This MA thesis attempts to achieve three main goals in setting the stage for a case study on Afro-Brazilian community social organizations. First among these goals is to demonstrate that scholarly and activist criticism of community organizations’ inability to generate broad-based political constituencies overlooks a key component of what community organizations actually strive for, and thus, characterizing them as an inappropriate use of resources is an error. This is accomplished through a discussion of the reluctance of Afro-Brazilians to self-identify as such and the need to support consciousness-raising with a valorization effort that addresses the negative stigma associated with blackness. Second, this essay looks to theories of education, specifically the racialized nature of the educational experience, as an indication that valorization efforts must focus on supplementing or countering the racial subjectivities that schools establish with more positive experiences of blackness. Third, this essay considers how community social capital is among the most influential sources of valorization, and establishes several hypotheses about the mechanisms of community organizations that garner effective valorization. These hypotheses are tested in a case study of community organizations in Salvador da Bahia. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2007. / Accompanied by DVD videorecording of performance. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 29, 2008). Advisor: Shawn M. Banasick. Keywords: Japan, Brazil, immigration, transnationalism. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-108).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2007. / "May, 2007." Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2008]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

This dissertation investigates the role of listening and sounding in the geopolitics of extractivism, in which the Brazilian Amazon is deeply immersed, by weaving a storytelling of transformation and destruction of places in the region through the tropes of noise and silence. Extractivism here means a process of accumulation by dispossession tied to the tearing apart of places to become resources. The storytelling of this dissertation builds on ethnographic fieldwork in the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, and the geopolitical testimonies of small farmers, inhabitants of riverine communities, and a social educator, as they articulate relations between the sonic and what they perceive around them, what they are losing, and what they value. I elaborate on a dialogue with and critique of acoustemology as tied to place making by attending to noise and silence as acoustic assemblages tied to modes of making, destroying, sensing, and neglecting place. In the context of radically unequal land distribution, finite land becomes a major contested ontological ground. As places clash, unequal needs of sensing reality as a shared ecosystem come to the fore. Chapter one delves into the way an educator in the Xingu region talks about the silence of the water and the loss of forest and river spirits to neoliberal megaprojects. In dialogue with her words, I explore how silence participates in an economy of extraction in which incompatible notions of nature clash while crystallized sensorial machinations of neoliberalism destroy place from a safe distance. Chapter two debates how soy monoculture farming, in the Low Amazonas Region, fabricates multiple silences as it displaces people, desertifies place, and fills the land with pesticides and mechanisms of surveillance for private property. In dialogue with the testimonies of small rural farmers, and building on my visits to the region, this chapter discusses silences in relation to the desertification and animation of place as part of the cycles of the monoculture extractive chain. The third chapter focuses on the trope of noise as tied to present and potentially changing infrastructures in a riverine community in a conservation unit in the same region. I build on what four inhabitants of this community express about the noise of motors and generators in relation to singing birds and roosters, noting how the storytelling of the relation between these sounding presences is also the storytelling of development as a threat and a promise, in a context where belonging is complexly situated in relation to state tutelage, notions of environmental protection, and NGO projects. Altogether, the storytelling of noise and silence presented in these chapters points to the complicated entanglement between modes of listening and modes of tying being, belonging, and land together, in territories of a region constantly positioned as a resource for extraction.

