In Mama Africa, Brazilian social scientist Patricia de Santana Pinho details the influence that “Africa” has on conceptions of blackness in Bahia, the northeastern ­Brazilian state with the country’s largest Afro-descendent population and a black culture known for its vibrancy. The receptiveness of Afro-Bahians to black cultural influences from abroad, coupled with the desire of outsiders to project African “tradition” and “purity” onto the state, has defined its place within the diasporic “b..

Weeks, Samuel

English

OpenEdition

 
Etnográfica
Revista do Centro em Rede de Investigação em
Antropologia 
vol. 16 (2) | 2012
Varia
Patricia de Santana Pinho, Mama Africa: Reinventing
Blackness in Bahia
Samuel Weeks
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etnografica/1575
DOI: 10.4000/etnografica.1575
ISSN: 2182-2891
Publisher
Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia
Printed version
Date of publication: 1 June 2012
Number of pages: 423-425
ISSN: 0873-6561
 
Electronic reference
Samuel Weeks, « Patricia de Santana Pinho, Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia », Etnográfica
[Online], vol. 16 (2) | 2012, Online since 26 June 2012, connection on 21 September 2020. URL : http://
journals.openedition.org/etnografica/1575  ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.1575 
Etnográfica is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License.
RECENSÕES   423
ao nível da preocupação dos prestadores de 
cuidados de saúde, é também nesta fase que 
os pais assumem consciente ou inconscien-
temente uma tomada de posição. O texto 
de Maria José Casa-Nova ilustra bem esta 
ambiguidade no contexto de famílias ciga-
nas, em que existem crianças que não são 
vacinadas por “descuido” ou “desinteresse” 
da família (ideias manifestadas por alguns 
interlocutores da autora), mas, para outras, 
é o inverso que é privilegiado: vacinar é a 
expressão do cuidado, da proteção, mesmo 
quando implica a compra de vacinas que 
não são comparticipadas pelo Estado mas 
que se considera serem uma prevenção, 
um cuidado extra que se tem para com as 
 crianças.
A questão da vacinação demonstra a sua 
complexidade – e talvez sejam os textos de 
Virgínia Calado e de Manuela Ivone Cunha 
e Jean-Yves Durand os que melhor a expli-
citam – no âmbito da recusa da vacinação 
enquanto expressão de agencialidade polí-
tica. Tal acontece no sentido em que são 
aqueles que têm um maior conhecimento 
sobre os propósitos e efeitos da vacinação 
que a questionam e põem em causa todo 
o sistema político hegemónico no qual esse 
plano está inserido. Vacinar não representa 
então um cuidado acrescido, mas antes um 
risco desnecessário, e a autoridade médica 
é desafiada nos seus preceitos e convicções. 
Não vacinar, para além de uma escolha, 
torna-se um ato de resistência rara no con-
texto português. Assim, não estamos a falar 
de uma lógica economicista, como sucede 
noutros países, mas antes na consciência de 
si próprio e da gestão do corpo, na saúde 
e na doença. Ora, estamos antes de mais 
perante um tema que provoca e espoleta 
toda uma série de inquietações, não só em 
termos teóricos e académicos, mas também 
ao nível da sociedade civil, da comunidade 
médica e dos decisores políticos. Neste 
sentido, esta é uma obra que tem a poten-
cialidade de catapultar essa discussão e con-
tribuir para um conhecimento informado 
que não se confine nem à coleta de infor-
mação ad hoc e acrítica, nem à partilha de 
um modelo que, na prática, se desconhece.
Catarina Frois
Centro em Rede de Investigação
em Antropologia, ISCTE – Instituto
Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
catarina.frois@netcabo.pt
Patricia de Santana Pinho
MAMA AFRICA:
REINVENTING BLACKNESS IN BAHIA
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 
2010, 280 pages,
ISBN: 9780822346463.
In Mama Africa, Brazilian social scien-
tist Patricia de Santana Pinho details the 
influence that “Africa” has on conceptions 
of blackness in Bahia, the northeastern 
 Brazilian state with the country’s largest 
Afro-descendent population and a black 
culture known for its vibrancy. The recep-
tiveness of Afro-Bahians to black cultural 
influences from abroad, coupled with 
the desire of outsiders to project African 
“tradition” and “purity” onto the state, 
has defined its place within the diasporic 
“black Atlantic”. As such, Afro culture in 
Bahia influences, and is influenced by, the 
other nodes of the African diaspora in the 
New World (namely the USA, Cuba, and 
424  RECENSÕES etnográfica  junho de 2012  16 (2): 421-430
Jamaica), an interaction corroborated by 
the increasing presence of African-Amer-
ican “roots” tourists in the state. In this 
light, Pinho likens “African” Bahia to an 
imagined community, the solidarity neces-
sary for which exists as an idea in the minds 
of its believers.
A central theme to Mama Africa is how 
the blocos afro, Bahia’s Afrocentric and anti-
racist Carnival groups-cum-cultural organi-
zations, consider Africanness, blackness, 
and themselves in relation to these con-
cepts. In this context, the body assumes 
an essential role as the place where the blo-
cos afro seek to re-inscribe Africa through 
dance, song, religious practice, clothes, 
hairstyles, jewelry, and the celebration of 
bodily features such as skin color and hair 
texture. To Pinho, this ethnicized identity 
depends excessively on consumption and 
treads towards an exoticism all too easily 
gazed upon.
While lauding the blocos afro for resigni-
fying the previously stigmatized black body, 
she documents the presence of an informal 
system of surveillance that monitors the 
adherence of members to Afro-aesthetic 
ideals. Bloco veterans encourage newcomers 
