Abstract
This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus—their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil.
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Notes
The argument for the importance of dispositions rests on the assumption that “adherence to the existing order operates primarily...through the “double naturalization” of the social world “resulting from its inscription in things and in bodies,” and through the silent and invisible agreement between social structures and mental structures” (Wacquant 2004, p. 10).
For us, publics refer to “self-organizing fields of discourse in which participation is not based primarily on personal connections and is always in principle open to strangers” (Calhoun 2002, p. 164).
According to the Observatório das Metropoles, Salvador has today an estimated population of 2.6 million almost double of what it was in 1980, and is marked by high inequality. According to official government data, 28% of the city’s population survives on household incomes less than ½ of a minimum wage. (Observatório 2006). Access to urban services is extremely uneven; some of the city’s outlying districts have less than 50% coverage of sewage services, and less than 60% of homes in outlying districts have access to running water (IBGE 2006).
See Economic and Social Studies of Bahia (SEI) article “Unemployment in Salvador falls to 23.3%, says SEI.” (November 2005). See http://www.jornaldamidia.com.br/noticias/2005/11/25/Bahia_Nacional/Desemprego_em_Salvador_cai_para_2.shtml
See Secretaria Municipal de Reparações: http://www.reparacao.salvador.ba.gov.br/
According to the research of Avritzer and colleagues, Salvador had 7,299 associations in 2007, a ratio of 2.37/1000 see Mota (2007).
Not all terreiros are registered as associations, so it is likely that the actual statistic for associationalism in Salvador might be even higher.
Hanchard defines them as cultural groups that “have specifically Afro-Brazilian membership and constituency; they produce lyrics and music that utilize Afro-Brazilian identity and racial discrimination as principal themes” (Hanchard 1999, p. 76).
See Ilê Aiyê website: http://www.ileaiye.org.br.
See Bloco Afro Olodum’s website: www2.uol.com.br/olodum/novo/historicoblocoafro.htm
But because most mediators were working-class and the line of rupture in the discourse was not along class lines per se as much location within these associational networks, our analysis proceeds along this relational line and not “class analysis” per se.
capoeira
http://noticias.terra.com.br/brasil/interna/0,,OI282830-EI306,00.html. March 23rd 2004. Accessed May 18th 2005
See “Carta de Salvador—Ações futuras para o Povo do Axé” by Marcos Rezende, in Jornal A Tarde Online Dec 1st 2008. Available online at: http://cenbrasil.blogspot.com/search/label/CEN%2FBA. Accessed on December 15th 2008.
The national government has shown historically unprecedented levels of recognition of racial issues since 2003. Subsequent to our research, changes in state level politics (where the Workers’ Party won in 2006), and in local politics, where a more progressive mayor won in 2005, have also opened new opportunities for this type of engagement.
Olivia Santana, city councilor for the Communist Party, who, some months after this interview, became head of the Municipal Department of Education and Culture in 2005.
ENAPAN—Encontro Nacional de Parlamentares Negros
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Samuel Vida, Leonardo Avritzer, Javier Auyero and the anonymous reviewers for feedback on this article. We also wish to acknowledge the able research assistance of Élcio de Araújo.
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Baiocchi, G., Corrado, L. The Politics of Habitus: Publics, Blackness, and Community Activism in Salvador, Brazil. Qual Sociol 33, 369–388 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9155-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9155-z