The domestic work of consumption: materiality, migration and home-making

This article aims to discuss the potentials of an integrated approach to two significant fields of practice: materiality and migration. Based on the results of a preliminary approach to the Portuguese migrant community in Toronto and three previous ethnographies with Portuguese and Indi-Portuguese migrants conducted in Lisbon, Maputo and four Brazilian cities, it intends in particular to explore the various ways in which the home and home-making as a social and cultural process can work as a significant field to explore that relation. It will be argued that domestic materiality constitutes a particularly productive field to look at the relationships between macro-contexts and micro-practices, social formations and cultural institutions that affect and shape the life experiences of those who migrate. In order to discuss its participation in the evaluations, reconfigurations and processes of rebuilding / reconstructions that necessarily take part in all migratory movements, the work of domestic consumption will be addressed as an expression of those processes but also as a constitutive activity, i. e., the (re)production of identity and belonging.Este artigo procura discutir as potencialidades de uma abordagem que promova a integração de dois terrenos de estudo: o da cultura material e o das migrações contemporâneas. Mais especificamente, exploram-se os modos como a casa, enquanto contexto, e os processos culturais através dos quais esta é produzida poderão contribuir para discutir os cruzamentos destes dois campos, a partir dos resultados preliminares de uma investigação conduzida na comunidade portuguesa em Toronto e de três etnografias realizadas em Lisboa, Maputo e em quatro cidades brasileiras com famílias migrantes de origem portuguesa e indo-portuguesa. Argumenta-se que a cultura material do espaço doméstico constitui um campo particularmente produtivo de observação de relações entre os macrocontextos e as micropráticas, as formações sociais e as instituições culturais que dão forma e afectam as experiências de vida daqueles que migram. Por forma a discutir a sua participação nas avaliações, reconfigurações e reconstruções que ocorrem em todas as migrações, a cultura material e o consumo (enquanto trabalho doméstico) serão tratados, não só como uma expressão desses processos, mas igualmente como actividades constitutivas dos mesmos, isto é, de (re)produção de identidade e de pertença sociais

Nodes of inclusion and exclusion: media, contexto and the shaping of contemporary movements across the Atlantic

This chapter is based on a comparative ethnographic research project addressing the migration movements across the Atlantic between four cities (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Lisbon and Porto), from 2011 to 2015, and their intersections with the movements of things (Appadurai 1988) across the same routes. The project examined all four cities as both sites of departure and destination. This theoretical and methodological option aspired to challenge the dominant assumptions concerning power relationships and their impact on migration trends between South American and European countries, in general; and simultaneously tackle present day post-colonial relationships between Portugal and Brazil, in particular. The movements of people and things were explored at three levels of analysis. The first (macro) aimed at identifying and contextualising the major lines that define and delimit these movements between the four cities, exploring how and to what extent they feed, compete and/or complement each other. The second (mezzo) investigated the specificities of each city as point of arrival and departure. Thirdly (micro), the impact of movement on identity and belonging was looked into through the analysis of domestic material culture and consumption practices.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Predmeti, vonjave in okusi daljnega doma: gojevske življenjske izkušnje v Afriki

This paper reviews part of the outcome of a research project based on the life narratives of a group of Goan Brahmin families with a common past: a long life experience in colonial Mozambique, followed by a forced exodus to Portugal after its independence. The families´ life experiences were explored via the discussion of their past homes, their material culture and domestic consumption practices, which proved to be a positive contribution to revealing significant features of their position in the former colonial system.Članek prinaša del rezultatov raziskovalnega projekta, ki je temeljil na življenjskih zgodbah skupine brahminskih družin iz Goe. Družine imajo podobno preteklost: dolgoročno življenjsko izkušnjo v kolonialnem Mozambiku, ki ji je sledila prisilna množična selitev na Portugalsko po razglasitvi neodvisnosti. Življenjske izkušnje družin so bile preučevane skozi pogovore o njihovih domovih, materialni kulturi in potrošniškimi praksami v zvezi z domom, kar je pripomoglo k razumevanju pomembnih značilnosti njihovega položaja v bivšem kolonialnem sistemu

Portuguese migrants in Rio de Janeiro: exploring identity ambivalences through food practices

