor less conditioning than the differences of both sides of the discursive boundary. 41 I am not entirely sure if it is legitimate to apply this suggestion from the other side of the discursive boundary. But the procedure suggested by the author appears to describe with some precision what the Indians of the Rio Negro do with their narratives: there is no separate 'origin myth' for the whites, since their distinctive qualities are conceived as variants of those that distinguish the Indians from each other (see Hugh-Jones 1988, Goldman 2004). In this case, specifying the 'life' of the whites is part of the 'theory' of the native as much as their own, indicating a reverse anthropology that is equally symmetric - which perhaps is not the case in the famous analogy suggested by Wagner (1981) between 'culture' (of the whites vis-à-vis the Melanesians) and 'cargo' (of the Melanesians vis-à-vis the whites). The message, therefore, that the recent indigenous writings address to the whites concerns our common origin, as well as a creative mode of thinking about our differences. And if it really is the case of 'thinking with' them - rather than 'like' them, as Viveiros de Castro argues12 - taking the difference between their thought and ours seriously, we need to ask what the implications of this statement are. What kind of lesson can be drawn?

42 Without the space and competence to develop this point satisfactorily, I return to two points described above where I alluded to fundamental aspects of the local cosmology elaborated in diverse narratives. The first relates to the transformation of humankind, its emergence from the subaquatic world of the fish-people; the second to the fact that the whites do not possess 'ethnic groups' or 'culture': while the Indians are Tukano (earth-people), Desana (universe-people), Wanano (water-people) etc., the whites are generically considered 'shotgun-people.' The two points complement each other, albeit not explicitly, the second amounting to a deduction of the first. The slow process that led proto-humanity to differentiate itself from the fish resulted in a fundamental antagonism: since the fish-people envy humans, they became their enemies for not having effected that passage, and later became their principal food. Because they envy the human condition, fish are held responsible for most diseases and deaths, conceived as abductions of human souls. For this reason great care is needed both on fishing trips and when bathing in the river, especially on the part of menstruated women and their new-born children. 43 The whites, however, are completely oblivious to this fact, as the Indians have already long observed, since no white person is known to have died from a spiritual attack from the fish-people. It is deduced from this that they do not run the same risks as the Indians, since they do not fish and indeed eat other kinds of food. But from the indigenous point of view the main reason why they are invulnerable to attacks from the fish-people is their lack of ethnic groups. Not possessing ethnic groups means not possessing souls -in other words, a specific immaterial part of the person, coupled to the body via nomination and brought back by shamans from the same subaquatic houses located at the stopover places of the anaconda who led the ancestors to the Uaupés River. Without these soul-names the indigenous collectives could not reproduce themselves and grow, since by differentiating themselves as the Tukano, Desana and so on, they establish a relation of affinity between them as exchangers of women, which enables them to procreate. Sexual desire is one of the indices of the gradual acquisition

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of humanity by the indigenous ancestors, but the differentiation between their descendants, the condition for the satisfaction of this desire, is only possible through a reconnection, so to speak, with their previous pre-human condition. Not by chance, some of these names designate fish species, such as the aracu, the wolf fish or the peacock bass. A crucial consequences stems from this: these soul-names, suggestively conceived as 'fish bones,' are what make the Indians fully visible as true human beings, especially from the viewpoint of fish but also from other potentially aggressive beings. 13 If whites are oblivious to this type of aggression, it is very probably because they are invisible to the fish who therefore do not harm them. Hence dealing with the viewpoint of the other and with the serious risks this involves is fundamental for the Indians but apparently irrelevant for the whites. This is the first lesson of this history. 44 This succinct account certainly fails to do justice to the complexity and nuances of the topic, which I hope to be able to explore on another occasion. However it is enough to highlight a fundamental aspect of this Rio Negro ethno-anthropology: while to us it seems fundamental to understand how the Indians think to try to think with them, to the Indians it is important to understand our habits and manners, in other words, how we behave and what we do with our own body - enter the river without any type of precaution, for example. This careless behaviour leads to the second deduction, namely our invisibility from the viewpoint of the fish, which means that nobody in this universe envies us, and that the mythic bath that lightened our skin and made us the masters of production is the same bath that took from us the soul that the Indians were able to retain - "you whites have no soul," in the inspired phrase and title of a book of tales by the anthropologist Jorge Pozzobon. The soul that makes the Indians visible as true human beings in the eyes of others - the fish, first and foremost. What is the lesson then? The somewhat discouraging lesson is that, from the indigenous viewpoint, our own humanity is doubtful, perhaps since it resulted from an immediate and abrupt transformation, in contrast to the mediated and slow transformation experienced by the indigenous ancestors. But here we must tread carefully, since rather than constituting a form of ethnocentrism, this attitude seems to result from the long and very often painful ethnography that they themselves have been conducting on us. In sum they know us and our ways better than we know them and their thought. A knowledge undoubtedly produced through the logic of the sensible. But times have changed. Our desire to comprehend indigenous thought has not passed the Indians by unnoticed: on the contrary, many people on the Uaupés River are enthusiastic about this shift. Many are aware too, though, of the distance that separates their ways from our own, and frequently ask us: "Do you think you'll succeed?" 45 But returning to our point, it is necessary, therefore, to take this type of knowledge seriously. In my view, the best way of so doing perhaps is to avoid taking ourselves so seriously. This question could be examined in some depth, possibly more than can be explored here. Since we need to return to the initial point of the article, suffice to note that the virtues we so extol in various fields may simply not be those that impress - and mobilize - others. In the case in question - official cultural policies and the possibilities for effective involvement of indigenous peoples within their scope - what most stands out are the unpredictable effects elicited by the set of actions planned on the basis of what seem in principle coherent criteria. Fortunately there has been some space and dialogue for constant adjustments to be made. It would be difficult to expect otherwise given that on the Rio Negro, under the apparently shared language of heritage, there are diverse modes of knowing and correlate forms of sociality that we are only

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beginning to learn through local narratives. Here it is worth mentioning that IPHAN and the Ministry of Culture more recently began to support a large bi-national Brazilian-Colombian project intended to retrace the trajectory of the ancestral anaconda, mapping all the relevant places along the Rio Negro between Manaus and São Gabriel da Cachoeira, and from there to the Ipanoré Falls on the middle Uaupés from where humanity emerged. This project is now underway with a first part of the journey having been undertaken in February 2013, with the participation of Tukano, Desana, Pira-Tapuia, Tuyuka, Bará and Makuna indigenous specialists. Images and narratives are being captured with the objective of editing in the future a video documentary on the theme of the appearance and differentiation of humanity. We shift, therefore, from the journeys on paper maps to another type of experiment, where the intention is precisely to experiment what may have happened on that primordial journey. 46 In conclusion: the transformation routes described in these narratives refer to a primordial movement along the course of the region's rivers through which humankind transformed into its present form, leaving behind the subaquatic world in which it slowly acquired strength and shape. Perhaps this formulation is the most that can be achieved at the moment in terms of some kind of synthesis, but it at the very least prompts us to ask about its source of inspiration. Anyone familiar with the region and who has already travelled up and down the rivers for many days or weeks with the Indians to reach distant communities situated on the headwater rivers, and, in the opposite direction, visit kin who already live in the cities, will have some idea of how much this experience of prolonged travel - involving a 'picture by picture' contemplation of the landscape as it gradually reveals itself - stimulates thought and reflection. Hours and hours of silence spent in constant observation of the elements of the landscape, interspersed with the appearance here and there of communities and, above all, dangerous rapids, spectacularly shaped rocks, sandbanks and islands, variation in the patterns of shoreline vegetation, and the attentive search for the correct channel to follow, constitute a permanent scrutiny of what has already been seen and interpreted on previous voyages. In the end, each voyage can be considered a verification of what happened, or did not happen, on the first ever journey, that of the ancestral anaconda itself. The latter, for its part, is annually remembered through the upriver movement of shoals of various fish species and by the festivals held along different sections - i.e. their spawnings. 47 To travel in space and observe other movements is also, therefore, to travel in time and read the events and movements of past moments and eras within the landscape. What other events could have caused the qualities of the world and its inhabitants? This is why these earlier events were precipitated in the ancient and esoteric ritual discourses and songs, specialized knowledge par excellence. This leads us to conjecture on the extent to which the knowledge of the grandparents described earlier, sometimes deemed to be lost, or partially lost, is not found there still, so to speak: if not entirely stored in thought, then potentially distributed along these transformation routes.14 Between what is stored in thought and what is acquired through observation during successive voyages - of humans and non-humans - is situated perhaps the specific way in which knowledge is generated and, as we saw in the case of the Iauaretê Falls, disputed on the Rio Negro.

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48 Moreover, obtaining day-to-day food in the region demands knowing the appropriate locations to place the sophisticated fishing traps - cacuris, caiás and matapis - over the course of the seasons. As we have seen, these locations contain the rocks that crystallized the transformations of the Tariano demiurge and thus intentionally prepared them to ensure fish could be captured by future generations. Eating fish, and avoiding the risks associated with this consumption, therefore implies knowing this history; but such knowledge is tested, precisely, when one fishes. Knowing the myth and fishing appropriately are indissociable operations here. In my view, it is this apparently recursive relation between thought and practice that needs to be kept uppermost in mind when planning future actions to safeguard the cultural and/or intellectual rights of the indigenous peoples of the Rio Negro, and very probably elsewhere.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDRELLO, Geraldo. 2010. "Falas, objetos e corpos. Autores indígenas no alto rio Negro". Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 25(73):5-26.

ANDRELLO, Geraldo. 2012. "Histórias tariano e tukano. Política e ritual do rio Uaupés". Revista de Antropologia, 55(1):291-330.

ANDRELLO, Geraldo. (ed.). 2012. Rotas de criação e transformação. Narrativas de origem dos povos indígenas do Rio Negro. São Paulo: ISA/FOIRN.

BASSO, Keith. 1996. Wisdom sits in place. Landscape and language among the western Apache. Albuqierque: University of New México Press.

CABALZAR, Aloísio (ed.). 2010. Manejo do mundo. Conhecimentos e práticas dos povos indígenas do rio Negro. São Paulo: FOIRN/ISA.

CARNEIRO DA CUNHA, Manuela. 2009. "Relações e dissensões entre os saberes tradicionais e os saberes científicos". In: Cultura com aspas. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify. Pp. 301-310.

CAYÓN, Luis. 2008. "Ide Ma: el camino de água. Espacio, chamanismo y persona entre los Makuna". Antípoda, 7: 141-173.

GOLDMAN, Irving. 2004. Cubeo hehénewa religious thought. Metaphysics of a northwestern amazonian people. New York: Columbia University Press.

HUGH-JONES, Stephen. 1988. "The gun and the bow. Myths of white men and indians". L'Homme, 106-107: 138-155.

HUGH-JONES, Stephen. 2010. "Entre l'image et l'écrit. La politique tukano de patrimonialisation en Amazonie".Cahiers des Amériques Latines, 63-64: 195-227.

HUGH-JONES, Stephen. 2011. "Nuestra historia esta escrita en las pedras". Conferência magistral, Congreso internacional sobre antropología e historia "Memoria amazónica el los paises andinos", Bogotá. Mimeo.

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INGOLD, Tim. 2000. "To journey along a way of life. Maps, wayfiding and navigation". In: Theperception of environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge. Pp 219-241.

INGOLD, Tim. 2000. "Ancestry, generations, substance, memory, land". In: The perception of environment. Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 132-152.

INGOLD, Tim. 2011. "Anthropology is not ethnography". In: Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge and description. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 229-243.

LOLLI, Pedro. 2012. "Nos caminhos dos Yuhupdeh. Travessias e conhecimento no igarapé Castanha". In: Geraldo Andrello (ed.), Rotas de criação e transformação. Narrativas de origem dos povos indígenas do rio Negro. São Paulo: ISA/FOIRN. Pp. 211-222.

MAIA, Moisés & MAIA, Tiago. 2004. Isâ yẽküsimia masîke: a sabedoria de nossos antepassados. São Gabriel da Cachoeira: FOIRN.

RICARDO, Beto. 2001. "Dos petroglifos aos marcos de bronze". In: Povos indígenas no Brasil 1996-2000. São Paulo: Instituto Socioambiental. Pp. 245-254.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. 2004. "Perspectival anthropology and the method of controlled equivocation".Tipiti, 2(1):3-22.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. 2008. "Perspectivismo indígena". In: Beto Ricardo e Marina Antogiovani (eds.),Visões do rio Negro. São Paulo: ISA. Pp. 83-92.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. 2012. "Transformações na antropologia, transformações na antropologia". Mana.Estudos de Antropologia Social, 18(1):151-171.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo; GOLDMAN & ALMEIDA. 2006. "Etnologia indígena" e "antropologia das sociedades complexas": um experimento de ontografia comparativa. Rio de Janeiro: Projeto PRONEX/CNPq.

WAGNER, Roy. 1981. The invention of culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

XAVIER, Carlos. 2008. A cidade grande de Napirikoli e os petroglifos do Içana. Master's dissertation, PPGAS/MN/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro.

