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This book provides a case study of slavery and its abolition in Ottoman Tunisia, one of the smallest countries in North Africa and the first to abolish the longstanding institution of slavery in the Muslim world during the modern period. The book combines a range of Tunisian and European archival data, travellers' accounts, and Arabic legal documents and source materials, directing much-needed attention not only to the Tunisian elements within slavery and abolition discourses, but also to those in west and central Sudan and Europe, especially in the Mediterranean basin. It argues that the major force driving abolition was Tunisian rulers' pragmatic response to increased European economic and political intervention in North Africa—first with the 1816 prohibition against enslaving Christians for ransom and especially after the French occupation of Algeria in the 1830s. The urgency of safeguarding the independence of Tunisia, more than efforts at selective “modernization” or “reform,” triggered the move toward abolition and the emancipation of the enslaved black population, which was achieved in 1846. By assessing how European capitalism along with political pressure and dynamics in the western Mediterranean shaped the abolition of the trans-Saharan slave trade and slavery in Tunisia, this book attempts to bridge the historiographical gap that treats the Atlantic and Saharan slave trades as separate entities. It offers wider regional perspectives and shows how the Tunisian model of abolition is useful for viewing slavery in the Islamic context during the modern period.

Motivated by a growing need to address questions of transnationalism, female mobility, and citizenship, this book offers an in-depth study of selective texts of Audre Lorde (Barbadian-American), Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American), Maryse Condé (Guadeloupean-American) and Grace Nichols (Guyanese-British). The book examines transnational migration or movement not only in terms of physical journeys, but it also employs the trope of migration as resistance, as dissent. Examining the pervasive circulation of bodies, this book challenges the pathologization ascribed to black female sexuality/body, subverting its assumed definition as diseased, passive, and docile. Investigating how black female identities and sexualities circulate globally, it focuses on issues of embodiment, how women's bodies are read and seen; how bodies “perform” and are performed upon; how they challenge hierarchical constructs and disrupt normative standards. Furthermore, it depicts how female subjects not only discursively engender a parallel “migration” that disrupts and debunks hierarchical structures, but how they also engender a politics of resistance and subversion of mainstream/dominant discourse, a detour from normative categorizations and ideologies, a migration from and challenge of single, fixed, heteronormative, heterosexual definitions of self. In essence, it examines the politics and economics of migratory movements, re-examining and reconfiguring the definition of citizenship to reflect transnational movements and subjectivities, and the shifting definitions of home. The book's engagement with critical race theory, adds another layer to its uniqueness by engaging “disability” studies, albeit peripherally, as it challenges the construct of disease, wellness and able-bodiedness as configured by Western medical science.

A close study of six major public religious festivals, including carnival, African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil, explores the cultural politics of regional identity in the state of Bahia in northeast Brazil. The author shows how, after 1930, the festivals provided a platform for African-Bahians and their allies to re-formulate Bahian regional identity to allow for a greater degree of cultural inclusion for Bahians of African descent. The book emphasizes the agency of African-Bahians as samba, capoeira, and Candomblé ritual were performed during the festivals and describes how politicians, journalists, song writers, and public intellectuals came to celebrate African-Bahian culture as a defining feature of what it meant to be Bahian. The nature of this cultural inclusion, however, was such that, although it was an improvement on the prejudice and persecution of the 1920s, it led to very little, if any, improvement in the political and economic position of working-class people of African descent. As such, the book explores the possibilities and limitations of cross-class alliances based around cultural inclusion in a specific historical setting and the potential of cultural politics for the social inclusion of people of African descent in multi-racial, multi-cultural communities within Brazil and the African diaspora.

Cuban Costumbrista writers reported the strong presence of African traditions developed by slaves and by freed Blacks as agents of a vigorous popular culture that was highly visible throughout the nineteenth century. In their handling of Black themes, Costumbristas addressed four main subjects: (1) the particularities of the sugar-cane plantation, rich in slave cultures (as performed in different formats of acculturation by both African and Creole or Cuban-born slaves); (2) the development of religious systems within rural and urban settings; (3) documentation of Black musical expressions; and (4) the incorporation of certain Black social types as literary characters, as workers of specific trades assigned to slaves or to freed Blacks, or as marginal outcasts living in slum areas of major Cuban cities. Afro-Cuban Costumbrismo intends to examine the special qualities that the nineteenth-century Costumbristas observed as eyewitnesses of the making of a new racial hybridity, known today as “mulattoness.” Although mulattoness was a racial concept handled in various types of documents (for example, in ecclesiastical and civil regulations against mixed marriages), it was in Costumbrista literature that the concept took on literary presence. Although Blacks as depicted by Costumbristas had little literary significance, their presence in these politically infused texts covertly addresses the influence of Black Creole culture on developing Cubanía.

