Patricia de Santana Pinho
My research and teaching focus on the topics of blackness, whiteness, racism, and forms of resistance to racism in Brazil, and more broadly in Latin America.
My new book, Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), examines diaspora tourism as a channel of communication, interaction, and solidarity building between African Americans and Afro-Brazilians. Brazil, like some countries in Africa, has become a major destination for African American tourists seeking the cultural roots of the black Atlantic diaspora. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research as well as textual, visual, and archival sources, I investigate African American roots tourism, a complex, poignant kind of travel that provides profound personal and collective meaning for those searching for black identity and heritage. African Americans have become frequent travelers across what I call the "map of Africanness" that connects diasporic communities and stimulates transnational solidarities while simultaneously exposing the unevenness of the black diaspora. Roots tourism is a fertile site to examine the tensions between racial and national identities as well as the gendered dimensions of travel, particularly when women are the major roots-seekers.
My earlier book, Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia (Duke University Press, 2010) traced the ways in which Africa has been imagined and reinvented by Afro-Bahian cultural groups, functioning, on the one hand, as an inspiring reference for the construction of cultural and political black identities, but serving, on the other hand, to freeze blackness in static icons that are manipulated by the local government and the tourism industry. Mama Africa is a revised and expanded edition of Reinvenções da África na Bahia (Editora Annablume, 2004), which received an Honorary Award from LASA’s Premio IberoAmericano in 2006.
Before joining UCSC, I taught at SUNY, Albany, and I was a post-doc fellow at Amherst College, Yale University, and the Open University, UK. I have a PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP, Brazil.
My publications also include:
"Tourism Mobilities," co-edited with Bianca Freire-Medeiros, especial issue of Plural, Revista de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de São Paulo, 23(2), 2016. http://revistas.usp.br/plural/issue/view/9327
“Bahia is a Closer Africa.” African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World, edited by Ana Lucia Araujo. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015, 253-284.
“The Dirty Body that Cleans: Representations of Domestic Workers in Brazilian Common Sense.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 13 (1), August 2015, 103-128.
“Nurturing Bantu Africanness in Brazil.” John Burdick and Kwame Dixon (editors), Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012, 21-41.
“Domestic Relations in Brazil: Legacies and Horizons,” co-authored with Elizabeth B. Silva. Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, n.2, June 2010, p.90-113.
“White but not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, n. 29 (Vol. 13/2), June 2009, p.39-56.
“African-American Roots Tourism in Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives, 160, vol. 35, May 2008, p.70-86.
“Afro-Aesthetics in Brazil.” Nuttall, Sarah (editor), Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006, p.266-289.
“Gilberto Freyre e a Baianidade.” McNee, Malcolm & Joshua Lund (editors), Gilberto Freyre e os Estudos Latinoamericanos. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006, p.227-254.
My new book, Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), examines diaspora tourism as a channel of communication, interaction, and solidarity building between African Americans and Afro-Brazilians. Brazil, like some countries in Africa, has become a major destination for African American tourists seeking the cultural roots of the black Atlantic diaspora. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research as well as textual, visual, and archival sources, I investigate African American roots tourism, a complex, poignant kind of travel that provides profound personal and collective meaning for those searching for black identity and heritage. African Americans have become frequent travelers across what I call the "map of Africanness" that connects diasporic communities and stimulates transnational solidarities while simultaneously exposing the unevenness of the black diaspora. Roots tourism is a fertile site to examine the tensions between racial and national identities as well as the gendered dimensions of travel, particularly when women are the major roots-seekers.
My earlier book, Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia (Duke University Press, 2010) traced the ways in which Africa has been imagined and reinvented by Afro-Bahian cultural groups, functioning, on the one hand, as an inspiring reference for the construction of cultural and political black identities, but serving, on the other hand, to freeze blackness in static icons that are manipulated by the local government and the tourism industry. Mama Africa is a revised and expanded edition of Reinvenções da África na Bahia (Editora Annablume, 2004), which received an Honorary Award from LASA’s Premio IberoAmericano in 2006.
