Pathways to the internationalization of anthropology: from Brazil

Abstract

In this second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, a topic to be covered in the next issue of Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, it became important for us to rethink the role of the periodical in the internationalization of the anthropology produced from Brazil – an essential and founding objective of Vibrant – as well as the necessary intensification of intellectual exchanges via different media. In a world in which interconnectivity continues to expand inexorably, homogenizing and (re)inventing differences of class, race, ethnicity, gender and civilizational traditions distributed in time and space in a mosaic of inequalities, stimulated by the spread – and also collapse – of authoritarian governments around the globe, Brazil’s role as a centre of training in the discipline, at least in the Americas, and as a participant in a global dialogical scenario, implies recognizing that we do so not just from Brazil but between worlds. In conjunction with our editorial committee, therefore, we decided to create a new section in Vibrant. Through the dossier “Anthropology on Latin America and the Caribbean Today: New Theoretical and Methodological Challenges,” we inaugurate a new section, Global Anthropological Dialogues, in which we aim to provide space for international dialogues between the anthropology made in and on Brazil and other world anthropologies, recognizing not only the need to overcome linguistic and hegemonic barriers, but also pointing to the contemporary reality of the product of our intense labour with and through relations with colleagues from all around the world, working to overcome asymmetries. This new section could not have a better launch. In it we explore the theoretical and methodological challenges faced in the context of Latin America and the Caribbean. Organised by Laura R. Valladares and Rebecca Lemos Igreja, the dossier contains 13 excellent articles that, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, approach central topics like nationalisms, race, indigenous issues, feminism, gender, and political dynamics. The primordial guiding thread, emphasized in the article opening the dossier, are the theoretical, methodological and epistemological challenges of doing anthropology today. Volume 18 also contains articles from diverse areas of social anthropology in a composite of separate articles and another two dossiers that express the debates in the field and the diversity of the dialogues between Brazilian anthropology and distinct international contexts.