Afro-Cuban Religious Arts traces the religious art created by four generations of Afro-Caribbean women from Havana, Cuba, to Spanish Harlem, New York, from 1899 to 1969. Through an examination of archives featuring photographs, notes, and surviving altar fragments belonging to Tiburcia Sotolongo y Ugarte, Hortensia Ferrer, Iluminada Sierra Ortiz, and Carmen Oramas Caballery, a history of women’s leadership roles within Afro-Cuban religious arts practices emerges. To this end, their work reveals the critical interaction between the arts of different Afro-Caribbean belief systems, particularly Espiritismo and Santería. With careful documentation of this work, these leaders created an impressive account of hybrid cultural identities that references African, native Caribe, and European cultural inheritances. This exploration of Caribbean Creole identity prompted critical dialogue among their audiences during highly turbulent social and political changes of the twentieth century. Such popular discourse proves to be exemplary of the dynamic exchange of histories that led to the explosion of African diasporic religious arts throughout the Americas and beyond.

This book compares Cuban American and African American religiosity, arguing that Afro-Cuban religiosity and culture are central to understanding the Cuban and Cuban American condition. The book interprets this saturation of the Afro-Cuban as transcending race and affecting all Cubans and Cuban Americans in spite of their pigmentation or self-identification. Building on a historical overview of the intersection of race, religion, and nationhood, the book explores the manner in which devotion to La Caridad del Cobre, popular religion, and Cuban letters inform an Afro-Cuban theology. This interdisciplinary study draws from various theological schools as well as the disciplines of history, literary studies, and ethnic studies. The primary discipline is systematic theology, with special attention to black and Latino/a theologies. Far from being disconnected subfields, they are interrelated areas within theological studies. The book provides a broad overview of the Cuban and Cuban American communities, emphasizing the manner in which the intersection of race and religion has functioned within the construction of Cuban and Cuban American identities. The Roman Catholic Church's role in this history, as well as the preservation of African religious practices and consequent formation of Afro-Cuban religions, are paramount. Also new is the collaborative spirit between black and Latino/a that underlines this work. The book proposes an expansion of racial identity recognizing the different cultures that exist within U.S. racial contexts—specifically a model of collaboration versus dialogue between black and Latino/a theologies.

This volume presents examples of how digital technologies are being used by people of African descent in South America and the Caribbean, a topic that has been overlooked within the field of digital humanities. These case studies show that in the last few decades, Black Latinx communities have been making themselves visible and asserting long-standing claims and rights through digital tools and platforms, which have been essential for enacting discussions and creating new connections between diverse groups. Afro-Latinx Digital Connections includes both research articles and interviews with practitioners who are working to create opportunities for marginalized communities. Projects discussed in this volume range from an Afrodescendant digital archive in Argentina, blog networks in Cuba, an NGO dedicated to democratizing technology in Brazilian favelas, and the recruitment of digital media to fight racism in Peru. Contributors demonstrate that these tools need not be state of the art to be effective and that they are often most useful when employed to sustain a resilience that is deep and historically grounded. Digital connections are shown here as a means to achieve social justice and to create complex self-representations that challenge racist images of Afrodescendant peoples and monolithic conceptions of humanity. This volume expands the scope of digital humanities and challenges views of the field as a predominantly white discipline.

The struggle for racial justice by Afro–civil society in Brazil and Salvador da Bahia is the main concern of this book. Theoretically this research aims to contribute to Latin American critical racial theory and Afro-Brazilian social movements by providing deep insights regarding cultural politics in Salvador da Bahia by exploring the following: various and different of forms of Black consciousness and cultural expressions; different levels of political action and social mobilization by Afro-Brazilian groups; the role of Afro–civil society in relation to the state; and to critically analyze current debates on racial and gender discrimination as well as social inequality. Conceptually, this research seeks to break new ground by examining how Black politics both cultural and formal are articulated and the ways in which the state is responding to various Black demands in Brazil, particularly in Salvador da Bahia.

Too often, approaches to dealing with the problems posed by the spread of HIV have been one dimensional, with the assumption that what works in one place will work in another. This book includes chapters representing a range of original ideas, methodologies, and suggestions that contribute to the field of AIDS research, both in Africa and beyond. The chapters examine such issues as HIV transmission, condom use, sexual patterns, male circumcision, political factors, gender, poverty, and behavioral change. The book features the research of those working in different countries in Africa, with different communities within those countries, and with different age, class, religious, and ethnic groups within those communities. These previously unpublished chapters also address the need for a greater anthropological perspective in the increasingly medicalized and politicized study of HIV and AIDS. As a whole, they pave the way for a deeper cultural understanding necessary to effectively reverse the catastrophic growth of HIV/AIDS on the continent.

There are approximately seven million adult gay and bisexual men in the United States and 120 million adult gay and bisexual men globally. This book explores the cultural dimensions of AIDS among men who have sex with men (MSM). The traditional emphasis in HIV/AIDS research within gay communities has focused on sexual behavior and psychological issues. Yet to better understand the social and cultural dimensions of the disease, and to halt the spread of HIV infection, it is essential to recognize and understand the culture of MSM. Cultural anthropologists, unquestionably, are in a unique position to achieve this understanding. The editor has gathered a diverse group of experts to contribute to this collection, and the volume features a wealth of scholarly data unavailable elsewhere.

This book presents a new framework for understanding the history of Algeria and its global connections from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It focuses on the movement of people within, but especially from and back to Algeria. These include immigrants crossing borders for purposes of work, education, or diplomatic or military service, and refugees fleeing political or religious oppression. This framework helps to bring out long term continuities in Algerian history and create an understanding of these continuities in a geopolitical context. The book examines both the political and economic factors that have affected Algerian border crossing, and the legal and institutional elements that have shaped it including international refugee law, trans-national Islamic movements, and great power conflicts. Algerians are understood as forming a global frontier society coming from an area where the Western and Islamic worlds have long experienced intensive interaction, sometimes resulting in a “clash of civilizations,” but at other times fostering interfaith dialogue and cultural syncretism. The book examines ways in which Algerians have interacted with “others”, notably through intermarriage, political alliance, and shared participation in music or theatre. The Algerian experience is viewed in a long term historical context in which there are cycles of opening when civil society is insulated from government authority, and of closing, with efforts to impose government control through means including arbitrary detention and torture.

Michelle Bachelet was the first elected female president of Chile, and the first woman elected president of any South American country. What was just as remarkable, though less noted, was the success and stability of the political coalition that she represented, the Concertaciόn. Though Bachelet was the fourth consecutive Concertaciόn president, upon taking office her administration quickly faced a series of crises, including massive student protests, labor unrest, internal governmental divisions, and allegations of ineptitude and wrongdoing as a result of a major reorganization of Santiago's transportation system. Candidate Bachelet promised not only different policies but also a different policymaking style—a style characterized by a kinder and gentler approach to politics in a country with a long tradition of machismo and strong male rulers. Bachelet promised to listen to the people and to return power to those who had been denied it in the past. Her attitude enhanced the influence of existing social movements and inspired the formation of new ones. This book examines the policies, political issues, and conflicts of Bachelet's administration, and provides analyses of the challenges, successes, and failures experienced by the Concertaciόn since 1989.

In the late 19th century, many Central American governments and countries sought to fill low-paying jobs and develop their economies by recruiting black American and West Indian laborers. This book offers a revisionist interpretation of these workers, who were often depicted as simple victims with little, if any, enduring legacy. The Guatemalan government sought to build an extensive railroad system in the 1880s, and actively recruited foreign labor. For poor workers of African descent, immigrating to Guatemala was seen as an opportunity to improve their lives and escape from the racism of the Jim Crow U.S. South and the French and British colonial Caribbean. Using primary and secondary sources as well as ethnographic data, the author details the struggles of these workers who were ultimately inspired to organize by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black laborers frequently met such attacks with resistance. Their leverage — being able to shut down the railroad — was crucially important to the revolutionary movements in 1897 and 1920.

In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba, Takkara Brunson traces how women of African descent battled exclusion on multiple fronts and played an important role in forging a modern democracy. Brunson takes a much-needed intersectional approach to the political history of the era, examining how Black women’s engagement with questions of Cuban citizenship intersected with racial prejudice, gender norms, and sexual politics, incorporating Afro-diasporic and Latin American feminist perspectives. Brunson demonstrates that between the 1886 abolition of slavery in Cuba and the 1959 Revolution, Black women—without formal political power—navigated political movements in their efforts to create a more just society. She examines how women helped build a Black public sphere as they claimed moral respectability and sought racial integration. She reveals how Black women entered into national women’s organizations, labor unions, and political parties to bring about legal reforms. Brunson shows how women of African descent achieved individual victories as part of a collective struggle for social justice; in doing so, she highlights how racism and sexism persisted even as legal definitions of Cuban citizenship evolved.

