Abstract
The chapter begins with a story detailing the ethnographer’s initial encounter with a community of bohemians on which the ethnography centers. It then reveals the problem underpinning the entire book: Teresina, Brazil’s location in the poorest state in the nation’s poorest region, renders it marginal at best within the national imaginary. When Teresina’s population growth is met with economic prosperity, status performances among the city’s large and expanding middle class seem to only exacerbate residents’ desires to establish a sense of place and belonging. The chapter introduces the book’s concept of be-longing in the world at home—being both local and cosmopolitan in a city like Teresina. The chapter concludes with explanations about fieldwork, questions of representation, and the structure of the book.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In Brazilian Portuguese, “festa” means “party,” and in this particular case, “rave.”
- 2.
References
Abbas, Ackbar. 2002. Cosmopolitan De-scriptions: Shanghai and Hong Kong. In Cosmopolitanism, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, 209–228. Durham: Duke University Press.
Allison, Anne. 2001. Cyborg Violence: Bursting Borders and Bodies with Queer Machines. Cultural Anthropology 16 (2): 237–265.
Amin, Ash, and Stephen Graham. 1997. The Ordinary City. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22: 411–429.
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Appadurai, Arjun, and Carol Breckenridge. 1988. Why Public Culture? Public Culture 1 (1): 4–9.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1998. Cosmopolitan Patriots. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 91–114. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bersani, L. 1996. Homos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Besnier, Niko. 2009. Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Bettie, Julie. 2003. Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Boellstorff, Tom. 2005. The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Breckenridge, Carol A., Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds. 2002. Cosmopolitanism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Caldeira, Teresa. 2001. City of Walls: Crime Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Calhoun, Craig. 2008. Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism 14 (3): 427–448.
Chan, Brenda. 2006. Virtual Communities and Chinese National Identity. Journal of Chinese Overseas 2 (1): 1–32.
Chauncey, George. 1994. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic Books.
Cheah, Pheng. 1998. The Cosmopolitical—Today. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 20–41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cheah, Pheng, and Bruce Robbins. 1998. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Clancey, Gregory. 2004. Local Memory and Worldly Narrative: The Remote City in America and Japan. Urban Studies 41: 2335–2355.
Condry, Ian. 2001. Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture. In Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City, ed. George Gmelch and Walter Zenner. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.
Davis, Mike. 2006. Planet of Slums. London: Verso.
Dean, Tim. 2009. Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dharwadker, Vinay, ed. 2001. Cosmopolitan Geographies: New Locations in Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge.
Diouf, Mamadou. 2002. The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism. In Cosmopolitanism, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, 111–137. Durham: Duke University Press.
Donham, Donald. 1998. Freeing South Africa: The “Modernization” of Male-Male Sexuality in Soweto. Cultural Anthropology 13 (l): 1–19.
Edelman, Lee. 1995. Queer Theory: Unstating Desire. GLQ 2: 343–346.
———. 1998. The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification, and the Death Drive. Narrative 6: 18–30.
Fernandes, L. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fischer, Michael. 2010. The Rhythmic Beat of the Revolution in Iran. Cultural Anthropology 25 (3): 497–543.
Friedmann, John. 1986. The World City Hypothesis. Development and Change 17: 69–83.
Gontijo, Fabiano. 2009. O Rei Momo e O Arco-Îris: Homossexualidade e Carnaval no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond.
Graña, César, and Marigay Graña. 1990. On Bohemia: The Code of the Self-Exiled. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Green, James. 2000. Além do Carnaval: A Homossexualidade Masculina no Brasil do Século XX. São Paulo: Editora da UNESP.
Gregory, Steven. 2007. The Devil Behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Halberstam, Judith. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press.
Hall, Stuart. 2003. Political Belonging in a World of Multiple Identities. In Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice, ed. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, 25–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1990. Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture. In Global Culture, ed. Mike Featherstone, 237–252. London: Sage.