The early 1800s witnessed the exodus of former slaves from Brazil to Africa. A number of slaves migrated after gaining manumission. Others were deported after they were accused of committing various “crimes” and after slave rebellions. These returnees established various communities and identities along the coastline of West Africa, but Historians often limit the scope to communities that developed in Benin, Togo and Nigeria. My dissertation fills in this gap by highlighting the obscured history of the Tabom people—the descendants of Afro-Brazilian returnees in Ghana. The study examines the history of the Tabom people to show the various ways they are constructing their identities and how their leaders are forging ties with the Brazilian government, the Ghanaian government, and institutions such as UNESCO. The main goal of the Tabom people is to preserve their history, to underscore the significance of sites of memories, and to restore various historical monuments within their communities for tourism. The economic consciousness contributed to the restoration of the “Brazil House” in Accra which was opened for tourism on November 15, 2007, after a year of repairs through the support of the Brazilian Embassy and various institutions in Ghana. This watershed moment not only marked an important historical event and the birth of tourism within the Tabom community, but epitomized decades of attempts to showcase the history of the Afro-Brazilian community which has been obscured in Ghanaian school curriculum and African diaspora history. My central thesis is that the initiatives by the Tabom people are not only influenced by economic interests, but also by the need to express the “dual” identities that underlie what it means to the “Ghanaian-Brazilian.” The efforts by the Tabom leaders to project their dual heritage, led to the visit by Brazilian President Luiz Inácios Lula da Silva “Lula” in April 2005, who also graciously supported the restoration of the “Brazil House.” Through these interactions Lula extended an invitation to the Tabom chief and members of the community to visit Brazil for the first time. This dissertation posits that Lula’s invitation highlight notions that the African Diaspora is an unending journey. / text

This dissertation examines the development of race relations in the port district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from abolition in 1888 until 1937. In the generation following the abolition of slavery (1888) and the proclamation of the First Republic (1889), how and why did racial democracy emerge as the founding myth of Brazilian race relations? While some scholars have seen racial democracy as an elite project accepted passively by former slaves and their descendants, this thesis argues that racial democracy cannot be understood without a recognition of the powerful role played by Afro-Brazilians in its success: a success made even more puzzling given the ongoing poverty and marginalisation of black Brazil.

In recent years, more groups have been moving from location to location as technological advancements, economic interconnections, and interdependence among nation states have made this movement easier. Within this new environment, identities and nation state affiliations are in flux. These movements have also influenced the process of education. National education systems have been partially globalized through student and teacher mobility, deterritorializing of academic institutions, widespread policy borrowing, teaching English as a foreign/second language, and attempts to enhance the global dimension of curricula at secondary and post-secondary levels. The present study examines the Japanese Brazilian transnational community in Japan to determine whether a case for strong forms of bilingual education can be made in the context of linguistic human rights under Article 27 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Even though, the Japanese government ratified the Covenant in 1979, it has not been properly addressing the issue of bilingualism for linguistic minorities within Japanese society. Therefore, this study uses a general qualitative approach to offer explanations for the current sociohistorical and ethnolinguistic situation facing Japanese Brazilians in Japan. A critical cultural meta-ethnography was chosen for this investigation as it aims to provide an interpretive synthesis of qualitative research and other secondary sources. The contextual situation is explored to understand the development of Japanese Brazilians position both in Japan and in Brazil. First, I explain the development of the concepts linguistic human rights and "Japaneseness" as a racial group. Next, I examine the social, historical, and ethnolinguistic positions of Japan's ethnic and immigrant minorities and the position of their language in the Japanese public educational system in order to consider possible modes of action for educating Japanese Brazilian children. Then, I analyze governmental policies at the national and at the local levels to understand what the government has done to address the issue. I then explore possible grassroots movements' models both within Japan and in other parts of the world in order to make recommendations for language education for Japanese Brazilian children. Finally, I investigate areas for possible future studies.

This thesis examines South Florida’s Brazilian community’ spatial organization in the region and its socio-cultural features in order to understand the nature of this immigrant community and the characteristics of its spatial structure. To do so, this study uses qualitative interviews with members of Brazilian community with the purpose of understanding how they make decisions of where to live, how they are connected to the broader community, how the community affects their individual experiences of living in the region and plan for the future. In addition, using secondary literature, it will compare the transformation of Brazilians ethnic community with that of the Cuban, Haitian and Russian communities located in South Florida. Situating this case within ongoing theoretical debates about immigrant incorporation in US cities, I will make the case that classical ethnic enclave or the spatial assimilation concept does not fit the spatial and social structure of Brazilian community. The conclusion of this paper is that the US new immigrant ethnic groups may transform their shapes into a new multicultural ethnic web, as a result of the actual economic and social phenomena. The new ethnic web does not discard the disappearance of classical ethnic enclave, or the spatial assimilation processes, but given the actual international and local socio-economic processes, the three types of processes could overlap or be complementary. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection