Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Afro-Brazilian (quilombola) communities in Maranhão, this talk will explore some of the multiple facets of collective land struggles in contemporary Brazil, examining the interconnections between identity politics, religious conversion, and land conflicts. In doing so, the discussion will consider broader religious and political shifts, and new religious and political actors that have emerged in the country in recent decades, and reflect on the social conditions that have enabled such shifts to materialize.

About the Speaker

Katerina Hatzikidi is a social anthropologist (PhD Oxford, 2018). Her main research area is Brazil, focusing on Afro-Brazilian (quilombola) grassroots political organisation around land and cultural heritage. She is also interested in questions of ethnicity, religious conversion, far-right nationalism and digital populism. Katerina is Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, and Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Graduate Institute.