NOTES

1. These experiences took place at the National Centre of Cultural References (CNRC) and the National Pro-Memory Foundation in the period between the end of the 1970s and the mid-1980s. Both institutions were directed by Aloísio Magalhães. 2. This diagnosis of IPHAN's institutional vision of its own work in the upper Rio Negro region is based on my conversations with the anthropologist Ana Gita de Oliveira, a technical officer at the institute's Department of Intangible Heritage, responsible for coordinating its activities in the area. She enjoyed a privileged view of these issues, since as well as being a permanent employee of IPHAN, she had carried out research in Iauaretê and São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the 1980s as the basis for her master's dissertation and doctoral thesis in Anthropology at the University of Brasilia. 3. Among these actions we can list the support given to the rebuilding of malocas; the identification of sacred adornments held at the Indian Museum in Manaus; the elaboration of a Repatriation Agreement for these adornments drafted by IPHAN with the collaboration of lawyers from ISA and the participation of indigenous leaders from FOIRN; and the audio-visual

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documentation of the work process by Vincent Carelli from Vídeo nas Aldeias. It is also worth mentioning the implementation of a Culture Point at FOIRN in 2008, which formed the basis for a diverse range of local actions focused on cultural heritage, leading more recently to plans for a specific program for the Rio Negro under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture. This program, still under development, will involve indigenous communities situated on the Colombian side of the region. 4. On this point the distinction between 'mapping' and 'mapmaking' would be equivalent to the distinction between the oral and the written (again see Ingold 2000, Chapter 13). 5. Teams of advisors-researchers from ISA began to work with community leaders and local associations in 1993 on a project to produce an extensive map of the region's communities, as well as advise FOIRN on assembling a network of effective communication between the more than 500 communities represented by the entity, belonging to more than 20 indigenous peoples, distributed across the enormous system of rivers forming the basin of the upper Rio Negro. This first phase of work was crowned by the homologation of five Indigenous Lands in the region, covering a total area of more than 10 million hectares, in 1998. FOIRN's political and institutional consolidation, as well as the database accumulated thus far, played a fundamental role, enabling the successful implementation of a participatory process of physical demarcation of these areas. 6. A description of a number of these experiences can be found in a volume recently edited by Cabalzar (2010). 7. In Tukano, Isa wikisimia masinsehé, an expression chosen by a member of an important Tukano clan as the title of the book in which they narrate their version of the origin history of the universe and humanity (see Maia & Maia 2002). 8. On "controlled equivocation"as a virtual positive component of ethnographic analisys, see Viveiros de Castro, 2004. 9. Earlier examples could also be cited here, such as the famous text on Jurupari published by Stradelli at the end of the nineteenth century and the articles by Marcos Fulop in the 1950s on Tukano cosmogony. On the production of books of mythology by indigenous authors, as well as other kinds of writing produced in collaboration with anthropologists, see Andrello (2010 and ed. 2012) and Hugh-Jones (2010 and 2011). 10. Defining the extent to which the indigenous conceptual schemes themselves determined the form assumed by later ethnographic descriptions would demand a re-reading guided by this problematic generated by the extensive set of works available today, but I suspect that their influence is far from negligible. It is worth recalling what Irving Goldman observed in his second book (Goldman 2004), namely that an indigenous anthropology would correspond to the origin narratives themselves. In this book, indeed, the author famously devotes himself to what we would today call 'cultural revitalization' work, having stimulated the revival of a mourning ritual among the Cubeo Hehenewa. 11. A collection made up of eight volumes published by the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN), with versions of the origin narratives elaborated by Desana, Tukano, Baniwa and Tariano authors. Other volumes are currently in production phase, though whether these will see the light of day is unknown. Like those already published, they result from the encounter between anthropologists and people from the region interested in producing manuscripts. 12. Although in the present case we could perhaps take the exercise of symmetrization contained in the indigenous narratives as an inspiration for our own experiments. 13. These conceptions clearly invert certain aspects of the theory of Amerindian perspectivism as formulated by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Here the prey of humans - the fish - do not see them as jaguars or cannibal monsters, but as humans, a condition that they could not attain. Consequently the prey par excellence is also the predator par excellence, epitomized by the anaconda, the mother of all fish. Perhaps the difference corresponds to one between groups that

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privilege hunting and those that privilege fishing. I hope to be able to discuss this point more fully on another occasion; not, of course, to claim that perspectivism does not apply in the Rio Negro region, but to verify how far its basic components involve an important transformation that can provide us with a more complete generalization of the model. After all, here humanity does not correspond to a condition removed by humans and lost by animals, but a condition corresponding to a transformation in the animal condition itself and, to a certain extent, dependent on it. An unequal condition dynamically shared by the so-called 'transformation people,' true humankind. I suspect that perspectivism can also help us to comprehend the nature of the hierarchical relations on the Rio Negro and thus conflicts like the one we have seen emerge in the case of the Iauaretê Falls, involving the Tukano and Tariano. 14. In support of this hypothesis, see the recent works on the Northwest Amazonian region by Hugh-Jones (2011), Xavier (2008), Lolli (2012) and Cayón (2008), and others collected in Andrello ed. (2012).

ABSTRACTS

This article begins with a series of discussions on the identification of sacred sites in the locality of Iauaretê, situated on the shores of the middle Uaupés River, between 2004 and 2011, involving the participation of local indigenous leaders and representatives of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN). The work of identifying these sites began with the institute's visit to the region in 2004 and the partnership established with the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN) and the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a non- government organization that has provided advice and support to indigenous peoples of the region for two decades. Following an evaluation of the effects of the listing of the Iauaretê Falls as intangible heritage by IPHAN in 2005, as well as the preservation actions implemented subsequently, the article explores some aspects of the new collaborative dynamics between anthropologists and indigenous researchers/intellectuals which the experience brings to the fore, as well as the specific way in which this phenomenon is manifested in the context of the upper Rio Negro.

Este artigo apresenta, inicialmente, uma série de discussões sobre a identificação de sítios sagrados existentes na localidade de Iauaretê, situada às margens do médio rio Uaupés, entre 2004 e 2011, da qual participaram lideranças indígenas locais e representantes do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Iphan). As atividades de identificação desses sítios iniciaram-se com a aproximação do órgão à região em 2004 e à parceria que estabeleceu com a Federação das Organizações Indígena do Rio Negro (FOIRN) e o Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), organização não-governamental que presta assessoria aos povos indígenas da região há duas décadas. A partir de uma avaliação sobre os efeitos do registro da Cachoeira de Iauaretê como patrimônio imaterial em 2005 pelo Iphan, bem como das ações de salvaguarda que se seguiram, busca-se explorar alguns aspectos das novas dinâmicas colaborativas entre antropólogos e pesquisadores/intelectuais indígenas que a experiência põe em destaque, bem como o modo específico como esse fenômeno se atualiza do contexto do alto rio Negro.

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INDEX

Palavras-chave: patrimônio imaterial, conhecimento, narrativas míticas, antropologia simétrica Keywords: intangible heritage, knowledge, mythic narratives, symmetrical anthropology

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Film directed by Vincent Carelli2006, 48 min Iauaretê, Cachoeira das Onças [Jaguar Waterfalls]

Vincent Carelli

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 1 journals.openedition.org/vibrant/969

2 The film was produced in 2006 as part of the Registration Process of Iauaretê, Cachoeira das Onças [Jaguar Waterfalls], municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the Upper Rio Negro. This sacred place was the first site to be inscribed in the "Book of Places" of Brazilian Immaterial Cultural Heritage. In addition to subsidizing the inclusion of these elements into the listing process, the film features the mythical account of the origin of humanity, which the Tariano Indians attribute to the stones of Iauaretê falls. It also shows some of the activities to safeguard the site, such as the reconstruction of a large hut and the successful attempt to retrieve ritual objects that had been stored for many years in a museum in Manaus. 3 IPHAN and the Ministry of Culture more recently began to support a large bi-national Brazilian-Colombian project intended to retrace the trajectory of the tukanoan ancestral anaconda-canoe, mapping all the relevant places along the Rio Negro between Manaus and São Gabriel da Cachoeira, and from there to the Ipanoré Falls on the middle Uaupés from where humanity emerged according to the vision of tukanoan Indians. This project is now underway with a first part of the journey having been undertaken in February 2013, with the participation of Tukano, Desana, Pira-Tapuia, Tuyuka, Bará and Makuna indigenous specialists. Images and narratives are being produced with the aim of editing a new video documentary on the theme of the simultaneous appearance and differentiation of regional landscape and humanity.

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The recognition of Brazilian samba de roda and reunion maloya as intangible cultural heritage of humanity

Guillaume Samson and Carlos Sandroni Translation : John Angell

EDITOR'S NOTE

Accepted for publication on February 22, 2013.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The authors would like to thank Michael Iyanaga for his suggestions and remarks on the English version.

Introduction

1 To what extent does recognition of musical forms as Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) relate to national politics and local identity struggles? What is revealed by the ways in which cultural expressions are selected as candidates for inclusion in international Proclamations and Lists? What is the impact of these choices, in which governments appear to play a central role (Roda, 2011), on musical practices and their contexts? To address these questions, this article examines comparatively the complex processes of recognition by UNESCO as ICH of humanity of two African Diaspora dance and music cultural expressions, samba de roda from Brazil and maloyafrom Reunion Island1. In particular, we explore the dynamics of local politics and emotional investment

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regarding the respective traditions while also considering the ways in which such traditions have been reevaluated locally in the context of international recognition.

2 It is important to note that we, the authors of this article, each participated individually as ethnomusicologists in the respective commissions which were established to compile the applications sent to UNESCO on maloya andsamba de roda. Based on our experiences, we will first examine the relationships between the ICH processes and regulations, how they are implemented institutionally, and the diversity of cultural and political contexts in which musics are eligible for recognition. Second, we will discuss the role of cultural expertise in these processes of cultural revitalization, considering such questions as: 1) Should we think of the investment of UNESCO and the ICH as something akin to a set of tools employable by communities in order to assert their right to difference in a globalized world? 2) Or, on the contrary, should the ICH policies be regarded as a new means of "inventing traditions," resulting in top-down constructions imposed on the people they supposedly represent? Between these two positions, the first of which can be described "as too naïve" and the other "too critical" (Sandroni, 2010), we have above all sought, through our analyses, to underscore the complexity and diversity of local cultural and historical situations that can be affected by UNESCO's designation of the ICH status.

1. Samba de roda and maloya: Some Elements of Historical and Cultural Comparison

1.1 "Neo-African" Musics

3 A comparison between maloya and samba de roda seems pertinent for several reasons. Both developed in the analogous socio-economic and cultural contexts of nineteenth- century colonial sugar cane plantation societies. Defined by forced African migration as a result of the slave trade and, beginning in 1848 for Reunion Island, indentured servitude, maloya (in what is considered its "traditional" form in the Island) and samba de roda belong to what Peter Manuel (1989: 25) has characterized as "neo-African" New World musics. According to this model, both maloya and samba de roda are defined by songs involving alternating responsorial (i.e., call-and-response) singing between a soloist and a choir, and are performed with the accompaniment of orchestras composed mainly of drums and rattles. They also share choreographic practices in which couples of dancers move either in succession or simultaneously inside a circle of participants or assistants. Dance moves themselves are also similar, composed of "short, quick steps" (Chaudenson, 1974 for maloya; Waddey, 1981 for samba de roda) that shuffle along the ground. Finally, maloya and samba de roda have historically comprised a sort of "common cultural denominator" as part of a cluster of religious, economic, and ludic practices specific to plantation workers. Until the 1960s on Reunion Island, the musical practices currently associated with maloya were common across a variety of contexts that integrated ancestor worship, work songs (linked to the cultivation of sugar cane), entertainment practices (such as the bal maloya), and a form of combat- dance called moring (Samson, 2008). In the Reconcavo region of Brazil, samba de roda is typically associated with entertainment practices, but it is also a part of syncretic cults dedicated to Catholic saints, in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, and in the combat-dance practice called capoeira. In their historical performance contexts and

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formal characteristics,maloya and samba de roda both appear to share significant attributes. In fact, musicians in Reunion occasionally invoke their shared traits as explanations for the appeal of samba and Brazilian musical culture in general on the island.2

1.2 Different Musical Contexts of Recognition

4 A comparison between the contemporary expressions of these musical genres helps to shed light on the ways in which both genres were seen as consistent with the value system of the ICH. But if we take the comparison a step further, a more sociological perspective on their respective contexts reveals several fundamental differences that strongly influenced the path to, and the consequences of, recognition by UNESCO. These differences relate to the position of the musical forms recognized by the ICH in their respective fields of cultural production (Bourdieu, 1998). In the case of maloya, the entire genre was recognized, including its many varieties - "traditional," "neo- traditional," "electric". Like maloya, samba in fact encompasses a diverse group of categories that includes samba-enredo, samba de partido alto, and samba de roda, among others. But the ICH award came to one particular version of this much larger samba genre. Because they play different roles in their respective societies and relate to national musical identities in unique ways, this distinction between maloya and samba de roda has important implications for their ICH designation.

1.3 The Emergence of Samba as the Brazilian National Music

5 Samba serves as a powerful symbol of national identity in Brazil, rarely questioned as such to date. Its rise to the status of "Brazil's national music" took place during the 1930s. The first published instances of the word "samba" in reference to music or dance date from the 1830s in Brazil. In 1842, the word appeared for the first time in Bahia to describe the practices of enslaved Africans. Beginning in the 1860s, however, it became increasingly common in print sources to refer to the music and dance practices of slaves, as well as of free blacks, mulattos, and poor whites. In the ensuing decade, references to "sambas" in the Bahian press share several characteristics with the present-day samba de roda of the Recôncavo. The subsequent popularization of the word in Rio de Janeiro was associated with the immigration of Bahian blacks to the capital immediately after slavery was abolished in 1888. There are also several early twentieth- century references to popular celebrations in Rio de Janeiro during which samba was practiced.

6 Recording technology first arrived in Rio de Janeiro (the capital at the time) in 1902 and played a key role in the popularization of samba. Musical genres such as lundu, modinha and choro gradually became part of an emergent industrial and commercial network in which the music was diffused as merchandise via records and later, through radio broadcasts. The creation of samba as a genre of popular music was part of this broader process. The success of the song "Pelo telefone" during the 1917 Carnival was an early milestone. Allegedly composed by Ernesto dos Santos, aka Donga, the son of a Bahian woman from the city of Santo Amaro (in the Recôncavo), "Pelo telefone" was described as a "samba carnavalesque." It is worth noting, however, that some members of the

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Bahian community of Rio de Janeiro accused Donga of appropriating collective musical heritage for his own purposes (Sandroni 2001). 7 In the 1920s, the spread of samba throughout Rio was facilitated by a variety of media, and it eventually was acknowledged as the country's national musical genre in the 1930s. "Samba carioca", which developed in Rio and later spread throughout the country, evolved a style that was very distinct from Bahian samba de roda. The "nationalization" of samba took place against a backdrop of profound social and political changes and increased attention to the question of national identity (Vianna, 1995). During the twentieth century, this came to involve the question of the different "races" from which the Brazilian people originated. According to a view that was prevalent among the early-twentieth-century political and intellectual elite, racial mixing doomed the nation because it was perceived as a form of degeneration that would cause the country to lag "behind" Europe and the United States. The massive influx of whites from Europe between the 1890s and the 1930s was thus perceived as the only means of counter-acting the negative effects of racial mixing (Skidmore, 1993; Schwarcz, 1993). 8 Between the 1920s and 1930s, the "modernist" literary generation, together with culturalism-influenced sociologists such as Gilberto Freyre, radically inverted this relationship with mestiçagem by reframing it as a positive attribute. From that point forward, mestiçagem was interpreted as proof of the tolerant, harmonious character of Brazilian society (Freyre, 1997 [1933]). Since then, mixing has even come to be seen as a kind of prophecy about the cultural creativity of Brazilians. Indeed, Brazilians have often been portrayed as open to unexpected blends, continually searching for hybrid solutions to daily problems and to spiritual matters (Ribeiro et al, 1996). Towards the end of the 1930s, the promotion of mestiçagem, albeit often tainted by thinly-veiled racism, came to dominate official discourse as well as the media. Samba thus came to be perceived as the popular musical genre that best expressed Brazilian "racial mixing" and indeed, as an example "par excellence" of Brazilian cultural creativity. This was particularly well expressed by the celebrated samba "Aquarela do Brasil," composed in 1939 by Ari Barroso (known in English as "Brazil"). The lyrics of the song, which was hugely successful in Brazil and internationally, describe Brazil as a "mulatto" country, "brown," "tanned" ("mulato, moreno, trigueiro"), a "land of samba and tambourines" ("terra de samba e pandeiro"); the song's references to skin tones that were neither completely "white" nor totally "black" were inextricably linked to musical topoi. 9 From the 1940s to the early twenty-first century, Brazilian music saw the popularization of several other successful musical genres, such as baião, bossa-nova, iê- iê-iê, MPB, and axé, but, for most Brazilians, none ever rivaled the more-or-less official position of samba as "the most Brazilian of musics."

