Aaron Ansell
I am a sociocultural anthropologist with a specialization in Northeast Brazil, and research interest in political discourse, social inequality, political theory, and alternative democracies.
My work focuses on the intersection of language and material exchange. I am particularly interested in the discourse systems that rural Brazilians use to reconcile traditional patronage politics with liberal models of democracy. I examine these issues in the context of an important regime change in Brazil, the rise of the left-wing Workers' Party government (2003-present). By examining this government's effort to stimulate critical political reflexivity among subsistence cultivators, I explore the meaning of democratic socialism in the new millennium.
The courses I teach at Virginia Tech include Multicultural Communication, Ethnography, Investigations in Religion & Culture, and Historical and Theoretical Frameworks in Material Culture and the Public Humanities (graduate). I also hope to design new courses that appeal to students interested in anthropology.
I currently serve as contributing co-editor of the Society of Linguistic Anthropology's Section News column.
Address: Blacksburg, Virginia, United States
My work focuses on the intersection of language and material exchange. I am particularly interested in the discourse systems that rural Brazilians use to reconcile traditional patronage politics with liberal models of democracy. I examine these issues in the context of an important regime change in Brazil, the rise of the left-wing Workers' Party government (2003-present). By examining this government's effort to stimulate critical political reflexivity among subsistence cultivators, I explore the meaning of democratic socialism in the new millennium.
The courses I teach at Virginia Tech include Multicultural Communication, Ethnography, Investigations in Religion & Culture, and Historical and Theoretical Frameworks in Material Culture and the Public Humanities (graduate). I also hope to design new courses that appeal to students interested in anthropology.
I currently serve as contributing co-editor of the Society of Linguistic Anthropology's Section News column.
Address: Blacksburg, Virginia, United States
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Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, for alleged budgetary
misconduct, as well as the related right-wing, ‘anti-corruption’
demonstrations calling for her ouster. I argue that Rousseff’s
impeachment was facilitated by a conflation of two models of
‘corruption’ operating in Brazil, one legal-behavioural and the
other religious-ontological. What happened in 2016 was a tacit
conflation of these two models, along with their associated
regimes for construing evidence of guilt. More specifically,
congressional deliberations on Rousseff’s guilt allowed
jurisprudential standards of evidence to be influenced by the
evidential regime of the right-wing Fora Dilma (‘Out Dilma’)
demonstrators. The demonstrators evinced Rousseff’s corruption
through a semiotic process I term ‘cross-domain homology’, a
process that I claim is intrinsically dangerous for democracy
because it invites a state of exception to the norms girding
representative institutions.
Keywords: Brazil; zero hunger; patronage; clientelism
participatory development project in northeast
Brazil by exploring how local genres of public
speech articulate with categories of wealth.
Although development resources cannot be easily
categorized into local classes of wealth, they
nonetheless evoke some of the anxieties cultivators
feel when dealing with wealth forms susceptible to
the evil eye. Beliefs surrounding the evil eye shape
cultivators’ relations to material objects, and they
also define the contours of safe and acceptable
speech within the village development association.
As a result, during association meetings, the
villagers speak in ways that frustrate development
agents seeking to generate “open” and
“transparent” managerial discourse felicitous to
project success—at least, external notions of
project success. Appreciating the link between
wealth and speech forms sheds light on both the
local implementation challenges that participants in
such projects face and the reason development
agents frequently blame ostensive project failures
on beneficiary backwardness.
currency stabilization and democratization have had on municipal politics. These simultaneous processes havemade
politics confusing for the people of Passerinho by creating multiple modalities of electoral reciprocity. In this article,
I argue that the ritual procedures of the auctions commensurate these modalities of reciprocity through a semiotic
procedure in which money signifies both exchange value and more personal forms of value. I consider the auction’s
impact on municipal politics by looking at its effect on the narrative of democratic progress and on the prestige of
grassroots politicians, traditional elites, and voluntary associations.
governments to turn piecemeal, discretionary CCTs into more expansive and secure benefits.
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Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, for alleged budgetary
misconduct, as well as the related right-wing, ‘anti-corruption’
demonstrations calling for her ouster. I argue that Rousseff’s
impeachment was facilitated by a conflation of two models of
‘corruption’ operating in Brazil, one legal-behavioural and the
other religious-ontological. What happened in 2016 was a tacit
conflation of these two models, along with their associated
regimes for construing evidence of guilt. More specifically,
congressional deliberations on Rousseff’s guilt allowed
jurisprudential standards of evidence to be influenced by the
evidential regime of the right-wing Fora Dilma (‘Out Dilma’)
demonstrators. The demonstrators evinced Rousseff’s corruption
through a semiotic process I term ‘cross-domain homology’, a
process that I claim is intrinsically dangerous for democracy
because it invites a state of exception to the norms girding
representative institutions.
Keywords: Brazil; zero hunger; patronage; clientelism
participatory development project in northeast
Brazil by exploring how local genres of public
speech articulate with categories of wealth.
Although development resources cannot be easily
categorized into local classes of wealth, they
nonetheless evoke some of the anxieties cultivators
feel when dealing with wealth forms susceptible to
the evil eye. Beliefs surrounding the evil eye shape
cultivators’ relations to material objects, and they
also define the contours of safe and acceptable
speech within the village development association.
As a result, during association meetings, the
villagers speak in ways that frustrate development
agents seeking to generate “open” and
“transparent” managerial discourse felicitous to
project success—at least, external notions of
project success. Appreciating the link between
wealth and speech forms sheds light on both the
local implementation challenges that participants in
such projects face and the reason development
agents frequently blame ostensive project failures
on beneficiary backwardness.
currency stabilization and democratization have had on municipal politics. These simultaneous processes havemade
politics confusing for the people of Passerinho by creating multiple modalities of electoral reciprocity. In this article,
I argue that the ritual procedures of the auctions commensurate these modalities of reciprocity through a semiotic
procedure in which money signifies both exchange value and more personal forms of value. I consider the auction’s
impact on municipal politics by looking at its effect on the narrative of democratic progress and on the prestige of
grassroots politicians, traditional elites, and voluntary associations.
governments to turn piecemeal, discretionary CCTs into more expansive and secure benefits.