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Anthropologists widely agree that identities--even ethnic and racial ones--are socially constructed. Less understood are the processes by which social identities are conceived and developed.Legalizing Identitiesshows how law can successfully serve as the impetus for the transformation of cultural practices and collective identity. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal analysis of successful claims to land by two neighboring black communities in the backlands of northeastern Brazil, Jan Hoffman French demonstrates how these two communities have come to distinguish themselves from each other while revising and retelling their histories and present-day stories.French argues that the invocation of laws by these related communities led to the emergence of two different identities: one indigenous (Xoco Indian) and the other quilombo (descendants of a fugitive African slave community). With the help of the Catholic Church, government officials, lawyers, anthropologists, and activists, each community won government recognition and land rights, and displaced elite landowners. This was accomplished even though anthropologists called upon to assess the validity of their claims recognized that their identities were \"constructed.\" The positive outcome of their claims demonstrates that authenticity is not a prerequisite for identity. French draws from this insight a more sweeping conclusion that, far from being evidence of inauthenticity, processes of construction form the basis of all identities and may have important consequences for social justice.

In the wake of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, a key state ideology developed: racism was a systemic cultural issue that ceased to exist after the Revolution, and any racism that did persist was a result of contained cases of individual prejudice perpetuated by US influence. Even after the state officially pronounced the end of racism within its borders, social inequalities tied to racism, sexism, and homophobia endured, and, during the economic liberalization of the 1990s, widespread economic disparities began to reemerge. Cuban Underground Hip Hop focuses on a group of self-described antiracist, revolutionary youth who initiated a social movement (1996–2006) to educate and fight against these inequalities through the use of arts-based political activism intended to spur debate and enact social change. Their “revolution\" was manifest in altering individual and collective consciousness by critiquing nearly all aspects of social and economic life tied to colonial legacies. Using over a decade of research and interviews with those directly involved, Tanya L. Saunders traces the history of the movement from its inception and the national and international debates that it spawned to the exodus of these activists/artists from Cuba and the creative vacuum they left behind. Shedding light on identity politics, race, sexuality, and gender in Cuba and the Americas, Cuban Underground Hip Hop is a valuable case study of a social movement that is a part of Cuba’s longer historical process of decolonization.

After generations of being rendered virtually invisible by the US academy in critical anthologies and literary histories, writing by Latin Americans of African ancestry has become represented by a booming corpus of intellectual and critical investigation. This volume aims to provide an introduction to the literary worlds and perceptions of national culture and identity of authors from Spanish-America, Brazil, and uniquely, Equatorial Guinea, thus contextually connecting Africa to the history of Spanish colonization. The importance of Latin America literature to the discipline of African Diaspora studies is immeasurable, and this edited collection provides a ripe cultural context for critical comparative analysis among the vast geographies that encompass African and African Diaspora studies. Scholars in the area of African Diaspora Studies, Black Studies, Latin American Studies, and American literature will be able to utilize the eleven essays in this edition to enhance classroom instruction and further academic research. Introduction Antonio D. Tillis Part One: Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts Introduction to Part One Antonio D. Tillis 1. Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature Dorothy E. Mosby 2. Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading Sonja Stephenson Watson 3. Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón Antonio D. Tillis Part Two: Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts Introduction to Part Two Antonio D. Tillis 4. Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas Aida L. Heredia 5. Myth, Legend & Reality: Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker Cristina Cabral 6. Nicomedes Santa Cruz: A Clarion for Black Cultural Traditions in Peru Martha Ojeda 7. Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural-Political Order Elisa Rizo Part Three: Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature Introduction to Part Three Antonio D. Tillis 8. Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves 9. The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil Dawn Duke 10. Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje Emmanuel Harris, III 11. Dialogically Redefining the Nation: Hip-hop and the Collective Identity Lesley Feracho Antonio D. Tillis is an Associate Professor at Dartmouth College. A Fulbright Scholar at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (2009-2010), he is the editor of PALARA (Publication of the Afro-Latin American Research Association) and author of Manuel Zapata Olivella and the \"Darkening\" of Latin American Literature (2005) and Caribbean-African…Upon Awakening: Poetry by Blas Jiménez (2010).