1.4 Competition Between maloya and séga on Reunion: The Question of Legitimacy

10 Compared with samba, maloya has a substantially more ambivalent relationship with the musical identity of Reunion Island and has been the object of considerable controversy. Having first appeared in the public and media discourse in the 1970s, maloya has been involved in an on-going tug-of-war for representativeness withséga, a Creole musical form. On Reunion, the distinction between séga and maloya became established in the

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second half of the twentieth century (Samson, 2008). The distinction divided the field of musical creation on the island into two principal genres that, although closely related in historical and musical terms, were nevertheless often perceived as opposed to each other in terms of cultural representativeness. A key factor in this division relates to the terminological distinction between séga and maloya.

11 The term séga first appeared in the late seventeenth century in the Mascarene Islands, and along with its variants, tchéga and shiega, continued to have multiple meanings well into the mid-twentieth century. In colonial travel narratives and journals, the term was used to describe all of the musical practices of laborers of African and Malagasy origin, including slaves, descendants of slaves, and indentured servants. Beginning in the 1850s-1860s, the term was also applied to Creolized forms of quadrille and popular singing. First mentioned in the early nineteenth century, the term maloya appears to have come into widespread use beginning in the 1920s to refer to the music of the descendants of slaves and indentured servants of African and Malagasy origin (music that had been labeled séga in colonial documents until that time). This hypothesis, widely accepted since the pioneering studies of Jean-Pierre La Selve (1995), should be interpreted carefully, however. Until the 1960s, a wide range of diverse, local terminologies (romans, kabaré, maloya, chanson maloya, chanson kabaré, séga maloya...) appear to have been used to describe the musical traits ascribed to the broad category of maloyamusic ." (Chaudenson, 1974; Samson, 2008). 12 In the second half of the twentieth century, two movements helped cement the polarized distinction between the terms séga and maloya: 1) beginning in the 1950s, the media popularized Creole popular songs called séga by way of recordings and talent shows, a development that was partly propelled by the folklore movement; 2) beginning in the 1970s, in a militant leftist political context, plantation laborers' "traditional" musical practices were revitalized under the exclusive label of maloya. Partially reflecting conflicting views of the island's political and cultural ties to France, including debates regarding the island's autonomy, the opposition between séga and maloya was constructed during the 1970s. Séga came to function to some extent as a symbol of collusion with the right-wing anti-autonomist establishment, while maloya embodied cultural and political resistance to assimilation with France, a position politically identified with the left-wing pro-autonomy movements and the Parti Communiste Réunionnais (PCR). Although it is partly valid, this polarized view of séga and maloya oversimplifies the occasionally blurred boundaries between the two genres. Séga musicians, some of whom were themselves PCR militants, had contacts with maloya beginning in the late 1950s. Conversely, some maloya singers recordedséga versions (i.e., with modern orchestras) of songs that are more typically associated with maloya. Finally, in the mid-1970s, séga and maloya musicians occasionally shared the same stage. 13 The evolution of maloya as a totally distinct musical genre dates from this period, however. In the 1980s and 1990s, the institutional recognition of the genre by cultural policies helped it become part of the national and international live performance circuit and World Music scene. séga remained confined to the local and regional market, however, much more present than maloya on the island's airwaves and album sales charts. The economic role and pathways of diffusion of séga and maloya are grafted onto contrasting cultural positionings. While ségalyrics tend to refer to daily life, humor, anecdotes, and popular criticism, since the 1970s maloya has been more closely

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associated with complex and occasionally contradictory themes involving memorial revitalization, the return to ancestral roots, and the literary and musical avant-garde. 14 As a consequence of this process of differentiation since the 1970s, séga and maloya currently occupy very different positions within the island's cultural field. Their roles as the twin musical emblems of Reunion, which are sustained by the media, the recording industry, official institutions, and the live music scene, creates a sort of competition between them. And the process of selecting a single genre as representing the island's culture - a sole "winner", implying "one country, one culture, one people, and thus one music" - resulted in a strong tendency to mask the ties between the two musics and the complementarity of their respective fields of expression.

2. The ICH and Collective Representativeness

15 Dominant ideas about collective musical identity appear to powerfully influence the reception of official forms of recognition of musical genres within their societies and cultural fields. The recognition of samba de roda andmaloya by UNESCO elicited very different local reactions, which serve to underscore the relative and "localized" dimension and contrasting character of ICH procedures.

2.1 Samba and the ICH Proclamation: From Representativeness to the Risk of Extinction

16 In these early years of the twenty-first century, samba continues to function as the emblematic national musical genre of Brazil. This was the clear message of a televised report on April 23, 2004 that aired on the Globo network's Jornal Nacional, the most influential news broadcast in Brazil.3 Broadcast on what is the Catholic feast day of Saint George, the report presented images of popular devotion to the saint while emphasizing the importance of samba as a national symbol. The relationship between the two subjects-Saint George and samba-gradually became clear as the images succeeded each other. First, the devotion to Saint George is considered particularly strong among samba practitioners and fans in Rio, who associate him with Ogun, a Candomblé "orixá," and Ogun Beira-Mar, the spiritual entity of Umbanda (another popular religion in Brazil). Moreover, April 23 allegedly corresponds with the birth date of Tia Ciata, or "Aunt" Ciata, a key figure in the early development ofsamba. The broadcast concluded with the announcement of a major decision related to samba, which had been made by the Minister of Culture, the musician Gilberto Gil. The televised announcement read as follows: "Samba and devotion to a warrior saint are united on this day, April 23, in Rio de Janeiro. Today is Saint George's day, and musicians and composers of samba have commemorated the birthday of the Bahian cook, "Aunt" Ciata, who made samba into a national symbol. (...) Samba is born of a mixture of drums and faith. It is for this reason that the Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, has proposed samba, a symbol of the mixing that has forged the Brazilian soul, as a candidate for recognition as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The final choice will be made by UNESCO, the United Nations institution that promotes Education and Culture." 17 This announcement was followed by an excerpt from an interview with the Minister- musician in which he stated that: "We think that samba represents an important

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dimension of this heritage, perhaps one of the most important dimensions of Brazilian intangible heritage."

18 This was followed by a declaration by Beth Carvalho, one of the most well known contemporary samba singers: "Samba is the most representative and the most revolutionary musical genre of the Brazilian people." 19 Gil's proposal was to submit samba as Brazil's candidate for inclusion in the Third Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The program, which UNESCO began developing in 1998, produced proclamations in 2001, 2003, and 2005. These "Proclamations," which preceded the International Convention for Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (voted in 2003 and ratified in 2006), were the first concrete steps taken by UNESCO to widely promote the ICH. Each member country was allowed to present a single candidate for each round. Among the requirements for candidacies, in addition to intrinsic cultural excellence, was the "risk of extinction"-as UNESCO called it-of the cultural practices in question. In fact, the Proclamation's goal was not merely to promote remarkable cultural forms, but also to highlight the cultural importance of candidates considered to be "endangered". The criteria for the selection of "candidates" were as follows: a. "its outstanding value as a masterpiece of the human creative genius"; b. "its roots in a cultural tradition or the cultural history of the community concerned"; c. "its role as a means of affirming the cultural identity of the peoples and cultural communities concerned, its importance as a source of inspiration and intercultural exchanges and as a means of bringing peoples and communities closer together, and its contemporary cultural and social role in the community concerned"; d. "excellence in the application of the skill and technical qualities displayed"; e. "its value as a unique testimony of a living cultural tradition"; f. "the risk of its disappearing, due either to a lack of means for safeguarding and protecting it or of processes of rapid change, or to urbanization, or to acculturation."4

20 The criteria can be grouped into three broad areas. Points "a" and "d" concerned the intrinsic quality of the "candidates." Points "b," "c," and "e" related to the relationships between the "candidates" and the cultural traditions among the peoples and "communities" in which they were situated. Point "f" concerned the risk of extinction. In summary, UNESCO required that potential candidates 1) present intrinsic qualities; 2) be integral parts of the cultural traditions of a community; and 3) be threatened with extinction.

21 Several Brazilian expressions of popular culture could have satisfied these conditions, but samba had the added attribute of a claim to national representativeness. It is nevertheless worth noting that the word "nation" does not appear among the criteria for candidates. The word "people" figures prominently (twice), as does "community" (four times). If the intention was for these terms to be interpreted as signifying "nation," samba was an ideal candidate. After all, compared to similar Brazilian dances such as jongo of the southeastern region or the tambor de crioula of the state of Maranhão, samba was and continues to be widely viewed as a national symbol. 22 This is not the only possible interpretation of the Proclamation criteria, however. And indeed, as Hafstein (2004) contends with regard to the 2003 Convention (whose general orientation is identical to that of the Proclamation of Masterpieces), it could be argued

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that this is not the most appropriate interpretation. After all, a cultural form that has acquired some degree of "national representativeness" might for this very reason be incapable of satisfying condition "f," the "risk of extinction." It is also clear that this factor had a negative impact on the candidacy of Argentine tango. Tango was a candidate for the Proclamation in 2003, and the jury reasoned that because it was internationally known, amply recognized by the media, taught in dance schools, and promoted as a tourist attraction, tango was far from facing the risk of extinction.

2.2 The Final Choice of the Brazilian Candidate5

23 The proposal to submit samba as the Brazilian candidate was discussed at the Ministry of Culture at the end of March 2004, and the press announced its candidacy in early April. However, as we shall see, at that point the public treatment of the subject revealed a flagrant misunderstanding of the Proclamation's requirements. During the months of April and May, the Ministry consulted with experts and researchers. It was at this point that I (Carlos Sandroni) was invited to contribute. I had published a book on samba (Sandroni, 2001) that had received favorable coverage in the Brazilian press. For this reason, IPHAN (the Brazilian institution for cultural heritage) invited me to join the project team in early May 2004. As a result, I participated in the discussions that led the Ministry to decide, on June 9, that the Brazilian candidate would not be "Brazilian samba" in general but "samba de roda of the Bahian Recôncavo."

24 This decision was based on two arguments. The first concerned the requirement of point "f" of the Proclamation regulations. The risk of extinction of cultural forms, or of entire cultures, has been a frequent and often controversial subject within academic disciplines such as cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology. In the context of political decisions, however, a degree of pragmatism is always recommended. It seemed obvious that it would be difficult to convince the Proclamation jury that "Brazilian samba" met this condition, given its wide diffusion and international prestige (which are comparable to Argentine tango). Indeed, this argument effectively eliminated "Brazilian samba" as a potential candidate. 25 Numerous other expressions of the intangible Brazilian heritage might also have been credible candidates for the Proclamation's condition "f" as for the other requirements. For example, it would have been relatively easy to demonstrate the intrinsic value and cultural and community insertion of, as well as the risk of extinction faced by,jongo or tambor de crioula, to which we referred earlier. The final choice of samba de roda is evidence that pragmatism again won the day. The Minister had already announced samba as the candidate, and the press had reported his announcement. The substitution of samba for samba de roda enabled point "f" to be accommodated while also respecting Minister Gilberto Gil's announcement in maintaining a form of "samba" as the Brazilian candidate. 26 It was not simply a question of terminology, however. The historiography of Brazilian popular music reveals a strong connection between Rio samba and Bahian samba de roda. The latter was in fact often described as the "root" (and Bahia as the "cradle") of Rio samba (or "samba carioca.") The narratives surrounding the origins ofsamba carioca emphasized the role of Bahian immigration to Rio in festivals and among the Bahian "aunts" such as Ciata, Presciliana (Donga's mother), Amelia (the mother of another celebrated Rio "sambista" named João da Baiana, or "João, son of the Bahian woman").

