Brazil: the Cultural Construction of Hybrid Identity

The collection contains seven articles. The problem they share is that how can the mixture of races, formerly an object of shame and resentment, become the source of national pride and self-respect. Brazil represents a special case among the postcolonial states: the overwhelming majority of its citizens is of mixed blood. The first three texts offer a bird’s eye view of Brazilian society in a historical perspective. The further articles study different symbolic dimensions of the cultural process known as hybridisation. The collection starts with an excerpt of Gilberto Freyre’s introduction to his famous “Masters and Slaves”. Freyre, a classic author of Brazilian sociology makes refined observations on social changes by analysing the structure of the manor house. Hervé Théry describes long-term societal processes of the twentieth century Brazil on the basis of macro-scale statistical indicators. By dealing with the nationalisation of traditional Indian lands, Joao Pacheco de Oliveira examines the delicate relation between the modern state and the native Indians. In his analysis concerning the re-interpretation of the national founding myth, Afrânio Raul Garcia utilises literary sources to show how mestizo identity is created as a source of positively distinguished national self-definition. Marion Aubrée writes on the re-evaluation of the concept of African identity in Brazilian culture. The last two articles concentrate on two major features that have a pivotal role in forging both the Brazilian self-identity and the image of Brazil in abroad. One of these key features is samba (in the article of Vassili Rivron), the other is football (by José Sergio Leite Lopes). These texts demonstrate that the identity-politics leading to the high esteem of hybridity are encouraged by the state as well.