Bianchezza e mascolinità in Brasile. Etnografia di un soggetto dominante

The choice to study whiteness and masculinity in Brazil derives from my previous work on racism and sexism and my interest in focusing on the social group that has historically named and defined Others in Brazilian society. Whiteness and masculinity are expressed through the power to designate Others as such and, at the same time, to designate oneself as the universal subject. The aim of this book is to contribute to examining a topic that has long remained unspoken and obscured in dominant discourse about differences in terms of both gender and race: Other in relation to who? Different from who? The text is based on an anthropological study carried out in Rio de Janeiro from 2009 to 2012 involving interviews with 21 men who define themselves as white and upper middle class, aged from 43 to 60 years old and residing in wealthy neighborhoods in the city. The aim of this book is to understand, from an anthropological perspective, the mechanisms which serve to reproduce positions of power and privilege in class, gender and race relations in Brazilian society, and how dominant subjects construct these positions as legitimate and inevitable. The volume questions representations that depict Brazil as a society without conflictual relations between the rich and the poor, blacks and whites or men and women, focusing instead on moments of oppression and violence that even the dominant subject themselves recognize as such. This book also contributes to an understanding of the forms of resistance that dominant groups enact when faced with processes of change leading toward enhanced equality and social justice.