BiblioVault - Books about Social Science

The Xavante in Transition

Health, Ecology, and Bioanthropology in Central Brazil

Carlos E. A. Coimbra, Jr., Nancy M. Flowers, Francisco M. Salzano, and Ricardo V. Santos

University of Michigan Press, 2004

The Xavánte in Transition presents a diachronic view of the long and complex interaction between the Xavánte, an indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon, and the surrounding nation, documenting the effects of this interaction on Xavánte health, ecology, and biology.

A powerful example of how a small-scale society, buffeted by political and economic forces at the national level and beyond, attempts to cope with changing conditions, this study will be important reading for demographers, economists, environmentalists, and public health workers.

". . . an integrated and politically informed anthropology for the new millennium. They show how the local and the regional meet on the ground and under the skin."
--Alan H. Goodman, Professor of Biological Anthropology, Hampshire College

"This volume delivers what it promises. Drawing on twenty-five years of team research, the authors combine history, ethnography and bioanthropology on the cutting edge of science in highly readable form."
--Daniel Gross, Lead Anthropologist, The World Bank

"No doubt it will serve as a model for future interdisciplinary scholarship. It promises to be highly relevant to policy formulation and implementation of health care programs among small-scale populations in Brazil and elsewhere."
--Laura R. Graham, Professor of Anthropology, University of Iowa

Carlos E. A. Coimbra Jr. is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the National School of Public Health, Rio de Janeiro.Nancy M. Flowers is Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology, Hunter College. Francisco M. Salzano is Emeritus Professor, Department of Genetics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Ricardo V. Santos is Professor of Biological Anthropology at the National School of Public Health and at the National Museum IUFRJ, Rio de Janeiro.

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A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness

Writings, 2000-2010

Cherríe L. Moraga

Duke University Press, 2011

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness features essays and poems by Cherríe L. Moraga, one of the most influential figures in Chicana/o, feminist, queer, and indigenous activism and scholarship. Combining moving personal stories with trenchant political and cultural critique, the writer, activist, teacher, dramatist, mother, daughter, comadre, and lesbian lover looks back on the first ten years of the twenty-first century. She considers decade-defining public events such as 9/11 and the campaign and election of Barack Obama, and she explores socioeconomic, cultural, and political phenomena closer to home, sharing her fears about raising her son amid increasing urban violence and the many forms of dehumanization faced by young men of color. Moraga describes her deepening grief as she loses her mother to Alzheimer’s; pays poignant tribute to friends who passed away, including the sculptor Marsha Gómez and the poets Alfred Arteaga, Pat Parker, and Audre Lorde; and offers a heartfelt essay about her personal and political relationship with Gloria Anzaldúa.

Thirty years after the publication of Anzaldúa and Moraga’s collection This Bridge Called My Back, a landmark of women-of-color feminism, Moraga’s literary and political praxis remains motivated by and intertwined with indigenous spirituality and her identity as Chicana lesbian. Yet aspects of her thinking have changed over time. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness reveals key transformations in Moraga’s thought; the breadth, rigor, and philosophical depth of her work; her views on contemporary debates about citizenship, immigration, and gay marriage; and her deepening involvement in transnational feminist and indigenous activism. It is a major statement from one of our most important public intellectuals.

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X-Marks

Native Signatures of Assent

Scott Richard Lyons

University of Minnesota Press, 2010

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, North American Indian leaders commonly signed treaties with the European powers and the American and Canadian governments with an X, signifying their presence and assent to the terms. These x-marks indicated coercion (because the treaties were made under unfair conditions), resistance (because they were often met with protest), and acquiescence (to both a European modernity and the end of a particular moment of Indian history and identity).

In X-Marks, Scott Richard Lyons explores the complexity of contemporary Indian identity and current debates among Indians about traditionalism, nationalism, and tribalism. Employing the x-mark as a metaphor for what he calls the “Indian assent to the new,” Lyons offers a valuable alternative to both imperialist concepts of assimilation and nativist notions of resistance, calling into question the binary oppositions produced during the age of imperialism and maintaining that indigeneity is something that people do, not what they are. Drawing on his personal experiences and family history on the Leech Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota, discourses embedded in Ojibwemowin (the Ojibwe language), and disagreements about Indian identity within Native American studies, Lyons contends that Indians should be able to choose nontraditional ways of living, thinking, and being without fear of being condemned as inauthentic.

Arguing for a greater recognition of the diversity of Native America, X-Marks analyzes ongoing controversies about Indian identity, addresses the issue of culture and its use and misuse by essentialists, and considers the implications of the idea of an Indian nation. At once intellectually rigorous and deeply personal, X-Marks holds that indigenous peoples can operate in modern times while simultaneously honoring and defending their communities, practices, and values.

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Xuxa

The Mega-Marketing of Gender, Race, and Modernity

Amelia Simpson

Temple University Press, 1993

"A fascinating new book...[that] offers a lucid academic critique of Xuxa's persona." --Entertainment Weekly Former Playboy centerfold and soft-porn movie actress Xuxa (SHOO-sha) emerged in the 1980s as Brazil's mass media megastar. Through her children's television show, which reaches millions of people in Latin America and the United States, this blond sex symbol has attained extraordinary cultural authority. Reaching far beyond younger audiences, Xuxa's show informs the culture at large about gender relations, racial democracy, and idealized beauty. Backed by Brazil's TV Globo, the fourth-largest commercial network in the world, Xuxa has built an empire. Amelia Simoson's colorful portrayal is the first book to explore how Xuxa's representation of femininity, her privileging of a white ideal of beauty, and her promotional approach to culture perpetuate inequality on an unprecedented scale. Simpson's thoughtful analysis exposes the complicity of a mass audience eager to celebrate Xuxa's deeply compromised representations of gender, race, and modernity. Xuxa also explores the meaning behind the myth--Xuxa's long-term relationship with Brazil's soccer idol, PelÃ©, and the near-worship of her atypical blond, blue-eyed appearance by Brazil's population. As the author examines Xuxa's suggestive style juxtaposed with juvenile entertainment, and the phenomenon of Xuxa-look-alike teenaged paquitas, she unfold the symbolic territory of blond sex symbols worldwide. "Simpson has brought the facts and persona of Xuxa together in this well-documented, well-written analysis of the Brazilian superstar. She touches bases on gender, race, and changing patterns in Brazil. Xuxa is rich with information, laced with insight about the methods, practices and abuses that abound with the marketing of a personality and its products, and the effect of TV on all who watch it, especially the children." --News from Brazil

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