This article discusses the role of food and food circulation in contemporary migration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Rio de Janeiro in 2014 with young Portuguese immigrant families who have entered the country recently, the article focuses on their dominant perceptions and values concerning local food practices, as well as their routines on food selection, acquisition, preparation, and consumption to examine and discuss the group’s strategies of belonging and positioning in Brazil. Moreover, this discussion also explores the centrality of food in the evocation of origin and its relevance among the things that circulate across the Atlantic Ocean, following the same route the families travelled.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Introduction: consumption and its works

Though fairly recent as a research topic in the Portuguese anthropology context, contemporary material culture and consumption practices have been intensely scrutinized since the 1980s by all social sciences in many academic contexts, generating a plurality of debates that necessarily inspired and influenced the four papers presented in this collection. Despite this legacy, they however challenged us to reflect on a classical discussion that, even if always present in the field of contemporar..

Kimberly DaCosta Holton e Andrea Klimt (orgs.), Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity: Portuguese-Americans Along the Eastern Seaboard

Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity, organizado por Kimberly DaCosta ­Holton e Andrea Klimt constitui um volume de dimensão considerável que reúne um conjunto de reflexões acerca das populações de origem portuguesa, angolana, brasileira e cabo-verdiana que migraram para a costa leste dos Estados Unidos da América. De acordo com o exposto na introdu­ção, o livro resulta de um conjunto de debates académicos e propõe-se, enquanto projecto inovador, contribuir para a ultrapas­sagem da ..

Things and places from the city: Consumption practices, settlement and belonging of second generation migrants in Lisbon

While much scholarly work has been produced on the complex topic of contemporary migration, there is still relatively little literature on its intersections with material culture and consumption practices. But the impact of migration on material experiences goes beyond attachment to objects from home; it can change peoples’ perceptions of themselves, restructure their patterns of social interaction and, I believe, alter the balance of relationships maintained not just with those left behind but also with those who migrated to other localities as well as those who share and inhabit the same places.Drawing on the results of an ethnographic study carried out in Lisbon with teenage boys and girls of African descent, this paper aims to explore the interface between migration, materiality and place and, more significantly still, how personal, cultural and geographical trajectories, and positioning and belonging policies are marked and partially constituted through the relationship with mass produced goods which are acquired and used in very specific urban contexts. The study will draw particular attention to two aspects. The first stems from the fact that everyday things such as clothes, mobile phones, sneakers, food and music would seem to be appropriated according to a specific logic in order to materialize the teenagers’ collective identities and positioning strategies in specific key places such as the neighbourhood, school or city centre where they sometimes go clubbing and shopping. The second concerns the existence of an intense on-going transnational circulation of objects, which informs the existence of a complex social network based in multiple locations. Besides contributing to the maintenance and strengthening of family relationships, the continuous circulation of goods stimulates the production of a hierarchical representation of the world – a constellation of different places linked by complex transnational networks- and therefore of the best migration destinations, based on what is sent and received

Travessias do Atlântico: materialidade, movimentos contemporâneos e políticas de pertença

O projeto Travessias do Atlântico: Materialidade, Movimentos Contemporâneos e Políticas de Pertença estudou durante três anos os fluxos migratórios entre quatro grandes cidades: Lisboa, Porto, São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro. Este capítulo tem como objectivo disponibilizar um conjunto de dados descritivos sobre as travessias realizadas por portugueses para as duas cidades brasileiras em estudo. Assume-se como um contributo para a caracterização sociográfica deste grupo específico de emigrantes recentes e procura posicioná-lo por comparação com a numerosa e significativa população de origem portuguesa que integrou vagas migratórias anteriores e se fixou naquelas duas grandes metrópoles.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Travessias do Atlântico: Materialidade, movimentos contemporâneos e políticas de pertença

O projeto Travessias do Atlântico: materialidade, movimentos contemporâneos e políticas de pertença, estudou durante três anos os fluxos migratórios entre quatro grandes cidades: Lisboa, Porto, São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro. Este capítulo tem como objectivo disponibilizar um conjunto de dados descritivos sobre as travessias realizadas por portugueses para as duas cidades brasileiras em estudo. Assume-se como um contributo para a caracterização sociográfica deste grupo específico de emigrantes recentes e procura posicioná-lo face à numerosa e significativa população de origem portuguesa que integrou vagas migratórias anteriores e se fixou naquelas duas grandes metrópoles