When
Where
Center for Latin American Studies, Fall 2021 virtual Charlas con café – a weekly space to hear lectures from a wide variety of experts and discuss topics relevant to the Latin American region, Fridays from 1-2 p.m. (unless otherwise specified)
"Precarious Families: Generational Tensions as a Working-Class Household from Recife, Brazil Contemplates the 2018 Presidential Elections"
Friday, Oct. 22, 1-2pm (AZ Time)
Join via Zoom: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86782034717
Benjamin Junge presents an ethnographic account of an extended family from Recife during the final month of Brazil’s 2018 election season—the most contentious and polarizing election in a generation, in which hard-right congressman and former military captain Jair Bolsonaro assumes the presidency. The family exemplifies the sector once referred to as Brazil’s “new middle class”—the estimated 35 million who rose above the poverty line during the rule by the left-leaning Workers Party (PT), but whose prospects have since become precarious due to economic and political crisis. He focuses on the family’s interactions—both in-person and online—between the first-round election (October 7) and the second-round election (October 28). Emerging within the family’s interactions are narratives of moral disintegration, nostalgia for Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, lost masculinities, menacing sexualities, and views of hope and despair for the future. This analysis contributes to a more nuanced account of the political affinities of Brazil’s “previously ascendant” sector during a moment of deepening economic precarity and political cynicism.
Benjamin Junge is Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His research focuses on class mobility, political attitudes, gender, sexuality, health, and religion, with regional focus on Brazil and other settings in Latin America.