Please join the Dept. of Religion and Culture for our next informal brown bag research discussion. Discussant will be Prof. Aaron Ansell (http://www.rc.vt.edu/facstaff/ansell.html). ALL ARE WELCOME.

Abstract: In rural Northeast Brazil, there is a longstanding tradition by which junior kin honor their seniors every day by approaching them with an outstretched hand to beseech them for a blessing. Ethnographic fieldwork in the small town of Passerinho (Piaui State) suggests that this tradition has gained new significance in light of emergent efforts to separate the private from the public self during competitive elections. I offer that performances of beseeching kin from adversary factions for blessings have become iconic of the participants' proper liberal dualism. Yet analysis of their reflections on the honorific ritual suggests that, underlying locals' desire for a public-private separation, is a deeper ambivalence about liberal democracy itself. On the one hand, they want to absorb liberalism's dual political subject so they can cash in on the promises of impartial modern governance and so they can compete electorally without tearing apart their friend and kin networks. On the other hand, they want to minimize liberalism's penetration into their lives precisely because its representative institutions jeopardize those intimate networks that have long helped them to survive in a world circumscribed by poverty.
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Location:	132 Lane Hall
Price:	free
Sponsor:	Dept. of Religion and Culture
Contact:	Prof. Nicole Ni nizhange@vt.edu (540) 231-6551
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