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Samba thus gradually evolved into a new form in Rio de Janeiro and, although scholars such as Alves (2002) and Lopes (1992) have criticized the simplistic nature of these narratives because they do not account for other influences, Bahian samba remains an unavoidable historiographic reference for Rio samba. 27 Gilberto Gil's initial proposal to apply for ICH recognition of the entire samba genre would have been viable had the candidacy been targeted towards the "Representative List" of the new ICH Convention, which took effect two years after samba de roda was officially recognized. The Proclamation of Masterpieces resembled instead the "List of Cultural Expressions in Danger of Extinction" of the same Convention. The solution that was found--samba de roda--thus represented a compromise between two motivations. One was an expression of Gilberto Gil's desire to promote national identity, and the other related to the fragile nature and risk of extinction of a cultural form.samba de roda satisfied condition "f" of the Proclamation, while also obliquely satisfying the expectation created among the Brazilian people by the Minister's announcement that the candidate should be "representative of the country." Samba de roda was a credible "representative of the nation" not only because it was "a type ofsamba," but also because it is the samba form generally considered to be the "origin" or the "source" of Riosamba, which has achieved the status of the musical emblem of Brazil. In addition to the requirements of the UNESCO Proclamation, the exigencies of national self-congratulation were thus also satisfied by the final choice. 28 When the decision was announced by UNESCO that samba de roda had been designated as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, the only negative reactions expressed in the press came from individuals who did not understand the regulations of the Proclamation and insisted on the greater representativeness of Rio's samba than Bahian samba; Gilberto Gil's Bahian origins were mischievously cited as an explanation for the final choice of Bahian samba as the Brazilian candidate. 29 2.3 Maloya and the ICH Representative List: From Recognition to Emblematization

30 The inclusion of maloya on the ICH representative list was achieved within an institutional context involving a debate about the cultural policies of the Regional Council. The Maison des Civilisations et de l'Unité Réunionnaise("House of Civilizations and Unity of Reunion", MCUR), whose scientific team was presided over by two academics, Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou, was responsible for compiling the application file for the ICH before it was forwarded to the French Ministry of Culture.This policy was a significant feature of the MCUR's principal lines of action, which were designed to contribute to greater cultural equilibrium among the different cultural components of Reunion society. As the title of the preservation project indicated, the objective was to articulate recognition of the cultural diversity of Reunion Island and to unify the island's "people."6 31 These goals can be interpreted as revealing contemporary reinvestment in the processes of Creolization that gave rise to Reunion society. The positive aspects of Creolization are considered to center on a cluster of processes that give rise to new cultural forms by melding together cultures of different origins. In some ways, affirming a program specifically devoted to "Civilizations" and "Unity" expressed a desire to perpetuate the highest achievements of the cultural history of Reunion. This continuity appeared to suggest three narratives that could or ought to coexist: The maintenance of a link with source cultures, the coexistence of these cultural groups

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within the same geographical space, and the positive value of cultural transfers between these different groups: 32 "Let's say it again. The unity of Reunion is a unity that must value the fecundity of Creolization as an intercultural practice. It must preserve the ability to integrate, transform, and make its own that which it receives." (MCUR,Pour un musée du temps present ["Towards a Museum of the Present Day"], 2007: 91) 33 The advocacy for the merits of Creolization by the MCUR guided its approach in terms of culture and heritage, which in turn provided the inspiration and rationale for the building of a new cultural center beginning in 2010. The facility was intended as a modern, living museum that would offer exhibit spaces and research facilities, as well as spaces for performances and debate. Its ultimate purpose was to provide the island's inhabitants with a site that would encourage consciousness-raising, reflexivity, and cultural dialogue. 34 Given the project's aims to promote cultural tolerance and egalitarianism, it is perhaps surprising that the cultural center aroused powerful opposition. The factors that most directly influenced the reaction to maloya's recognition by UNESCO centered on the emphasis on non-European cultural elements and the "unofficial" heritage of Reunion's population. The leaders of the MCUR and Paul Vergès, president of the Regional Council, made a particular point of these issues, beginning with the organization's very first actions in 2004. The MCUR introduced the question of music very early in the discussions, and in 2004, the title Zarboutan nout kiltir (ZNK) was created as a distinction that would be awarded to honor "the contribution of the women and men of Reunion to the preservation, promotion, creation, and transmission of the intangible cultural heritage of Reunion Island" (MCUR 2009). The first year that the ZNK title was awarded, it recognized the achievements of a maloya musician, Gérose Barivoitse, aka Lo Rwa Kaf ("the Kaffir King"). Four other leading maloya musicians, all claiming African or Malagasy origins, received the ZNK title the following year. This recognition of African cultural contributions to music appears to have been a priority that arose from an understanding of diversity and the goal of focusing on less "official" currents in Reunion's cultural history. 35 In this respect, the actions of the MCUR followed more or less in the footsteps of PCR cultural militancy in the 1970s. This militancy, including the production of a series of "traditional" maloya recordings, fueled its increasing prominence. Some of these records had a powerful political dimension, blending old songs with speeches, testimony from militants, and songs with lyrics critical of the period's political opponents. Furthermore, Peuple de La Réunion. Peuple du maloya ["People of Reunion. People of maloya"], one of the LPs recorded during the Fourth Congress of the PCR (1976), emphasized that "every inhabitant of Reunion," whether of African descent or not, could-or should-feel a sense of belonging through maloya, which was becoming a symbolic part of the island's political struggle. 36 In the post-colonial political context of the 1970s, a period during which independence movements were springing up all over Africa, the PCR was embroiled in a polarized political conflict that pitted its pro-autonomy position against right-wing anti- autonomist political forces. In part, pro-autonomy militancy also relied on militancy regarding cultural forms, which symbolized the struggle against colonial oppression whose first victims had been the descendants of slaves and indentured servants. As a consequence of this coalescence between politics and culture, cultural positions,

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especially with regard to music and language, came to be closely linked to politics. This in turn favored the emergence of an ideology that, as revealed by the conflict surrounding the ICH recognition ofmaloya in 2009, persisted within the island's cultural and political spheres. The inherent tensions within this ideology are clear: On the one hand, it celebrated métissage (racial mixture) and the desire to embrace Reunion Island as a historic possession of France; on the other hand, was the desire to encourage the diversity of specific historical narratives, leading to the conception of the island's cultural unity that did not emphasize-and even questioned-this very same connection with France. Caught up in this ideological conflict, the promotion ofmaloya by the PCR in the 1970s greatly contributed to the recognition of African and Malagasy influences as part of the political and cultural identity of the island. It contributed also to the recognition of rites, cults, and the invocations of the ancestors as forces in the island's colonial history. The debate surrounding the recognition ofmaloya by the ICH is best seen in the context of this political environment.

2.4 Choosing maloya: Conflicts and Resentment over Identity Issues7

37 With the support of the Pôle Régional des Musiques Actuelles ("Regional Organization for Local Contemporary Music", or "PRMA", an organization devoted to support local musicians and producers), the MCUR led the initiative to propose maloya as a candidate for the ICH representative list (according to the new Convention of 2003) and took responsibility for compiling the application materials. As a member of the PRMA team, I (Guillaume Samson) became involved in this process when I was invited to contribute documentation in support of the candidacy. The final draft emphasized the vitality of the genre and its close ties to the musical identity of the island. This approach helped the organization avoid the legitimacy conflicts concerning culture and identity of which maloyahad been the focus since it first gained wide popularity. The application also stressed the fact that the "concerned community" was "the entire population of Reunion" and that maloya had become the "emblem of Reunion culture," "the very symbol of a cultural identity that spanned generations."8 However, the absence of a true, broad-based consensus on this question has pervaded the cultural environment of the island ever since the 1970s, a point of contention that was given new energy during the dissension surrounding the recognition ofmaloya by the ICH.

38 To fully understand this conflict, it should be kept in mind that the international recognition of maloya was interpreted locally, in a manner consistent with the arguments contained in the application, as cementing its status as the musical emblem of Reunion. The question of the "risk of extinction" was not part of the criteria for joining the representative list as defined in the 2003 Convention. Maloya, one musical form among others on Reunion Island, was thus awarded a specific symbolic value linked to cultural representativeness by the press following its official selection. In the cultural and political environment of Reunion, displacing the question of representativeness in the direction of the question of a "national"9 symbol further fueled the ensuing conflict involving maloya. In particular, it helped drive the competition for representativeness between maloya and séga. The reactions in the press during the days following the announcement offer ample evidence of this shift in

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emphasis. On October 2, 2010, Bernadette Ladauge, an influential figure in Reunion's folklore scene for the past forty years, declared in the Journal de l'Ile de La Réunion: "What amazes me is to see only maloya and not séga listed as heritage by UNESCO. Maloya, historically, is séga [...]. That's how we called the slaves' dances. [...] Séga presents the basic rhythmic pattern of our music, and you distinguish maloya from it just through a difference in tempo." 39 Conversely, there was this reaction from a well-known maloya musician and militant: "Great! This is what we were hoping for [...]. It [maloya] should be everywhere in Reunion, just asséga is everywhere on Mauritius10[...]." 40 The initial reaction centers on the historic links between maloya and séga and underscores the fact that, despite differences in terminology, maloya is allegedly a sub- category of séga, which is therefore its source. The second reaction dodges the question of the presence of séga on the island while insisting on the importance of the practice on Mauritius as well. The elevation of the status of maloya also called into question, if less officially, the role of musics associated with popular Hinduism in the musical representativeness of the island. During a conference which I had the opportunity to organize as part of the commemoration ceremonies surrounding the date of the abolition of slavery in 1848, the director of a concert hall raised this issue when he publicly stated that: "People always say that maloya is side-lined, forgotten, neglected, criticized. But the music that is totally absent from the cultural scene of Reunion, and has been for a long time, is the music connected to the population's Indian roots, and in particular the bal tamoul11. But we the malbars,12 we do not complain about it..." 41 In another context, a militant Hindu priest from the western part of the island exhorted the public, at a bal tamoul I attended, to invest themselves more in transmitting this heritage so that the malbars would not be considered "nobodies," and so that maloya would not be viewed as "THE Reunion culture and ALL OF Reunion culture." In light of this handful of selected responses, it is worth wondering about the notion of representativeness and the interpretations surrounding it. The discussion of maloya international recognition thus appears to have been framed more as a conversation about the island's musical representativeness (an "emblem" effect of its recognition by the ICH) than within the context of a consideration of Reunion's overall contribution to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Conclusion

42 Unlike the situation in Reunion, there was never any doubt in Brazil about which genre should be considered the nation's "musical emblem." And although this distinction was already assigned to samba in the version that had evolved in Rio de Janeiro since the 1930s and had become widespread throughout the country, the ICH Proclamation of Masterpieces emphasized the "risk of extinction" as opposed to the emblematic nature of the candidates. Still, the first choice of the Brazilian Ministry was to present the musical genre already chosen by Brazilians as the most representative. This initial choice ensured that the final candidate was the only one that could enjoy national recognition "obliquely" while also satisfying the requirement that it face a "risk of extinction."

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43 But the former Proclamation and the more recent Representative List do not in any way constitute a list of "the most representative genres" or the most emblematic musics of the affected countries. If Hafstein's analyses (2004) are correct, national representativeness does not in fact constitute a determining feature of the 2003 Convention, which is centered on strengthening "communities" among UNESCO member-states. Even if the intentions of UNESCO legislators, in such expressions as "Masterpieces of ICH" and "ICH Representative List," were not to locate "the most representative" candidates in each country, the cases we have analyzed of samba and maloya suggest the extent to which this system was interpretable within the framework of political and identity-based choices. Practitioners and experts in search of recognition, as well as militants, government civil servants, and administrators of regional institutions all appeared to have internalized, more or less willingly, the ICH program as part of collective, identity-related self-celebrations. This reinterpretation of the regulations associated with promoting the values of ICH can vary enormously depending on local political and cultural contexts, as we hope this article has shown. Even when the "successful" candidates share numerous formal and historical traits, likesamba de roda and maloya, it is clear that precise, thoughtful, case-by-case analysis remains the only means of evaluating the impact-positive and/or negative-of international programs for safeguarding particular cultural expressions.

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SANDRONI, Carlos. 2001. Feitiço decente: transformações do samba no Rio de Janeiro, 1917-1933. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor /Editora UFRJ.

SANDRONI, Carlos. 2010. "Samba de roda, patrimônio imaterial da humanidade", Estudos Avançados, 24(69):373-388.

SANDRONI, Carlos. 2011. "L'ethnomusicologue en médiateur du processus patrimonial: le cas du samba de roda". In: Chiara Bortolotto (org.), Le patrimoine culturel immatériel: enjeux d'une nouvelles catégorie. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. pp. 233-252.

SAMSON, Guillaume. 2008. "Histoire d'une sedimentation musicale". In: G. Samson, B. Lagarde, C. Marimoutou (orgs.), L'univers du maloya. Saint-Denis: Editions de La DREOI. pp. 10-88.

SAMSON, Guillaume & DESROCHES, Moniques. 2008. "La quête d'authenticité dans les musiques réunionnaises". In: C. Ghasarian (ed.), Anthropologies de La Réunion. Paris: Edition des Archives Contemporaines. pp. 201-218.

SAMSON, Guillaume. 2011. "Le maloya au patrimoine mondial de l'humanité. Enjeux culturels, politiques et éthiques et culturels d'une labellisation", Cahiers d'Ethnomusicologie, 24, p.155-169.

SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz. 1993. O espetáculo das raças: cientistas, instituições e questão racial no Brasil do século XIX. São Paulo: Cia. das Letras.

SKIDMORE, Thomas. 1993. Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought. Durham: Duke University Press.

UNESCO. Dossier de candidature du maloya. Digital version consulted online on April 26, 2013:http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?RL=00249&topic=desc.

UNESCO. 2001. "Proclamation of masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity: guide for the presentation of candidature files." Paris: UNESCO. Digital version consulted online on April 26, 2013:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001246/124628eo.pdf [ Links ]

VIANNA, Hermano. 1995. O mistério do samba. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/UFRJ.

WADDEY, Ralph Cole. 1980. "Viola de samba and samba de viola in the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil", Latin-American Music Review /Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 1(2):196-212.

NOTES

1. Samba de roda was recognized by the Proclamation of Masterpieces of the ICH on November 25, 2005, andmaloya was formally added to the ICH Representative List on October 1, 2009. Audiovisual information aboutsamba de roda is available at http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/? RL=00101 and about maloya athttp://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/RL/00249. 2. Along the same lines, the cultural ties between moring of the Reunion Island and Brazilian capoeira were exploited during the revitalization of moring in the 1990s. 3. A private telecommunications firm that holds a quasi-monopoly in the Brazilian media. 4. Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity: Guide for the Presentation of Candidature Files. Paris: UNESCO, 2001, p. 12. Digital version consulted online on April 26, 2013:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001246/124628eo.pdf 5. On this subject, see also Sandroni, 2011.

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6. For a detailed description of this project, see "Pour un musée du temps présent. La Maison des Civilisations et de l'Unité Réunionnaise," which can be consulted on line at the following address:http://www.temoignages.re/IMG/pdf/MCUR_POUR_UN_MUSEE-2.pdf 7. For a more detailed description of this question, see Samson, 2011 and Lagarde, 2012. 8. This dossier can be consulted on the UNESCO site at: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/ index.php?RL=00249&topic=desc. In his analysis of this dossier, Benjamin Lagarde emphasizes the fact that maloya was the focus of a "new definition" that alternated between "'Black individualist' and 'Creole unitarian' points of view" (Lagarde, 2012: 130). He reveals the highly political and identity-related character of this kind of application. 9. Because Reunion is officially a department of France, it could be argued that it is inappropriate to refer to "national" representativeness in the case of maloya. However, the local debates that accompanied the MCUR project and the inclusion of maloya in the ICH were not framed by the fact that the island is a region belonging to France, but by the notion of the particular insular identity of the island. 10. Mauritius is an independent nation formed by islands, 170 km away from Reunion. 11. A form of popular theater of Indian origin in which passages of the Mahabarata are performed on stage. 12. Descendants of Indians.

ABSTRACTS

In this essay, we present a comparative analysis of the UNESCO heritage nomination process for two African Diaspora music and dance forms: samba de roda, from the Bahian Recôncavo (a coastal area of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia), and maloya, from Reunion Island (a former French colony in the Indian Ocean, which is now officially an "overseas department of France"). samba de roda, as the Brazilian candidate, was included in the III Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity, in 2005. And maloya, the French candidate, was inscribed onto the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, in 2009. Despite a number of formal commonalities between samba de roda and maloya, such as responsorial singing, choreography, and the main musical instrument types, the controversies raised during their respective processes of nomination were quite distinct. The former is regarded as a traditional and less well known style of samba, the musical genre widely recognized as the musical emblem of Brazil. The latter competes with séga-a genre of popular music consolidated in the local media- for the position of chief musical representative of Reunion Island. The disparate symbolic identities attributed to these musical expressions pave the way for a distinct manner of employing the international resources related to the safeguarding of intangible heritage. This suggests that the local impact of the inclusion onto international lists depends as much on the contextual particularities of each candidacy as on central decision-making bodies such as UNESCO.

Este artigo apresenta uma análise comparativa do processo de patrimonialização, junto à UNESCO, de duas formas de música e dança afro-diaspóricas: o samba de roda, do Recôncavo baiano (área litorânea no estado da Bahia, na região Nordeste do Brasil), e o maloya, da Ilha da Reunião (um ex-colônia francesa no Oceano Índico, cujo atual estatuto jurídico-político é o de um "Departamento francês do Ultramar"). O samba de roda foi incluído, como candidato brasileiro,

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na Terceira Declaração de Obras-Primas do Patrimônio Imaterial da Humanidade, em 2005. O maloya foi inscrito, como candidato francês, na Lista Representativa da Convenção para a Salvaguarda do Patrimônio Imaterial, em 2009. Embora apresentem muitos traços formais em comum - tais como canto responsorial, estilo de dança e principais instrumentos musicais de acompanhamento - o samba de roda e omaloya diferem no que diz respeito às controvérsias suscitadas por seus respectivos processos de patrimonialização. O primeiro é visto como uma versão tradicional e menos conhecida de um gênero mais amplo, o samba, geralmente reconhecido como principal emblema musical do Brasil. O segundo disputou com o séga, gênero de música popular consolidado na mídia local, o papel de principal representante musical da Ilha da Reunião. Tais diferenças no simbolismo identitário atribuído a formas musicais dão lugar a diferentes usos dos recursos internacionais de salvaguarda do patrimônio imaterial. Sugere-se que o impacto político local de tais inscrições em listas internacionais depende de particularidades contextuais de cada candidatura, tanto quanto de instâncias decisórias centrais como a UNESCO.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: samba de roda, maloya, Bahia (Brasil), música e dança, Ilha da Reunião (França), patrimônio cultural imaterial, políticas culturais comparadas Keywords: samba de roda, maloya, Bahia (Brazil), Music and dance, Réunion (France, overseas departement), intangible cultural heritage, cultural policies

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The Reference Center for Brazilian Football Within the dialog between anthropology and museums

Clara de Assunção Azevedo and Daniela do Amaral Alfonsi Translation : Ana Letícia de Fiori and Jeff Hoff

EDITOR'S NOTE

Translated by Ana Letícia de Fiori and Jeff Hoff, except the excerpts from Lévi-Strauss, which are from the 1963 U.S. edition. Accepted for publication on March 19, 2013.

*

The setting is a small bar, of about 430 ft2. On the walls, in addition to a rack of pool cues, a public telephone and a message on a blackboard warning costumers that the owner doesn't sell on credit; there are shelves with trophies of all kinds, sizes and materials. They are spread across three sides of the space, on a central column and on the back wall behind the bar. A plastic cover protects the trophies in places most vulnerable to grease and dirt, such as the center of the bar and the kitchen. Alongside the trophies are dozens of photographs of a football team posing for the picture or playing on dirt fields around the city. The pictures, hung in wood and glass frames, are under the shelves. Close to the bar there is a large potted plant called a dieffenbachia which is poisonous if ingested but considered to have protective powers against the "evil eye." The Poulestra Bar, located in the Zona Sul or southern region of São Paulo close to the municipality of Santo Amaro, belongs to Ramiro dos Santos, who was born in Pernambuco. He lives on the second floor and the address is also the clubhouse of the Poulestra Football Club, a várzea or amateur team.1 Team mementos occupy not only the walls of the bar but also part of the basement. There are photos, trophies, medals and countless documents, such as the official founding papers for the team, articles about its history, and charts with schedules, lineups and the boards of directors. "It must be kept because it's memory" explains Ramiro, who through his own

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initiative keeps organized in plastic folders team papers and a chronological catalog of the trophies won by the team, which has only ever worn the colors black and yellow. Once a year, Ramiro changes the protective plastic for the trophies, carefully choosing the material: it can't be too thin or too thick, and has to be big enough to wrap up trophies of all sizes. The series of objects and images reminds the owner and customers of the bar of the trajectory of this amateur team, established in 1987 by migrants from Brazil's northeast like Ramiro, the club's first president. The founder's house and bar became Poulestra's clubhouse, and until today athletes and supporters come by regularly in the early evening. (...) In São Paulo's amateur football circuit, Poulestra F. C. stands out and has become renowned over time, winning championships and representing the neighborhood in important matches against teams from other regions. In the beginning, besides contributions from board members, to cover team expenses they held traditional St. John winter festivals and other fundraisers that attracted neighbors to the bar and the square in front. (...) Although players are still unpaid, there are costs of registration in the leagues, new balls, transportation, purchase and cleaning of uniforms, and the rental of training fields (which Ramiro says is increasingly less common and more expensive). The managers must find creative ways to raise funds, a challenge that is making the team enter fewer competitions. (...) the Poulestra Bar is next to the Interlagos Shopping, the largest Shopping Center in the Zona Sul and which was built just after the team was founded. Ramiro never played for the team, but remembers that a few years before the shopping center was built, in its place were several dirt fields in the then distant and peripheral region, where pickup games, games between rival teams and community leagues were held. He recalls that it was from this profusion of football that the desire to create his own team was born. (From the field report for the Poulestra Football Team, October 20, 2011). 1 The preceding text could be part of a work inspired by classical anthropological monographs, in which the author writes about a given group after living with its members for a few months or years. In the classical model established by the publication of The Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski in 1922, the anthropologist depicts the flesh, blood and spirit of the natives, describing the ways and motives by which men and women act, think and reflect about themselves and others.

2 For many decades, this model was a central element of anthropology, or at least it was one of the works produced by an anthropologist. It was part of the education of this professional and until today, is part of a study (whether for a dissertation, thesis or other phases of academic research) whose work methodology is concentrated on continuous and prolonged observation, made possible by close and continual contact with a certain group. This effort would allow the anthropologist to produce knowledge about the issue chosen that would emphasize the native point of view. 3 The paragraphs that began this article, however, were taken from the data base of a museum, and were produced in the context of research that is not strictly academic and for this reason, had other standards of evaluation, timeframes and methodological efforts. Even so, the classic production model for an ethnography and the interest in recognizing, by means of the work methodology, the perspective of those who are observed, remains an epistemological support for the research experience. 4 The transposition of anthropology to domains outside the academy is not a novelty in the history of the discipline. Whether by working in governments and the formulation of public policy, or in museums and cultural institutions, or - more recently, in the field

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of marketing and market research and public opion polls, it is possible to utilize the forms of action of the anthropologist and the interfaces between what is produced inside and outside the academic context. Within this field of possibilities for action, one in particular is worth highlighting, one that perhaps is as old as the discipline itself: the relationship between anthropology and museums.2 5 The proposal is to approach this relationship considering the problems and questions raised in the realm of the project to establish the Reference Center for Brazilian Football of the Football Museum, whose research procedures, as well as those of its model for writing reports, and, mainly, the type of knowledge produced based on these procedures, is directly inspired by anthropology.

*

6 This article presents the research paths taken at the Football Museum (MF), by its Reference Center for Brazilian Football (CRFB),3 focusing mainly on the methodology for data collection and registration of references of memory and practice of football in a computerized and multi-relational system (a data base).

7 The CRFB is one of the sectors of the MF, and was established five years after the inauguration of the Museum.4 It is the area responsible for the institution's research and documentation activities and offers the public a library and media room specialized in football, which can be consulted at the Museum, and an online database that provides access to both the institution's archives and references to archives and collections at other institutions that are related to the theme. This scope seeks to characterize the CRFB as a center that congregates references about football, in their multiple facets and based on different types of objects and expressions: books, collectable artifacts, general impressions, photographs, events and practices related to sport etc. The proposal, therefore, is to develop an inventory of references about football, independent from the nature of that reference (material or immaterial) and its source (whether it belongs to the MF) or not. 8 This article presents the method used to construct the inventory based on an ethnographic experience and to reflect on how this type of experience requires repositioning the concepts of museological archives, and the procedures for collection and the formation of archives at museums.

*

9 The idea of establishing a reference center, and transforming it into a central hub within a network of public and private archives, has existed since the inauguration of the Football Museum and is the fruit of the initial choice of the institution to not house collections.5

10 The option to approach Brazilian football as a phenomenon that invades various domains of social life, as expressed in the long term exhibit that was inaugurated along with the Museum, and without starting from that which is conventionally called the material dimension of culture - the central element of museological institutions - was well received by public opinion in terms of its expository interface, but questioned, in particular by professionals who work with museums, concerning the continuity of the institution and one of its basic presumptions: the need to establish internal processes

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to safeguard archives. Identified as a "museum without archives," what is suitable for this new institution and why should it be classified as a museum? Is the undertaking merely a large exhibition? The creation of the CRFB can be read, in a certain degree, as a response of the MF to these questions. 11 The concept of football adopted by the MF is a tribute to the interpretations that specialists (cf. Toledo, 2002) give to the sport: football is a multifaceted phenomenon, with a broad range of expressions that go beyond the practice of sport itself. In the vision of the institution, it would be reductionist to condense the representation of the phenomenon to the material dimension alone, which in most cases is limited to industrialized artifacts, produced in series (uniforms, cleats, balls, trading cards and stickers), or to objects that celebrate specific events (trophies, cups, medals, banners from tournaments and championships). After all, football is intertwined with the daily life of Brazilians.6 12 On the other hand, to ignore these material expressions would also be a mistake, given that they certainly also say something about the way that football is experienced and, moreover, they are, in the final analysis, inseparable from the so-called intangible dimension. Thus, how is it possible to identify these various material forms of expression of the phenomenon without necessarily having to store collections of objects and, on the other, access this intangible universe of the phenomenon, identify it, interpret it and present it to the public in a systematized manner? 13 The understanding of football as a cultural practice that gives access to the way that people live in and interpret the world is also a route that is little explored by the institutions of memory dedicated to the preservation of this sport.7 Thus, the inspiration from anthropology was decisive for the interpretation of the object of study and also for the development of research and documentation procedures that used the ethnographic method and applied it with some necessary adjustments. It is not by chance that the main partnership established for the implementation of the CRFB was with the Nucleus for Urban Anthropology of the University of São Paulo (NAU/USP),8 to be able to benefit from its multidisciplinary work staff and thus to anchor in anthropology part of the theoretical framework used in the research.9 14 If the use of ethnography outside of its original realm is not new, in the field more directly related to museums and patrimony in Brazil, it was highlighted by the experiences undertaken by the National Historic, Artistic and Cultural Heritage Institute (IPHAN), in particular the creation of the National Inventory of Cultural References (INRC) and its research methodology.10 15 Nevertheless, these initiatives are recent. It is sufficient to recall that the broader discussion about immaterial cultural assets in Brazil took shape in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is in this period that IPHAN, under the administration of Aloísio Magalhães, gradually began to change the then dominant focus about heritage (the emphasis on brick and mortar properties) and began to also consider elements of the so-called intangible sphere, such as cultural practices and expressions, within the agenda of preservation policies (cf. Fonseca, 2009). This change of focus was located especially in federal state and municipal agencies dedicated to the preservation of heritage, but was discussed in various segments of society, including universities. It influenced the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, which recognized as Brazilian cultural heritage both goods of a material nature as well as those of an immaterial nature.11

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16 Actions in this area only gained greater visibility in the realm of Brazilian public policy after publication of a federal decree in 2000 that established the registration of cultural goods of an immaterial nature that constitute Brazilian cultural heritage"12 and also after publication by UNESCO in 2003 of the convention that defines guidelines and makes recommendations that transform, in the realm of international public policy, the understanding of so-called cultural heritage. 17 All of these redefinitions questioned the traditional division between tangible and intangible heritage, and inevitably gave origin to new forms of identification and registration of heritage, with an emphasis on the use of the idea of cultural reference (cf. Arantes, 2008 and 2010). 18 Responsible for the development of the Department of Immaterial Heritage and the National Prgram of Immaterial Heritage of IPHAN, anthropologist Antônio Arantes had a decisive role in the development of the methodology applied by INRC since its establishment. From the defense of the execution of work by multidisciplinary teams to negotiations in the field and the flexibility of research procedures considering social diversity and specific contexts, the methodology for conducting inventories of immaterial heritage prepared by the INRC was born from an approach that was oriented by anthropology, and it can be said, is close in some points with the methodology being used for the CRFB, as will be shown below. 19 The difference, and what winds up influencing the entire process, perhaps resides in the origin of the initiative. While the INCR is part of a broad and general public policy for heritage preservation, the inventory of cultural references about football undertaken at the MF by means of its Reference Center is intended to be the central element in the formation of the archives of a museological institution. If the first undertakes action of broad scope that has the practical effect of assuring the communities involved the right to and basic means for the maintenance of their cultural practices and expressions, the second, on a much smaller and less pretentious scale, perhaps has its first and most immediate effects on the forms of conceiving and operating the safeguarding of heritage within museums. 20 The notion of cultural heritage is being transformed, and this is visible in the broadest policies undertaken mainly since the 2000s. Nevertheless, in the field of museums, there still seems to be a division between that which would be called material domain and that which can be fit within the immaterial or intangible dimension (practices, knowledge and productions, techniques, ways of seeing and living etc.), mainly in the guidelines and procedures for research and documentation. Perhaps, at the time of presentation of archives, in particular in exhibitions, this artificial division is less apparent, given that there appears to be a growing effort by museums to contextualize objects and locate them in a historic perspective, bringing to the exhibition discourse facets of the social processes that the objects engender. But, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the practices of safeguarding and handling archives and collections within museological institutions still emphasize material artifacts, especially when it comes to defining policies for collecting and acquiring the archives. This is clear, for example, in the classifications found in the data bases used by many of these institutions, in which there is no way to register the social processes or the experiences and contexts that go beyond the objects of a collection. 21 To develop an inventory of cultural references of football and rearrange this data into a multirelational system, which is the research objective of the Football Museum realized

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by its Reference Center, implies rethinking the safeguarding procedures that are currently used at museological institutions. It mainly means taking seriously the concept of cultural reference13 in all the steps of the work, including its transposition to the field of museums.

Ethnography as a method for registration

22 The production of an inventory of references about football, the object of the research conducted by the CRFB, has as its main procedures the mapping, registration and systematization of the items placed in a data base. These three steps must be connected and their meaning can be conferred through ethnographic experience.

23 Inventories are classic procedures in museums and agencies dedicated to the preservation of tangible or intangible heritage. In general, their primordial form is the listing and classification of items (objects and documents, but also practices and rituals) found in an area (community, group, city) or in an institution. This listing is essential for the organization, control and planning of the actions for conservation in material archives, for example. In the case of goods of an intangible nature, the inventory is the tool used by agencies specialized in heritage preservation to gain knowledge of the sociocultural context of the practices that are the object of heritage actions. Given this later use, the tool triggers a debate among anthropologists, given that the data presented in it may not reflect or consider the cultural dynamic of the practice to be safeguarded. 24 Taking as a premise the concept of football as a multifaceted phenomenon, with imbrications in various fields of social life, one of the main methodological challenges of the study is to be able to register, classify and list, following a certain standardization inherent to the museological procedures, items of distinct natures: from banners to chants by fans, from a collection of stickers or photos to the interpretation of the sociability experienced in spaces related to football. This is because the intention is to identify and describe locations of the practice of football, which go beyond the canonical spaces of the sport. This means contemplating, in addition to fields and stadiums, the bars, restaurants or other types of commercial establishments where fans congregate on game days, including the clubhouses of local teams that house the collections of photos, objects and documents; the private collections of a wide variety of items related to football (from beer cans to pins, from albums of stickers to shirts, caps or other clothing items, from banners to books, magazines, newspapers, etc.); the collections of public or private institutions, which also possess, in greater or lesser volume, items from the universe of football (which includes all types of items gathered in clubs and also photographs, books videos, etc. found in various institutions that do not have any direct relationship with the universe of football); associations of former players who promote sporting and cultural actions; football schools; multifunctional public spaces, but dedicated to sports (as in the case in the city of São Paulo of the Communiity Sport Clubs - CDCs and the Clubes Escolas [School Clubs]); companies that promote tournaments and competitions; companies that make uniforms that sponsor important events in the city and so on. 25 Ethnographic field research, therefore, was the special method used to attempt to grasp the heterogeneity of the object researched. Based on the premise that football attracts other expressions that go beyond that which occurs within the four lines of the

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field, the field research has been aimed at a set of actions and networks of sociability motivated by football. From there it turns to the locations of the practice of football (fields, clubs, courts, stadiums) the practitioners (amateur and professional teams, male and female, and of all age groups) their fans and organizing agents (from sports mangers to companies that organize championships and tournaments). That is, by ethnographing a practice (a festival, a tournament or a championship, a football school, a meeting of fans in the bar, etc.), and its practitioners, the idea is to reach the objects and documents, registering not only the existence of these items, but mainly the meanings people confer to them in their contexts. 26 The registration process begins in the survey of contacts and locations, conducted on the Internet (on social media, specialized blogs and sites) and mainly, by indications given by people already contacted by the study. Each contact invariably generates other contacts and indications, in what is called the "snowball" strategy (Bienarcki & Waldorf, 1981). At first, this option results in an open field of possibilities of locations to be studied. The risk to be avoided, given the scope of the field, is to fall into a proliferation of contacts without constituting a common meaning. Or, due to the short time of contact with the interlocutors, the danger is that the registration does not come to understand and comprehend possible relationships between the locations studied, falling into a segmentation that can obscure the articulation between the elements. Nevertheless, the advantage of this technique is to allow reaching, through indications made by actors in the field, other spaces, practices and subjects that can be mapped and systematized in order to reveal links of a network, thus following an internal logic of the field studied. 27 Because they are indications related to a theme - football - even if taken in their multiple dimensions and meanings, in the long run, the survey of contacts comes to delineate the contours of an active network in each location researched14 - the main starting point of the study. This is only possible because this survey takes place concomitantly to the visit to the locations and people. Thus, the network of references, a product of mapping, is also fed by information that comes from the researcher's observations, which begin to discover the meanings and links between one point and another of this network.15 28 The researchers go to the field armed with plans indicating what should be observed and asked in each context. However, based on ethnographic experience, they learn to emphasize the observation of behavior, language and other elements that are essential for the understanding of the native universe, and that are not always verbalized in an interview with a representative of a group, for example. 29 As part of the process of preparing an inventory, the research universe was initially broken down into typologies. They were groupings of locations mapped according to their function: bar, fan club, team clubhouse, club, school, etc., and also groupings of people according to their main activity: collector, player, club administrator, referee, fan, etc.16 Guidelines specific to each typology were created and later these instruments were aligned to catalog records in the data system. In addition to the specificities that constitute each typology, they have in common (1) the identification of basic data from the location mapped (the address and description of the activities conducted there); (2) the preparation of a brief history of the place and description of its main characteristics; (3) the identification of items of memory (with the indication of archives, photo collections etc.) realized pari passu to the interpretation of the ways

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that the local group understands and represents the memory of sport and (4) the identification of the network of relationships in which the group is inserted and in which it participates in some manner (championships, institutions, other locations etc.). 30 These items, common to all the research plans have the common objective of obtaining a minimum set of information that permits glimpsing certain regularities and patterns, making comparisons and relating the different types of locations visited, as well as identifying the connections that exist between them. 31 The work process that has been conducted includes the concomitant steps of identifying the contacts and scheduling and realizing the visits, which include the production of photographic and video registers, audio interviews and participant observation with recordings in field diaries. The process also includes discussion among the staff of the common points found in the visits realized and the writing of a text, called a "field report," based on the cataloging of references in the data base and which is one of the final documents to which the public will have access. It is in this set of procedures, therefore, that are delineated the items to be cataloged in the data base. Only after some field visits and the comparison of observations of different researchers, was it possible to define which references would be indexed in the data base. Understanding the concept of cultural reference as a collective construct of the research, references for modalities were chosen for the project presented here: people, institutions, events and archives, which will be described in detail. 32 One of the differences between this type of research and a classic ethnography concerns the time that the researcher spends with the people researched. With the goal of producing an inventory, and considering that the project encompasses a territory as large as the city of São Paulo - the first geographic scope of the study - and that it depends on resources and staffs hired for a limited time, it is not possible to remain in each location mapped for more than a few hours per day (morning or afternoon). Except on rare exceptions, the visit is conducted only once. That is, the researcher is always in movement, experiencing isolated events related to the universe studied. Nevertheless, the ethnographic perspective is maintained to the degree that it guides the researcher in what to observe in this rapid passage or how to interpret that which is observed in relation to that which is said by the interlocutors. Thus, the general orientation is on the observation of the behavior, the survey of the strategies of action, the occupation of the spaces, the division of tasks between men, women and children, etc. Even if interviews were conducted, the study is much more the result of participant observation than a simple adhesion to research plans and instruments. Thus, if on one hand the method is far from those used in classic procedures, on the other, it introduces to the field of museological documentation new elements that are capable of expanding the presumptions of the establishment of an archive. 33 Even if in-depth data is not produced about each location mapped, the study did allow an interesting comparative exercise, because it addressed a single universe - that of football - in a large territorial area. This exercise, another approximation with the anthropological perspective, is essential for the constitution of the final product. It is worth remembering that "it is not an obsession for the accumulation of details that characterizes ethnography, but the attention that is given to them: at some time the fragments can be arranged in a whole that offers a clue to a new understanding" (Magnani, 2009:136). This attention to elements, offered by the visits to the locations

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and by the consequent construction of this network of connections in lócu, and the continuous movement of approximation and distancing allowed by this approach, has allowed identifying specificities and regularities. Examples include the survey of recurrences in the organization of games and tournaments, the meeting with the same types of people in a wide variety of events (such as food sellers, politicians, photographers and journalists), and the survey of the types of food and drink consumed at amateur football events in São Paulo, the forms of cheering found in the stands of the amateur games and at stadiums, the forms of commemoration among players in the field, the relations with government in disputes over management of space and other issues. All these recurrences should appear in the indexation of data in the system, in addition, of course, to being described in the field reports to which the public will have access. It is in this new form of indexation, which will be presented below, that resides the museological experiment itself. 34 First however, it is worth concluding that the decision to use ethnography in the work process does not imply using only a method, but also conceptual presumptions that directly influence the way of perceiving, approaching and interacting with the other. If the idea to conduct a mapping to prepare an inventory should not be confused with the consecrated notion of ethnography, the mapping can be nurtured and inspired by ethnography and can and should experiment with it, even if superficially, given that a mapping is less focused and broader in scope. This form of approach seeks to guarantee that the data produced are constructed in the relationship with the other and always in context. 35 The research presented here thus allows producing more than primary information about the references to football, given that it has a supposition the effort to access indications of logics that organize and symbolize this sport in specific contexts. That is, more than just conducting random and disconnected surveys, the recourse to ethnography allows the creation of connections of meaning between the elements mapped, which helps to understand their relevance and pertinence and confers an analytic dimension to the process. As Magnani indicated: 36 Ethnography is a special form of operating in which the researcher comes into contact with the universe of the researched and shares their horizon, not to remain there or even to attest to the logic of their worldview, but, by following them wherever possible, in a true relationship of exchange, to compare their own theories with theirs and thus try to leave with a new model of understanding, or at least with a new clue that was not previously foreseen. (2009:135). 37 In this sense, the study undertaken can go beyond the simple survey of existing spaces of practice and memory of football and try to understand them in a minimally contextualized manner. More than to construct large lines of analysis about football, the main objective is to conduct a broad although contextualized inventory of the various cultural references to football raised in the mapping process.

For an antropomuseological translation of the data

38 One of the most difficult tasks in the realm of the CRFB project has been to translate the diversity and wealth of information collected in the field using a "rigid" tool that frames the data in pre-determined boxes, as does a database. While this tool is rarely

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used in anthropological research, it is the leading element of the documentation procedures at museological institutions.

39 With the advance in the development of specific software for the organization of data, data bases at museums have fortunately become increasingly attractive: they allow displaying photos, videos and texts in the same database, the information searches are faster, they offer users greater possibilities for research, they can be accessed over the Internet, among other advantages. Thus, in the development of the data base for the Football Museum, the information system technology did not represent an impediment, but offered potential to be explored in favor of a new form of organizing research data. 40 The development of the data base began with some principles: its records and fields for cataloging should dialog with the systems of other museological institutions at the same time in which they need to be based on concepts native to the universe of football, that is, their classification and the vocabulary used for the cataloging must translate the ideas and values operationalized by the different interlocutors of the research. If not, the entire effort undertaken in the collection of information, in the preparation of observation plans, in the work of writing the field report, would be lost in a static system of organization and control of data. 41 To manage the research contexts, the data base for the Football Museum has four options for entering information: 1) institutions; 2) people; 3) events and 4) archives. They are four independent but inter-related bases, which organize the information pertinent to each one of these groups. The choice of these four modules is related to the type of cultural reference that the study sought to understand and register. 42 To better understand the logic of the translation of data, it is helpful to consider the case mentioned at the beginning of this article, the bar which is the clubhouse for the Poulestra Futebol Clube. The data from the field research is thus cataloged as follows: in the base for institutions goes the information about the bar (its location and a description of the physical installations, and the history of the location) and about the Poulestra team (the year it was founded, its emblem, mascot, history, etc); the base for people is used for information about Senhor Ramiro, the owner of the establishment and one of the directors of the team; in the base for events is entered information related to any championships and tournaments in which Poulestra participated and finally, in the base of archives are cataloged, item by item, the photographs, trophies, medals, documents and other objects stored at the location, in addition to the field report produced by the researcher and the photographs, audio and videos produced in the research context. Each item cataloged (the bar, the team, Senhor Ramiro, a specific championship and a trophy, for example) becomes an "entity" in the data system. An entity is the minimum common unit of information within the system. The relationships considered to compose the network of references occur between entities. 43 The intent of the strategy of combining this information from the different entities, segregated in four different bases, is to allow establishing relationships between the modules in such a way that recreates in the system the interactions and logics observed in the field. In the case of the Bar do Poulestra, here are the types of possible relationships operated in the data base: a. institution-institution: between the clubhouse at the bar and the Poulestra team, or between the bar and another team that uses it or that has some form of interaction with it;

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b. institution-person: between the bar and Senhor Ramiro, between the team and Senhor Ramiro, and between these locations and any other people who are in the data base; c. institution-event: between the team and a championship or tournament in which it participated; d. institution-archives: between the bar and the complete series of objects stored there that were cataloged in the base of the archive; e. person-event: between Senhor Ramiro and a championship at which he conducted an activity; f. person-archive: between Senhor Ramiro and all the items of the archive present in his bar that were cataloged; g. person-person: between Senhor Ramiro and any other people related to him, whether it is the researcher who interviewed him or a player for the team; h. event-archives: between a championship and a trophy or a set of photographs related to this championship; i. event-event: between championships that have some type of relationship; j. archives-archives: this is what joins all the items of a single original collection, for example, between all of Senhor Ramiro's trophies and photographs. But not only this, the system allows relating Senhor Ramiro's objects to others, like books, textual documents, iconographies, as long as the field research indicates some connection.

44 All the possible relationships between the data bases are reversible, that is, a relationship institution-person is equally that of person-institution. It is not important through which base the insertion of the relationship is made, it automatically appears in the other related base.

