Afro-Politics and Civil Society in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

by Kwame Dixon

Overview

Brazil’s Black population, one of the oldest and largest in the Americas, mobilized a vibrant antiracism movement from grassroots origins when the country transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s. Campaigning for political equality after centuries of deeply engrained racial hierarchies, African-descended groups have been working to unlock democratic spaces that were previously closed to them.

Using the city of Salvador as a case study, Kwame Dixon tracks the emergence of Black civil society groups and their political projects: claiming new citizenship rights, testing new anti-discrimination and affirmative action measures, reclaiming rural and urban land, and increasing political representation. This book is one of the first to explore how Afro-Brazilians have influenced politics and democratic institutions in the contemporary period.

Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813072463
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Kwame Dixon is associate professor of African American studies at Howard University. He is coeditor of Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America.



What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Powerfully illustrates that Bahia has a vibrant black political history worthy of documentation, re-centering the scholarship on race and politics to the northeast where the black population is the majority.”—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil
 
“English-language work has rarely paid such attention to discourses in Afro-Brazilian communities on civil society inclusion and the process of democratization. This book is a significant contribution to understanding that movement for change and social justice.”—Clarence Lusane, author of The Black History of the White House

Editorial Reviews

Details the slow rise of Afro-Brazilian political organization in Salvador, the majority-black capital of Brazil’s Bahia state, and sets it within such change in Brazil and the African diaspora. . . . Contributes to comparative studies of the rise of black consciousness. . . . Recommended.”—Choice

 

“Synthesizes the great complexity of the history of what has been called ‘the Brazilian black movement’ with a special focus on the most visible location of blackness in that country: Salvador and the state of Bahia.”—Latin American Research Review

 

“Of great interest to scholars and students of the African diaspora and Brazilian politics.”—The Americas

 

“Without a doubt, this book is an important contribution to the emerging literature on the black public sphere, and black politics vis-à-vis racialized civil society in the African diaspora. . . . [This book] stands out as an engaging and serious attempt to recognize and understand the roadblocks blacks face in their (our) attempt to hold a civic existence.”—National Political Science Review

From the Publisher