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Indigenous peoples in Brazil are undergoing transformations since the colonization period, when the contact with the European caused a cultural hybridization process. Currently, the traditional indigenous livelihood seeks strategies for cultural assimilation while trying to resist and preserve its identity with the surrounding society. In this new economic format, in which indigenous peoples increasingly need the use of money, and, given the few options for obtaining income within the Indigenous Land (TI), the most common use has been to seek additional income outside its territory. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the strategies and consequences of the wage process of Kaingang and Guarani people in IT Mangueirinha, PR. Therefore, the research sought to interview bookies, indigenous leaders, and workers who fall within the indigenous wage process. In the end, we realized that these Indigenous leaders have a significant role in the formal salaried employment process of the Indigenous, as well as we identified different responses of the process, according to the culture involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first New World Jewish settlement was in Recife, then a relatively small city in northeastern Brazil. Portuguese New Christians migrated there in the sixteenth century in search of a freer environment in which to continue practicing the Jewish faith. However, it was not until 1630, when the Dutch conquered the region, that Jews were able to openly observe their religion. With the Portuguese reconquest in 1654, this brief chapter ended. Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe and Germany arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century and flourished for several decades. Assimilation and intermarriage, however, diminished Jewish practices and identity before a revival flourished during the last twenty-five years, which has seen both cultural and religious institutions rebuilt. Still, the long-term viability of this community, far from others in Brazil, is not guaranteed. What follows is an account of the long history of Recife Jewry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assimilation makes new members of a group by changing particular characteristics of non-members to reflect the fundamentals of collective belonging. Gaining the qualities for inclusion in one community typically involves losing at least some features that confer acceptance in another. However, scholars have generally not acknowledged assimilation as a process of loss. In part, this gap bespeaks a larger tendency to overlook the influence of emigration on national identity in population-exporting states (compared to the vast literature on immigration and national identity in population-receiving countries). This article analyzes discourses of assimilation concerning Japanese emigrants as a case study of how the ways in which members are understood to leave the national community delimits the bases of belonging for those who remain. Historically, Japanese ideologies of assimilation have been most contested in Brazil, where the largest Japanese diaspora in the West sought to reconcile patriotism and the expectations of the Japanese government with local nation-building agendas. After World War II, many emigrants and their descendants in Brazil refused to acknowledge Japan's surrender. This crisis inspired the first study of the Japanese diaspora ever conducted by a Japan-based social scientist. Izumi Seiichi's work in cultural anthropology helped to build Japan's new identity as a “peace state.” Subsequent generations of Japanese scholars continued to study the assimilation of the diaspora, recategorized as “Nikkei,” as a foil for “Japaneseness.” Their ethnic conception of national membership remains influential today, even as Japan transitions from a population exporter to a land of immigrants, including the Nikkei. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Starting with Hegel's definition of a ‘struggle for recognition’ in his ‘dialectics of master and slave,’ this article shows that contemporary Anglo-American theories of multiculturalism follow Hegel without realizing that African slavery was his implicit point of departure. Similarly, defenders of multiculturalism in Latin America claim that hybridity, mestizaje, miscegenation, and syncretism are good models for a different kind of multiculturalism, but forget that these terms reflect a long history of assimilatory policies such as ‘racial democracy’ in Brazil. On the basis of a critical reconstruction of syncretic multiculturalism in Brazilian history and the analysis of examples of Afro-Brazilian resistance to assimilation, it is argued that the identification of different locations of the Afro-Brazilian struggle for recognition can help us move beyond syncretic multiculturalism towards a non-reductionist interlocation of plural cultures and identities in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is about the laws and decrees edited by the Brazilian government and in the São Paulo State in the last nine years, focused on the standardization of educational language policies for deaf students. These laws and decrees resulted from international conventions promulgated by the UN and/or from recommendations provided by the International Disability Alliance (IDA). In this direction, the article analyzes the practices of the National Federation of Deaf People and the IDA to ensure both the compliance of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the interpretation of these terms, which does not legitimize the practices of linguistic assimilation of deaf people. In order to discuss the normalizing character that the laws and decrees bring along, the concept of biopower, as postulated by Michel Foucault, is revisited. In this article, the authors discuss the effects of ambiguities present in these laws for the training of teachers. The authors suggest that these laws and decrees, in particular the Convention of the Right of Persons with Disabilities are, in their terms, neither an advance, nor a return to the same point. The speeches focused on the human rights constitute an active field of struggles between a specific form of state regulation by the action of the biopower and an active practice of those who want to create fissures within this logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sample of 198 unrelated males distributed among the five geopolitical regions in Brazil were typed for the minimal Y-STR haplotype composed of microsatellite loci DYS19, DYS385I/II, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392 and DYS393. Gene frequency data, gene diversity, haplotype diversity and power of discrimination were estimated. An AMOVA indicated that 99.97% of the haplotypic variation is found within regions and only a small 0.03% and non significant variation is found among the five regions (Fst = 0.00031, P-value = 0.43). This result suggests that a single national database of Y-STR haplotypes can be used in the quantitative assessment of matches in forensic casework in the Brazilian population. A significant haplotype diversity of 99.8% was found and 172 different haplotypes were observed in 198 chromosomes. Haplotype (14–11, 14–13–29–24–11–13–13) with five occurrences in 198 chromosomes was the most frequent in Brazil. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Race and gender inequalities in Brazil are analyzed in light of international human fights law and standards. The demographic category "blacks" or "African descendants" is new and still controversial in Brazil; it conflicts with the traditional "racial democracy" ideology by grouping together dark-skinned and light-skinned blacks, but official research institutions increasingly employ this methodology. Statistical economic and demographic analysis demonstrates that African descendants' human rights, particularly those of black women, are violated daily in Brazil. Analysis is made of compliance with international standards for the rights to life (life expectancy, mortality rates, quality of life), physical and mental health, work with dignity and equal opportunity, ongoing improvement of living conditions, and protection in childhood. Brazilian society is traditionally authoritarian and inequality is taken for granted. Meaningful economic and social change must address the specific issues of race discrimination and its legacy, which implies deep structural changes in Brazilian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates and discusses the situation of diverse Indian groups who live on the Brazil/Guyana border. Efforts to enforce legal claims to land are frustrated by the machinations of local politicians as well as the Brazilian state's attempts to militarize the region through the Calha Norte project. The complexity of relations between different yet coexisting Indian groups challenges crude typologies based on ethnic authenticity and degree of assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about a unique case of assimilation: the entry of descendants of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to southern Brazil into Afro-Brazilian religious groups, some as heads of their own centres. The discussion is placed within the framework of the contemporary multiculturalist debate over assimilation. The emigration of Europeans to rural southern Brazil is summarized. African slaves are shown to have been established - with their syncretized Afro-Catholic religions - in the incipient urban centres. The transformation of Brazilian society in the second half of the twentieth century is examined focusing on 1) the massive growth of the population and 2) its urbanization. The difficulties faced by the migrants to the cities and their descendants is discussed. Umbanda, a secondary religious syncretism of the Afro-Catholic tradition with European Spiritism, is shown to provide help to those in need as it competes with Catholicism and other religions for converts. Large numbers of Brazilians have converted to Umbanda, with some of them later turning to the more 'African' Candomblé, Batuque, etc. Cases of European immigrants who joined Umbanda and Batuque centres in Porto Alegre are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the social construction of race and its impact on assimilation in Brazil and the United States. Concept of race in biology; Concept of race in the social sciences; Race in the speech of the United States and Brazil; Reflections on race.