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“‘Nothing is simple'. An ethnographic theory and its history”

Prof Marcio Goldman (Museu Nacional, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

Discussant: Dr Elizabeth Ewart (University of Oxford)

5pm, School I, St Salvator's Quad, School I and

Drawing on an intellectual exchange that had spanned almost 20 years, this presentation outlines and reflects on some of the steps that led to the development of an ‘ethnographic theory of acculturation' (or of ‘mixture'). To this end, it revisits and attempts to align developments in Peter Gow's thinking since the 1990s with those carried out in the context of studies on groups of African origin in Brazil.

About the Speaker

Marcio Goldman is currently Full Professor in Social Anthropology at the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and holds fellowships at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and the Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

He is the author of several books and articles, including Como Funciona a Democracia: Uma Teoria Etnográfica da Política, which was published in Brazil in 2006, and has been translated into English as How Democracy Works: An Ethnographic Theory of Politics (Sean Kingston, 2013). Most recently, he has been in the field studying the cosmopolitics of Afro-Brazilian religions in candomblé terreiro in the city of Ilhéus, in the south of Bahia. A book on this subject is in preparation.