Since 1992 — the end of the Cold War — Brazil has been slowly and quietly carving a niche for itself in the international community: that of a regional leader in Latin America. How and why is the subject of this study. Under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil embarked on a new direction vis-à-vis foreign policy. Brazilian diplomats set out to lead South America and the global south without actively claiming leadership or incurring the associated costs. They did so to protect Brazil's national autonomy in an ever-changing political climate. The author utilizes recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews with Brazilian leaders to track the adoption and implementation of Brazil's South American foreign policy and to explain the origins of this trajectory. Leadership and desire to lead have, until recently, been a contentious and forcefully disavowed ambition for Brazilian diplomats. The author dispels this illusion and provides a framework for understanding the conduct and ambitions of Brazilian foreign policy that can be applied to the wider global arena.

Brazilian Propaganda is the first English language study to uncover how the official propaganda organs justified the civilian-military regime in Brazil between 1964 and 1985. Based on a variety of sources including propaganda short films, intelligence files, and oral history interviews with key propagandists, the book contributes to our understanding of recent Brazilian politics, history, and culture. Schneider brings nuance to scholarly understanding of the Brazilian dictatorship by reconstructing internal frictions within the military regime and raising the complex question of civilian collaboration. Between 1968 and 1979 authoritarian propaganda in Brazil was multifaceted and contradictory: the official propaganda organs coexisted with other state and private propaganda-makers, all with varying intentions, strategies, and styles. Brazilian Propaganda initiates discussion of the subtle issue of degrees of perpetratorship during the civilian-military regime and offers refreshing and provocative discussion of the concept of propaganda by engaging the blurred line between state and private propaganda on one hand and authoritarian and democratic propaganda on the other. Breaking new theoretical ground by offering a holistic approach to propaganda, the book encompasses an examination of the propagandists' intentions and their campaigns' reception.

This detailed analysis of the poetry associated with the Afrocubanismo movement of the late 1920s infuses new life into the study of these remarkable works. Focusing on the representations of carnival and its comparsas (carnival bands and music), this book offers thought-provoking new readings of poems by seminal Cuban poets, demonstrating how their writings on and about these traditions both contributed to and detracted from the development of a recognizable Afro-Cuban identity. It is the first book to examine, from a literary perspective, the long-running debate between the proponents of Afro-Cuban cultural manifestations and the predominantly white Cuban intelligentsia, who viewed these traditions as “backward” and counter to the interests of the young Republic. Including analyses of the work of Felipe Pichardo Moya, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, Emilio Ballagas, José Zacarías Tallet, Felix B. Caignet, Marcelino Arozarena, and Alfonso Camín, this volume offers a fresh look at the canon of Afrocubanismo and gives surprising insights into Cuban culture during the early years of the Republic.

Does a civil society actually exist in Cuba today and if so what is its nature and role? In seeking answers to this contested and politicized question, the editors of this book have assembled a diverse group of contributors. The essays range from general discussion of the private sector to case studies about volunteer work, religious entities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis in 1990, the Cuban state has experienced severe challenges, and individuals have been forced to respond in unexpected ways to ensure their economic survival. Avoiding polemics and preconceptions, this volume brings a fresh perspective to one of the most vexing issues in Cuban society today.

This book chronicles the sociopolitical history and development of violence in the Sudan, and explores how it has crippled the state, retarded the development of a national identity, and ravaged the social and material life of its citizens. Beginning with the development of colonial states in Sudan, it establishes a solid base of discussion through an assessment of the country under Turko-Egyptian (1821–1875) and Anglo-Egyptian British (1898–1956) rules, examining institutional features, inherent violence, and the remnants of those legacies today. The book extends its investigation into the postcolonial period by examining social and political hierarchies, such as those of the Islamists and their opponents—including the Sudanese political parties, the Sudan Liberation Movement, and other armed movements—that have formed and clashed over the ensuing decades. The book chapter defines three forms of violence that have shaped the course of the country's history: decentralized (individual actors using targets as a means to express a particular grievance), centralized (violence enacted illegitimately by state actors), and “home-brewed” (violence among local actors toward other local actors). It reveals how each of these forms of violence has been taken to new extremes under each successive regime, ever deterring the emergence of a stable nation.

Throughout the Americas black social movement groups are increasingly using sophisticated strategies and tactics to challenge racial and gender inequality. Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America offers a new, dynamic discussion of the experience of blackness and cultural difference, black political mobilization, and state responses to Afro-Latin activism across Latin America.