Heiman, Rachel, Carla Freeman, and Mark Liechty eds. 2012. The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
IBGE. 2017. Teresina. Censo. https://cidades.ibge.gov.br/brasil/pi/teresina/panorama. Accessed 1 Feb 2018.
Jefferson, Mark. 1939. The Law of the Primate City. Geographical Review 29: 226–232.
Koonings, Kees, and Dirk Krujit. 2007. Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America. London: Zed Books.
Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lamonte, Michelle. 1992. Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lause, Mark A. 2009. The Antebellum Crisis & America’s First Bohemians. Kent: Kent State University Press.
Levin, Joanna. 2010. Bohemia in America, 1858–1920. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Liechty, Mark. 2003. Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lima, Gerson Portela. 2003. Atlas da exclusão no Piauí. Teresina: Fundação CEPRO.
Linklater, Andrew. 1999. Cosmopolitan Citizenship. In Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther, ed. Cosmopolitan Citizenship, 35–59. London: Macmillan Press.
Lloyd, Richard. 2006. Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City. New York: Routledge.
Malcomson, Scott L. 1998. The Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 233–245. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Manalansan, Martin F.I.V. 2003. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press.
McCallum, Cecilia. 2005. Racialized Bodies, Naturalized Classes: Moving through the City of Salvador da Bahia. American Ethnologist 32 (1): 100–117.
McCallum, E.L., and Mikko Tuhkanen. 2011. Queer Times, Queer Becomings. Albany: SUNY Press.
Montgomery, Mark R. 2008. The Urban Transformation of the Developing World. Science 319: 761–764.
Nascimento, Francisco Alcides do. 2007. Cajuína e cristalina: as transformações espaciais vistas pelos cronistas que atuaram nos jornais de Teresina entre 1950 e 1970. Revista Brasileira de História 27 (53): 195–214.
Novak, David. 2010. Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood. Cultural Anthropology 25 (1): 40–72.
O’Dougherty, Maureen. 2002. Consumption Intensified: The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ong, Aihwa. 1998. Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Cosmopolitans. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 134–162. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Parker, Richard. 1999a. Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male Homosexuality, and Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil. London: Routledge.
———. 1999b. ‘Within Four Walls’: Brazilian Sexual Culture and HIV/AIDS. In Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton. London: UCL Press.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2002. Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History. In Cosmopolitanism, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, 15–53. Durham: Duke University Press.
Potuoğlu-Cook, Öykü. 2006. Beyond the Glitter: Belly Dance and Neoliberal Gentrification in Istanbul. Cultural Anthropology 21 (4): 633–660.
Rapport, Nigel, and Ronald Stade. 2007. A Cosmopolitan Turn—Or Return? Social Anthropology 15 (2): 223–235.
Rée, Jonathan. 1998. Cosmopolitanism and the Experience of Nationality. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 77–90. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Robbins, Bruce. 1998. Comparative Cosmopolitanisms. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 246–264. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London/New York: Routledge.
Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schein, Louisa. 1998. Importing Miao Brethren to Hmong America: A Not-So-Stateless Transnationalism. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 163–191. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Scheld, Suzanne. 2007. Youth Cosmopolitanism: Clothing, the City and Globalization in Dakar, Senegal. City and Society 19 (2): 232–253.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Simone, Abdu Malik. 2004. For the city yet to come: Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham: Duke University Press.
Velho, Gilberto. 2002. A Utopia Urbana: Um Estudo de Antropologia Social. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor.
Weiss, Brad. 2002. Thug Realism: Inhabiting Fantasy in Urban Tanzania. Cultural Anthropology 17 (1): 93–124.
Wilson, Elizabeth. 2000. Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Wilson, Ara. 2004. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wood, Allen W. 1998. Kant’s Project for Perpetual Peace. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 59–76. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Zhang, Li. 2006. Contesting Spatial Modernity in Late Socialist China. Current Anthropology 47 (3): 461–484.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Murphy, T.E. (2019). A Middle-of-Nowhere Somewhere. In: Queerly Cosmopolitan. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00296-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00296-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00295-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00296-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)