to adopt Afrocentric habitus, then subse-
quently lay claim to having brought out the 
“true” identity of their members. As Pinho 
sees it, the regulation of what is properly 
“black” and impurely “non-black” serves 
to undermine the diversity of the creative 
black experience in favor of a homogenous 
form of blackness. On page 96, she states, 
“Afrocentricity reduces Africa to a set of fro-
zen and confining representations of black-
ness centered primarily on the body. The 
search for African genuineness is translated 
into the notion that to be black one must 
act, behave, and dress black, thus perpetu-
ating the notion that blacks are all alike” 
(italics in original).
Moving from the surface of the body 
to its interior, Pinho analyzes how her 
 interlocutors relate black skin and an “Afri-
can” appearance to a black essence, a belief 
they articulate with the myth of Mama 
Africa, or the idea of Africa being alive in 
every black person. So ubiquitous is this 
myth among the bloco participants that it 
has become “common sense” as Gramsci 
would define it, an ideology constructed 
more by consent than coercion. Here, 
blood is the medium that transmits the 
aptitude for music and dance “inherent” 
to black people. The role of blocos afro, in 
turn, is to provide opportunities in which 
their members can act out these supposedly 
natural tendencies with the stated goal of 
“strengthening” a collective Afro-Brazilian 
identity.
Unsurprisingly, Pinho rejects this essen-
tialism in favor of an explanation that cites 
how the “particularity” of the black expe-
rience informs the socially and historically 
constructed subjectivities of its actors. The 
thought that talent in music and dance are 
intrinsic to being black recalls racist ste-
reotypes from the nineteenth century and 
defines race in terms of a simplistic culture-
nature binary. The consequence of this 
dynamic appears to bring about the oppo-
site of the group’s original objective, as the 
people whom the blocos afro wish to liber-
ate are constrained instead. In this regard, 
Pinho reveals an inconsistency between 
the discourse and practice of the blocos, 
especially those that exclude people whom 
they regard as insufficiently black. As she 
stresses throughout the text, racism cannot 
be successfully “fought” by means of racial-
ist practice.
Mama Africa’s maternal and nurtur-
ing character troubles Pinho as well, which 
she believes serves to reinforce the notion 
that servitude is part of a black women’s 
“nature”. Compellingly, she contends that 
this myth results in an oppositional black 
culture that is susceptible to exploita-
tion by commercial and political interests. 
RECENSÕES   425
To her, the essentialized notions of 
 blackness found in Bahia too often merge 
with the idea of baianidade (Bahianness) 
promoted by the state and tourism industry, 
who for commercial ends readily circulate 
images of large black women in “African” 
dress and turbans. Unfortunately, as Pinho 
notes, “the enthusiasm demonstrated by 
the political elite toward the products of 
blackness has not been accompanied by an 
equivalent zeal for the human beings that 
produce such culture” (pp. 212-213).
Overall, Pinho succeeds in making acces-
sible to Anglophone readers key concepts 
and debates in contemporary Brazilianist 
scholarship. “Race”, “Africa”, “blackness”, 
“baianidade”, and “racial harmony” remain 
in quotation marks throughout the text 
in order to emphasize the ambiguity and 
instability surrounding these terms. She 
addresses the changing dynamics, and at 
times controversial logic, behind current 
public policy discussions in Brazil, the most 
contentious of which seeks to assess racial 
inequality in a country in which notions 
of mestiçagem (ethnic admixture) and racial 
democracy are central to the national narra-
tive. Too often, she fears, is “Africa” used to 
construct a blackness that enhances racial 
divisions rather than overcoming them. As 
a result, in her opinion, identity projects 
like those of the blocos afro serve to partition 
groups and limit the possibility of achieving 
an inclusive understanding of humanity.
Pinho is less successful in trying to but-
tress Mama Africa’s theoretical discussion 
(based on the work of Gilroy, Hall, and 
Appiah) and cultural references with eth-
nographic accounts, some of which are too 
brief and lack depth. For example, the text’s 
title alludes to the eponymous hit song by 
Chico César, in which Mama Africa is an 
exhausted proletarian who wraps pack-
ages at a chain store and prepares baby 
bottles for others’ children. A discussion of 
the song, however, is limited to one para-
graph in the introduction, and Pinho does 
not mention how her bloco afro informants 
would respond to unsentimental takes on 
Mama Africa like César’s.
Ultimately, the text’s strengths render 
this shortcoming of little consequence. 
Mama Africa will no doubt be an important 
reference to scholars studying ethnicity, 
race, nation, and diaspora at the global and 
local levels. Her demonstration of the abil-
ity of “celebration” to inadvertently perpet-
uate racism is a significant contribution, as 
is her observation of how “empowerment” 
discourses often do little to promote mean-
ingful racial equality. That groups like the 
blocos afro can coexist in relative peace with 
an exploitative market and an indifferent 
state is indicative of a condition common 
to the age of identity politics: the likelihood 
of a person feeling empowered without 
actually being so.
Samuel Weeks
Instituto de Ciências Sociais,
Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
ssweeks1@gmail.com


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