Before joining UCSC, I taught at SUNY, Albany, and I was a post-doc fellow at Amherst College, Yale University, and the Open University, UK. I have a PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP, Brazil.
My publications also include:
"Tourism Mobilities," co-edited with Bianca Freire-Medeiros, especial issue of Plural, Revista de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de São Paulo, 23(2), 2016. http://revistas.usp.br/plural/issue/view/9327
“Bahia is a Closer Africa.” African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World, edited by Ana Lucia Araujo. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015, 253-284.
“The Dirty Body that Cleans: Representations of Domestic Workers in Brazilian Common Sense.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 13 (1), August 2015, 103-128.
“Nurturing Bantu Africanness in Brazil.” John Burdick and Kwame Dixon (editors), Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012, 21-41.
“Domestic Relations in Brazil: Legacies and Horizons,” co-authored with Elizabeth B. Silva. Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, n.2, June 2010, p.90-113.
“White but not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, n. 29 (Vol. 13/2), June 2009, p.39-56.
“African-American Roots Tourism in Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives, 160, vol. 35, May 2008, p.70-86.
“Afro-Aesthetics in Brazil.” Nuttall, Sarah (editor), Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006, p.266-289.
“Gilberto Freyre e a Baianidade.” McNee, Malcolm & Joshua Lund (editors), Gilberto Freyre e os Estudos Latinoamericanos. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006, p.227-254.
less
InterestsView All (12)
Uploads
Published Articles by Patricia de Santana Pinho
Special Issues by Patricia de Santana Pinho
The second goal of this special issue is to propose a conceptual and theoretical roadmap for the study of whiteness in Latin America. Drawing from an array of disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, our collaborators have produced research that allows us to theorize three interconnected issues that we consider crucial for the analysis of
whiteness in Latin America. The first issue is what we call ‘ordinary whiteness,’ or the everyday ways whiteness organizes routines, perspectives, subjectivities, and affects (cf. Ramos-Zayas 2021). Secondly, we revisit long-held debates around the intersection of race and class. Rather than producing a competing approach or determining which of these elements plays a more significant role in Latin American processes of inequality, we view this intersection as situated in specific historical moments and within an always shifting continuum that varies according to local contexts. Finally, our roadmap considers how race, space, and im/mobility provide the contours of whiteness in the region.
The second goal of this special issue is to propose a conceptual and theoretical roadmap for the study of whiteness in Latin America. Drawing from an array of disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, our collaborators have produced research that allows us to theorize three interconnected issues that we consider crucial for the analysis of
whiteness in Latin America. The first issue is what we call ‘ordinary whiteness,’ or the everyday ways whiteness organizes routines, perspectives, subjectivities, and affects (cf. Ramos-Zayas 2021). Secondly, we revisit long-held debates around the intersection of race and class. Rather than producing a competing approach or determining which of these elements plays a more significant role in Latin American processes of inequality, we view this intersection as situated in specific historical moments and within an always shifting continuum that varies according to local contexts. Finally, our roadmap considers how race, space, and im/mobility provide the contours of whiteness in the region.
Pinho explores how Bahian cultural production influences and is influenced by black diasporic cultures and the idealization of Africa—to the extent that Bahia draws African American tourists wanting to learn about their heritage. Analyzing the conceptions of blackness produced by the blocos afro, she describes how Africa is re-inscribed on the body through clothes, hairstyles, and jewelry; once demeaned, blackness is reclaimed as a source of beauty and pride. Turning to the body’s interior, Pinho explains that the myth of Mama Africa implies that black appearances have corresponding black essences. Musical and dance abilities are seen as naturally belonging to black people, and these traits are often believed to be transmitted by blood. Pinho argues that such essentialized ideas of blackness render black culture increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by the state and commercial interests. She contends that the myth of Mama Africa, while informing oppositional black identities, overlaps with a constraining notion of Bahianness promoted by the government and the tourist industry.