45 The operation consists, therefore, in fragmenting and reconnecting the field data, in this interplay of combining analyses without establishing an hierarchy for them, or that is, without establishing greater or lesser importance to a type of input. The premise of the horizontality of the data in the system distinguishes the data base from more traditional tools used by museums, whose cataloging is invariably based on the object of the archive to relate other types of information to it, always laterally, belonging to people and locations. Because it is a database established for the purpose of organizing references about football, beyond its archives of a specifically material nature, it has as a principle that an "item from the archives" does not have to be initially registered. To the contrary, in many locations mapped these items are only identified generically, leaving their detailing, and therefore their cataloging, for a later research phase. 46 To the degree that the research advances, new relationships can be made in the data base, linking a location mapped at one time to a championship or a set of photographs discovered later. In this way, the network of relationships is always expanded and also refined. It must be considered that the network is not a pre-established fact, but a result obtained based on the items listed in the inventory of actions, places, people and objects. And it is not static: for each new insertion creates a possibility to add or re- qualify relationships previously constituted in the database. 47 Within this logic, another challenge is the naming of the types of relationship. This task calls for the construction of a controlled vocabulary, that is, lists of pre-established terms to standardize the insertion of data. As part of the methodology inspired by anthropology, an effort was made to use native terms for the construction of this vocabulary. As when writing a paper, each native term carries some links of meaning

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and is translated for the reader, that is, the data base has an area for management of terms that compose the controlled vocabulary, with the introduction of synonyms and meanings, in order to lead users of the data base to the understanding of the use of that word in the research context. 48 The native terms comprise the main inputs of keywords (or content descriptors), such as the ability to search for uniform data (shirts, pants, cleats) based on the terms "uniforme" commonly used in the Brazilian press, but also "fardamento," [another word for uniform in Portuguese] which is commonly used in the amateur universe. Another example is the identification as "teacher" for a person in a type of relationship that is very common in the amateur football universe, which is, that of teaching the football practice in government programs. This name "teacher" is not the official name given to professionals hired by the programs, which calls them "monitors" or "sports agents." Nevertheless, in practice, these agents refer to themselves as "teachers" as do the children that participate in the activities. Therefore, the option in the database is to also name these people and relate them to the spaces and events in which they act using the term "teacher," entering the official terms as synonyms. Another example is the connection, via a system of data, between two or more clubs or groups of fans (institution-institution type) based on the terms "alliance" or "rivalry," which are commonly used in the football universe. 49 Like the relationships, the fields of the cataloging - while controlled - are not unchangeable. From time to time, reviews are conducted of the lists of vocabulary in order to complete meanings, insert synonyms and new terms. What is important to highlight is the new use conferred to a procedure that is common in the field of museological documentation: the repetition of ideas with different words (as in the classic example of "cat-kitty-feline" to refer to the same animal), in the CRFB project this procedure is used to assist the translation of the research universe into an information management tool. 50 The investment in this connectivity allows, at first, that the user of the system expand their searches and become surprised with the connections that the database will reveal. At a second moment, and for the specialists in the theme, of which there are many judging by the interest that football stirs in the daily life of Brazilians, the person consulting the database can write to the Football Museum suggesting corrections and additions to information and it is hoped, make a request to see his private collection referenced in the CRFB and included in the network. 51 The plan for safeguarding the archives, therefore, comes to be shared between the Football Museum and a community of people interested in the issue. If the option to not collect objects and remove them from their context to store them in a technical reserve with temperature and humidity controls (a longtime practice of museums and still very necessary in many areas) creates the risk of losing material from valuable collections spread throughout the country, the proposal of the MF, on the other hand, is to innovate by constructing an archives of references whose meanings are shared with those who truly collect them, care for them and make them circulate, and for this reason, preserve their meanings and values.

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Conclusion

52 This article presented the research methodology used by the Football Museum at its Reference Center for Brazilian Football and the options chosen for the translation of field data into a data base. Because it is inspired by anthropology, the field research allows much more than a survey of formal or static data related to the universe studied, given that the main product of the researchers is the writing of a text, a "field report," which seeks to describe the location or event researched as would an ethnography. This text, in turn, is the basis for the cataloging of the cultural references of football that are the base of the inventory produced by the research conducted by CRFB.

53 By being based on ethnographic research, even if in a novel form, the cataloging undertaken sought to construct relationships between different entities that represent the dynamic of the practices related to football identified in the study. This methodology has allowed rethinking the procedures for safeguarding that are currently used at museological institutions and also the form of presenting them to the public. 54 The research presented here is a very recent experiment and is still underway (that is, its results are still not totally visualized and have not been open to public consultation so that they can be questioned and validated by the interlocutors of the study); nevertheless, it is possible to see that it points to new routes for the work of researchers at museums. This is especially pertinent to the so-called "new museums," which decide not to have their own material collections to adopt more technological exhibitions that are based on sensory experiences. The greater problem raised for this new type of museum has been the risk of not safeguarding the indicators of memory and collections about certain themes. In the case of football, this was carefully questioned, even because of the absence of other institutions in the country that take on this task (it is known that the clubs and federations do not properly store their documentation and their archives nor do they make them available for consultation to researchers). 55 Upon referencing and relating objects, documents, practices, events and people, without establishing an hierarchy between the material and immaterial or between archives of the museum itself and those of other institutions, the risk of physical loss of documents and objects remains, even when it is possibile to create a digital version or copy, which is possible with certain items. However, the local history, the relationships, the terms used and their meanings are preserved, as well as the description made at the time of passage of the researcher at the location through a series of products from the visit: report, photos, videos and audios.

*

56 In 1950, Lévi-Strauss indicated a need for the transformation of anthropology museums and the possibility that they become privileged spaces for experimentation for the anthropologist; "laboratories for the study of social phenomena difficult to analyze" (1989: 423). If Levi-Strauss' concern at that time was to discuss the place of anthropology in the social sciences and the discipline as a profession, the text recognized the potential to transform cultural dynamics and social representations

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(our much discussed intangible culture) into "objects" of analysis of museums, and also the distinction and the effort of the anthropological look in this undertaking.

57 Although Levi-Strauss was referring to anthropology museums, the suggestion not only appears current, but also capable of being transposed to the field of museums in general, and in particular, to the project presented here. The desire is to treat it as a laboratory, a place of experimentations for museums and for anthropology, perhaps this is the route. 58 Seen from another context, Levi-Strauss' recommendation continues to gain meaning: "In all these cases the purpose should be, not merely to collect objects, but to understand men; not so much to classify dried remains- as in herbariums- as to describe and analyze forms of existence with which the observer is closely and actively in touch. (...)But while it is becoming increasingly difficult to collect bows and arrows, drums and necklaces, baskets and statues of divinities, it is becoming easier to make a systematic study of languages, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities" (1989: 421). We may say, that this is crucial.

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NOTES

1. Amateurs teams in São Paulo are historically called "várzea teams." A "várzea" is a field along a stream or river and the name arose because the first football fields in the city were near the riverbanks. 2. The interface between anthropology and museums is the theme of important studies that run through the history of the discipline and which are not addressed in this article. We can highlight those by George Stocking (1985) and James Clifford (1988 and 1997). 3. The Museum of Football is a public facility that belongs to the State Secretariat of Culture of São Paulo and is managed by a civil society organization (known as a social organization for culture - OS). This mixed administrative model for museums in the state of São Paulo has been operating since 2005. 4. The implementation of the CRFB was begun in 2010 and concluded in 2013, although the project was conceived in early 2009, soon after the inauguration of the MF. It receives financial support from FINEP - the Brazilian Innovation Agency, an organ of the Ministry of Science and Technology - and is executed by means of a partnership between the Instituto da Arte do Futebol Brasileiro [The Brazilian Institute of the Art of Football] (a social organization for culture that administers the MF), and POIESIS (Instituto de Apoio à Cultura, à Língua e à Literatura) [the Institute of Support for Culture, Language and Literature] and USP, through the Nucleus for Urban Anthropology (NAU). For the execution of the project, in addition to professionals from the staff of the MF, there is a team of nine interns from CNPq (under the modality Industrial and Technological Development modality), whose responsibilities are divided between coordination, research, cataloging, library sciences and internship, in addition to outside consultants for the areas of data base development, architecture, monitoring and evaluation of the projects, research methodology and registration of heritage and specialists in contents related to football. The project was periodically accompanied by an Advisory Board, formed by nine specialists in the fields of anthropology, communication, history, heritage and public policy for culture. The complete list of all the professionals who participated in the project is available at www.museudofutebol.org.br/crfb. 5. The creation of the Museum of Football is part of and the fruit of a process of changes in conceptions about the role of a museum and the concepts of heritage, which has taken place in recent decades, mainly since the 1970s. The nearly exclusive emphasis on actions of conservation and documentation and on museological procedures aimed above all at collections, has shifted, opening space for discussions about the social functions of a museum, as well as to broader forms of thinking, preserving and communicating about a given heritage. About the recent trajectories in the field of museology see ARAÚJO & BRUNO (1995). 6. This article will analyze why the Museum of Football elected this approach to football in its main expositional narrative, but it is worth noting that this perspective, in Brazil, is the fruit of analyses constructed about this sport since the late 1930s, with specific texts by Gilberto Freyre about blacks and sports (Freyre, 1936; 1940 and 1947), as well as those by journalists and writers of chronicles, and which culminated, in the 1980s with anthropological studies on the theme, beginning mainly with Roberto DaMatta. The main contribution of DaMatta to the anthropological interpretation of football was the perspective that this sport could be understood as a "highly complex system of communication of values" (1982: 40). Football,

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according to the author, would be popular because of its ability to express national problems, redimensioning social representations and ritualizing them. As a rite and as a privileged place for dramatizations, the sport would allow "expressing a series of national problems, alternating perception and intellectual elaboration with emotions and sentiments concretely felt and lived" (1982: 40). This route inaugurated by DaMatta inspired important dissertations and thesis, which are now the main academic references about the issue, such as the works of Simoni Guedes (1977), Fátima Antunes (1992), Luis Henrique de Toledo (1996 and 2002), Édison Gastaldo (2002), Arlei Damo (2007), and others. 7. A recent study by the Brazilian Institute of the Museum (IBRAM), an agency created in 2009 and affiliated to the Ministry of Culture to lead the national policy concerning museums, found that there are more than three thousand museological institutions in Brazil (more than the number of movie houses and theaters). A search for the theme of "sport" on the National Registration of Museums on the Internet, found only nine museums dedicated to preserving the memory of sport in Brazil. The number of institutions dedicated to sports memory expands when we research outside the official registration of IBRAM, but it still does not exceed a few dozen. Most of these are museums linked to football teams and display memorabilia (trophies, banners, medals, shirts, etc). Except for a few cases, these institutions do not conduct research or document their archives and some do not offer service to the public. 8. It should be mentioned that NAU/USP has more than 20 years of activity in academic research and in cultural projects, in particular can be mentioned the undertaking of a set of anthropological studies that gave origin to the publications: Na Metrópole - textos de antropologia urbana (1996) and Jovens na metrópole - etnografias dos circuitos de lazer, encontro e sociabilidade (2007), in addition to the experience of "Expedição São Paulo 450 anos" in the realm of the project to establish the Museum of the City of São Paulo in 2004-2005. These projects were coordinated by Dr. José Guilherme Magnani and have in common the research of cultural practices in an urban context from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. The main projects undertaken by NAU in the field of heritage and museums are described in the article by José Guilherme C. Magnani in this journal. 9. It includes professionals in the field of history, sociology, anthropology, geography, museology, visual arts, photography (with emphasis on conservation of photographic archives) and library sciences. 10. For some examples of the application of the method of INRC see Arantes (2008) and Medeiros (2007). 11. Cf. article 216 of the Constitution. 12. Decree nº 3551, of August 4, 2000. 13. The concept of cultural reference does not distinguish between material and the immaterial, a product of process, object of production etc. (Arantes, 2008). Cultural references are everything that can allude to, indicate a range of meanings or represent a given social phenomenon. This concept is a construct. Therefore it is not found readymade in the universe of research. It is the researcher who, armed with suitable methodologies, with specific training and based on collective discussions within a broader project of mapping, observes the phenomenon that is the object of the field and defines it, based on the premises of the project, as a cultural reference. 14. It is worth mentioning that the initial research, which lasted from 2011 to the first semester of 2013, was based in the city of São Paulo. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the MF can later conduct the same methodology in other Brazilian cities. 15. It is important to highlight the concept of circuit, developed by the anthropologist José Guilherme Magnani and which has been important for the realization of this study and for the understanding of the network. Understood as that which "unites establishments, spaces and equipments characterized by the exercise of a certain practice or offer of a given service, although not contiguous in the urban landscape, and is recognized in its totality only by the users" (1996: 45), the

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circuit can be understood as a physical and or symbolic network that connects spaces, people, objects, knowledge and meanings, which is identified only when the perspective of the practitioner is taken, that is, it is only possible to locate and map the network when the researcher follows those that act within it. The concept of circuit helps understand and organize practices, relations and actors involved in the empiric line chosen, and applied to this research, guides the surveying, mapping and choice of criteria for the cataloging of the indicators of the memory of football. 16. The first challenge faced by the research team was the definition of the empiric angle. The project first called for the survey of any practice related to football, without distinguishing the various existing modalities of the practice of football, such as, football, or association football, futsal and others. After an evaluation made by the research staff, it was found that the time planned for the implementation of the CRFB would not permit broad field research in this first phase and decided to restrict the initial research to football on outdoor fields, which in itself is quite a large universe. As an initial line, therefore, the focus of the project was selected based on a preliminary classification of the spaces of practices and or of the memory of football that would initially be mapped: professional clubs-teams, amateur clubs-teams, school clubs, organized fan groups, collectors. Later, we added to this list the events and festivals. The research plans were prepared considering this first classification and division.

ABSTRACTS

This article presents the work conducted at the Reference Center for Brazilian Football (São Paulo), focusing on methodological aspects of information gathering and the transfer of data to a computerized database. By using an ethnographic method to discover archives and register memories and references related to football practices, the project allows reflecting on the limits and potential of ethnography for the museological work of preservation and promotion of archives.

INDEX

Keywords: ethnography, museums, cultural references, Football Museum

AUTHORS

CLARA DE ASSUNÇÃO AZEVEDO

Football Museum

DANIELA DO AMARAL ALFONSI

Football Museum; PPGAS – USP

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CRBF - Centro de Referência do Futebol Brasileiro [Brazilian Football Reference Center]

Aira Bonfim and Danilo Delfino

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 1 journals.openedition.org/vibrant/1081

2 Video clip directed by Aira Bonfim and Danilo Delfino 2013, 2min14 3 Images: Aira Bonfim Production and Edition: Aira Bonfim and Danilo Delfino BFRC Researchers: Ademir Takara, Aira Bonfim, Diego Mora, Karina Alves, Maria Helena Menezes, Marília Fernandes, Michele Silva, Nahema Falleiros, Paulo Nascimento Music: "Um bilhete para Didi" ("A note for Didi", free translation), Novos Baianos Images: Flamengo of Vila Maria District Football Field (Campo do Flamengo de Vila Maria); National Club Football Field (Campo do Clube Nacional); Adhemar de Barros Community Club (CDC Adhemar de Barros); Copa Kaiser's Amateur Football Final Match (Final da Copa Kaiser de Futebol Amador Série A); Corinthians versus Santos Match (Corinthians X Santos); Gaviões da Fiel Organized Supporters (Torcida Organizada Gaviões da Fiel); AB Sport, Sports Equipments Company (AB Sport Materiais Esportivos); Mr. Bezerra (amateur football photographer); Pery Novo Team (AA Pery Novo); Raul Tabajara Community Club (Clube Esportivo Raul Tabajara); Poulestra Team (Poulestra FC); Bola Preta Community Club (CDC Bola Preta); Leões da Fabulosa Organized Supporters (Torcida Organizada Leões da Fabulosa); Classe A Team (EC Classe A); Turma do Baffô Team (GR Turma do Baffô); Agostinho Vieira

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Book Reviews

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Edmundo Pereira. Um povo sábio, um povo aconselhado - Ritual e política entre os Huitoto-Murui

Pedro Musalem Nazar

REFERENCIA

Um povo sábio, um povo aconselhado - Ritual e política entre os Huitoto-Murui (ABA publicações, 2012), de Edmundo Pereira.