Since the mid-1990s, the black experience in Britain has begun to be (re)negotiated intensely, with a strong focus on history. Narrative Projections of a Black British History considers narratives that construct, or engage with, aspects of a black British history. Part I poses the question of what sort of narratives have emerged from, and in turn determine, key events (such as the iconic 'Windrush' moment) and developments and provides basic insights into theoretical frameworks. It also offers a large number of comparative readings, considering both 'factual' and 'fictional' forms of representation such as history books, documentary films, life writing, novels, and drama, and identifies main strands, 'official' narratives and countercurrents. Part II embarks on close readings and analyses of a selection of narratives that can be classed as reactions to the 'established' historical culture. Overall, the book draws attention to collective currents and individual positions, affirmative and critical approaches: Together, they form a representative image of a specific moment in the ongoing debate about a black British history.

In Blackness and Modernity Foster traces the main philosophical, anthropological, sociological, and mythological arguments that support views of modernity as a failed quest for whiteness. He outlines how these views were implemented as part of a \"world history\" and shows how Canada became the first country to officially reject this approach by adopting multiculturalism.

For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date. Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness. This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America.

Previous work discussing Black beauty has tended to concentrate on Black women's search for white beauty as a consequence of racialization. Without denying either the continuation of such aesthetics or their enduring power, this book uncovers the cracks in this hegemonic Black beauty. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research amongst British women of Caribbean heritage, this volume pursues a broad discussion of beauty within the Black diaspora contexts of the Caribbean, the UK, the United States and Latin America through different historical periods to the present day. With a unique exploration of beauty, race and identity politics, the author reveals how Black women themselves speak about, negotiate, inhabit, work on and perform Black beauty. As such, it will appeal not only to sociologists, but anyone working in the fields of race, ethnicity and post-colonial thought, feminism and the sociology of the body.

Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), an upper-class white Cuban intellectual, spent many years traveling through Cuba collecting oral histories, stories, and music from Cubans of African descent. Her work is commonly viewed as an extension of the work of her famous brother-in-law, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who initiated the study of Afro-Cubans and the concept of transculturation. Here, Edna Rodríguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others. Rodríguez-Mangual examines Cabrera's ethnographic essays and short stories in context. By blurring fact and fiction, anthropology and literature, Cabrera defied the scientific discourse used by other anthropologists. She wrote of Afro-Cubans not as objects but as subjects, and in her writings, whiteness, instead of blackness, is gazed upon as the \"other.\" As Rodríguez-Mangual demonstrates, Cabrera rewrote the history of Cuba and its culture through imaginative means, calling into question the empirical basis of anthropology and placing Afro-Cuban contributions at the center of the literature that describes the Cuban nation and its national identity.

Nago Grandma and White Papais a signal work in Brazilian anthropology and African diaspora studies originally published in Brazil in 1988. This edition makes Beatriz Gois Dantas's historioethnographic study available to an English-speaking audience for the first time.Dantas compares the formation of Yoruba (Nago) religious traditions and ethnic identities in the Brazilian states of Sergipe and Bahia, revealing how they diverged from each other due to their different social and political contexts and needs. By tracking how markers of supposedly \"pure\" ethnic identity and religious practice differed radically from one place to another, Dantas shows the social construction of identity within a network of class-related demands and alliances. She demonstrates how the shape and meaning of \"purity\" have been affected by prolonged and complex social and cultural mixing, compromise, and struggle over time. Ethnic identity, as well as social identity in general, is formed in the crucible of political relations between social groups that purposefully mobilize and manipulate cultural markers to define their respective boundaries-a process, Dantas argues, that must be applied to understanding the experience of African-descended people in Brazil.