1 El libro de Edmundo Pereira narra el recorrido de una investigación que tuvo como objetivo inicial el aportar al conocimiento de la etnohistoria de los Uitoto-Murui, del río Caraparaná, en el interfluvio Caquetá-Putumayo, abordando sus memorias del ciclo de la borracha, focalizándose particularmente en los procesos de reorganización de la vida emprendidos por la gente Murui tras el fin de la explotación cauchera, durante el repoblamiento del Caraparaná, despoblado por cuenta de la presiones asociadas a la susodicha explotación. Sin embargo, la situación en el mambeadero (espacio nocturno para conversación y consumo ritual de tabaco y de coca) del cacique y dueño de mambeadero, Don Ángel Ortiz, reorienta el foco de la investigación, viéndose el propio etnógrafo motivado a asumir las prioridades colocadas por la voluntad nativa, empeñada a la sazón en participar críticamente del proceso de elaboración de un Plan de Vida Uitoto-Murui para las comunidades del río Caraparaná. Al mambeadero de Don Ángel en la aldea de San Rafael llega el autor siguiendo los consejos del antropólogo colombiano Juan Álvaro Echeverri, co-orientador de su trabajo en Colombia, y autoridad en el estudio de la etnia, destacado por sus trabajos en torno a la tradición oral de los Uitoto, aspecto también relevado en lugar central por este trabajo de Pereira. En el mambeadero se realiza noche a noche la recreación oral del saber tradicional, un espacio devotado al ejercicio de la memoria colectiva y participando en el cual Edmundo Pereira va descubriendo los modos por los cuales este saber tradicional es evocado y recreado a la luz de la contingencia política, en el sentido de

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que ahí se elaboran tanto las relaciones locales cuanto aquellas que configuran la proyección de las comunidades en el ámbito nacional. Como dijimos, en el momento en que Edmundo comienza a participar del mambeadero, la preocupación central tienen que ver con tomar posiciones respecto a la elaboración de un Plan de Vida, instrumento de diagnóstico y planificación para el desarrollo funcional a las políticas indigenistas del Estado colombiano, elaborado en ese momento a través de una ONG que actúa según pautas que Don Ángel y su gente consideran con ojos críticos, sobre todo por su orientación utilitaria y su apresurada factura. Así, el aporte que Don Ángel y su grupo buscan realizar en dicho contexto es el de un Plan de Vida alternativo, portador de un concepto propio de desarrollo.

2 Entre tanto, el precio exigido al etnógrafo por participar en las actividades del mambeadero, incluye trabajo manual diurno en la roza de Don Ángel, lo que nos permitirá observar directamente las prácticas asociadas al manejo de la Coca y del Tabaco, las plantas ritualmente consumidas durante las conversaciones de la noche. Y a la noche, cuaderno o grabadora en mano -según las preferencias e indicaciones de Don Ángel-, los discursos pronunciados en el mambeadero van quedando registrados para, junto con las reflexiones del autor sobre las condiciones de producción de los mismos, constituir uno de los ejes centrales de este libro. 3 Desde la situación ya descrita, el autor se ocupa en trazar las interacciones y redes locales asociadas a la recepción y redefinición nativa de las políticas indigenistas oficiales, contrastando el modelo de autonomía y micro-gobierno indígena que resulta de la ley colombiana, con lo que podríamos llamar de "modelo tradicional", esbozado y enfatizado por Don Ángel -figura cuya caleidoscópica biografía es una de las estrategias recursivas favoritas de este libro, que lo va presentando como un líder con vasta experiencia en la representación de los Murui en las más diversas instancias del indigenismo nacional y supranacional (ONGs, agencias de gobierno, movimiento indígena, así como a través de varios períodos de trabajo como informante de antropólogos, y agente político de asociaciones indígenas Murui y no Murui), y ahora, ya de regreso de esos viajes, cacique y dueño de mambeadero. Es este recorrido biográfico lo que nos da la clave de su retórica particular, según la cual el Plan de Vida Murui debería ser "un proyecto de recuperación de la tradición para desarrollar recursos humanos". 4 El libro trae además, en forma de apéndices, la versiones de Don Ángel de un conjunto de narrativas tradicionales y de discursos reflexivos accionados alrededor del tema del desarrollo, material cuya transcripción escrita por parte de Edmundo fue en una primera instancia destinada, de acuerdo con la voluntad nativa, a la circulación local (en la vecina ciudad de Leticia), siendo editada para un público local no iniciado en las artes de mambeadero, tanto indígenas como no indígenas. Se trata de presentar las narrativas contenidas en el Cesto de las Tinieblas y en el Cesto de la Sabiduría, respectivamente Mito e Historia, de acuerdo con la consistente explicación clasificatoria ofrecida por Don Ángel. Básicamente digamos que la primera generación de seres humanos es transforma, tras el diluvio, en diversos seres del bosque y el Padre Creador, Buinama, entrega a los sobrevivientes la Palabra de Coca y de Tabaco, don cuya memoria y ejercicio será capaz de mantenerlos diferenciados en hasta hoy en su forma humana. Esta Palabra de Coca y de Tabaco está contenida en el Cesto de Sabiduría, mientras que el Cesto de las Tinieblas narra las metamorfosis a que fueran sometidos los primeros hombres. Palabra de Coca y de Tabaco es una categoría nativa

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que denota el tipo de discurso predominante en el espacio del mambeadero (estrechamente ligado a las prácticas cotidianas, sobre todo a las referidas al cultivo de tales plantas en la roza), y de la cual resultan, entre otras cosas, según Don Ángel, "la ley", "la ciencia" y "la sabiduría" Murui, siendo que las conversas de mambeadero han servido siempre para manejar todo este planeta, enfriar el corazón de los hombres blancos, hacer gobierno, curar cuerpo y espíritu, y algunas otras funciones parecidas que, como estas, han sido ya exploradas en el trabajo del antropólogo Juan Álvaro Echeverri, pero que aquí vienen a ser introducidas al ámbito lusófono, a través de una etnografía rica en detalles que focaliza la articulación entre estos conocimientos nativos y la apropiación de la política indigenista. 5 La edición de los textos corre por cuenta del etnógrafo (como ya se dijo alternativamente secretario u operador del micrófono), y de sus colegas de mambeadero (que actúan como traductores uitoto-español), estrictamente supervisados por Don Ángel, portador, transmisor y organizador de la Palabra de Coca y de Tabaco y quien decide, en cada ocasión, con detalle, el contenido y la forma final de cada texto producido, solicitando varias veces del etnógrafo la lectura de sus notas e introduciendo en ellas no pocas correcciones. Pero no se trata solamente aquí del habla de Don Ángel, sino también de toda una observación de la etiqueta propia del mambeadero, y del largo y elaborado proceso de aprendizaje al cual son sometidos los discípulos del mismo, así como de la clase de preceptos éticos y de las formas de conducta asociadas al bien estar y al buen gobierno de si y de los demás, que ahí son transmitidos. 6 Tal vez el aporte más específico de este libro tenga que ver con la recepción y elaboración de las políticas indigenistas y de los conceptos que estas comportan (como la idea de desarrollo). En el ámbito del indigenismo colombiano, la Constitución de 1991 crea el marco legal en el cual nuevos e inéditos derechos civiles pueden venir a ser ejercidos por los indígenas, entre ellos la autonomía política al interior de sus resguardos, tierras legalmente reconocidas y gobernadas por un Cabildo, tipo de organización creada (igual que el resguardo, en cuanto unidad territorial) por el derecho colonial español, definida como un tipo de autogobierno a través de cargos de elección popular. La constitución de 1991 promueve el reconocimiento y la reactivación de estas instancias, Resguardo y Cabildo, como focos privilegiados de autogobierno de acuerdo con los usos y costumbres de cada etnia, y es el análisis de este tipo de situación considerada a la luz de la historia del contacto interétnico, lo que constituye la novedad del libro y explica una parte de su título: ritual y política.

AUTORES

PEDRO MUSALEM NAZAR

PPGAS/UFSC

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Gilberto Velho. Um Antropólogo na Cidade: Ensaios de Antropologia Urbana

Howard S. Becker

REFERENCES

Gilberto Velho. Um Antropólogo na Cidade: Ensaios de Antropologia Urbana. Seleção e apresentação: Hermano Vianna, Karina Kuschnir e Celso Castro. Zahar: Rio de Janeiro, 2013.

1 The premature death of Gilberto Velho is a loss for the world of social science, in Brazil and throughout the world. As always, the death of a person so important to the thinking and lives of so many of us becomes the occasion for an assessment of his work, a rethinking (now that we know there won't be any more) of what he gave us, what we have now to carry on without his help or example.

2 Fortunately, Gilberto left us a lot. The editors, students and then colleagues of his, have made a judicious and helpful selection of some of his most important papers and, in a splendid introduction, have given readers a short but detailed and insightful introduction to the person as well as the writing. They tell us about his unusual childhood as the descendant of a military family (a few years of it spent at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where his father taught the language and history of Brazil), about his education at a very modern high school, and take full account of his well-known eccentricities. My favorite is his well-known insistence on unconventional measures of time. When he and I taught together he always announced a pause in the three hour meeting by saying, "Sete minutos!" and then kept track as the minutes passed so that everyone knew it was necessary to return strictly on time. 3 The editorial introduction to the person is important here because, while he wrote many important, insightful and trailblazing papers, Gilberto did much more than that for the enterprises we all were, and will continue to be, engaged in with him. He wrote and edited book after book based on his own research but also on the studies done by the people he worked with at the Museu Nacional and, especially, the students he saw

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through their graduate work and dissertations. He was instrumental in the development and flowering of Brazilian anthropology and, I believe, the other social sciences (certainly in sociology, my own field), in the later years of the ditadura and afterward, when the government's restrictions on intellectual life decreased. 4 And not just in an intellectual sense, though that too. He also presided over a collection at Zahar of some of the major works of British and American sociology and anthropology and, more importantly even, of the increasing number of first-rate research studies of life in urban Brazil and, especially, in Rio de Janeiro, most of these based on dissertations for which he had served as orientador. He was, I think, instrumental in the founding of the journal Mana. He understood very well the necessity of an organizational foundation for intellectual life, and took an active role in the creation of these outlets for the dissemination of all this scholarly production, and in the establishment of the national scholarly organizations involved with social science. And took an active role, as well, in bringing an anthropological breadth and wisdom to public discussions of what was happening in Brazilian society, so that his death was marked by important recognition in the national newspapers of the contribution he had made in that dimension. 5 This book contains some of his most important, agenda-setting papers, which laid out whole fields of research for his friends and students and colleagues to follow. One of the most important and salient points lies in his perpetual insistence on the study of "complex societies." He wanted no one ever to forget that contemporary urban society was complicated, made of many interlocking parts, which are in turn made of interlocking parts, all of these entities, large and small, involved in what the others do, in ways it is our job to discover and explicate. No simple formulas satisfied Gilberto, no matter how sanctioned they were by conventional veneration, academic history or anything other than their utility in understanding the world around us. 6 This helped him avoid (and helped people who paid attention to his counsel to avoid) the endless theoretical traps and fruitless arguments that accompany attempts to summarize the results of research in some handy abstract formula, no matter what famous name was attached to it. 7 One of the most striking results of this policy came when he reversed the standard practice of applying the ideas developed in the tribal societies and small communities anthropologists conventionally studied (following in the footsteps of such founders of the field as Levi-Strauss and Malinowski and the succeeding generations of mostly British and North American researchers) to large urban conglomerates. Instead, he insisted, people who studied those smaller entities should understand "little communities" (Robert Redfield's apt phrase for the conventional subjects of anthropological research) in the terms necessary for understanding urban life. In other words, there really aren't any "simpler societies" for us to work in. All societies have the complexity, the multiple interconnections between spheres, the arenas of competing interest, even areas of impersonality, that we ordinarily associate with the world's great metropolises. His anthropology was truly comparative at every level. 8 I saw all this very clearly in a field in which I had earlier suggested some ideas that provoked a lot of research but which I hadn't thought out as clearly as I should have, the field of so-called "deviance." Two papers in this book went a long way toward clearing up the confusion. "O estudo do comportamento desviante" makes clear the essentially political nature of this subject matter, how "o 'desviante' é um individuo

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que não está fora da sua cultura mas que fez uma 'leitura' divergente." In the deceptively simple paper that follows it here-"Acusações: projeto familiar e comportamento desviante"-he transformed the sociological ideas of so-called "labeling theory" for the better by inserting the element whose absence was creating confusion: the necessity for someone to accuse someone of something, making the act of accusation the keystone of the whole sequence of deviance creation. The same paper shows the utility of the improved idea by inserting it into the sequential activities that constitute the planning and execution of a projeto familiar. This is what progress looks like when we do science properly. 9 I can't help remarking on what I hadn't remembered so clearly from earlier readings: the extraordinary clarity of Gilberto's thinking and of the language, deceptively simple, in which he expressed his understanding of social life. He summed up what he had learned from his early fieldwork among Açorianos in Boston in the complimentary ideas of trajetória individual e campo de possibilidades. Which is to say, on the one hand the enormous number of things that formed the background of our every action and of every situation in which we acted, and on the other hand the more-or-less explicitly formulated projects we pursue, as we assess the possibilities our situation makes available to us. This formulation avoids all the sterile oppositions so much social theory imposes on us, giving us instead a lapidary formula that opens doors to new understanding. 10 I could go on much longer, pointing out ideas and remarks we can all use to improve our own work. But that is work for readers of this book to do. 11 Ciao, Gilberto!

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