From Social Gaze to Bureaucratic Standards: Doing Race in Affirmative Action Practices in Brazil
Final Report Abstract
This project analyzed racial classification processes in the context of Brazilian affirmative action policies. Focusing on assessment practices for job selections in the public service – so-called hetero-identification commissions –, we asked how race as a category of difference was established and made relevant in the course of bureaucratic and administrative action. To this end, we examined how race was articulated in three distinct settings: a) in commissions in which quota candidates’ self-classification as negro/a (Black) was ‘verified’, b) in governmental institutions that were responsible for the setting of the respective standards, and c) in legal cases in which quota candidates appealed to negative assessments of their self-classification as negro/a. Instead of asking whether candidates were classified ‘correctly’ in these procedures, we were interested in the workings of the so-called social gaze, which is assumed to structure Brazilians’ perception of race and with which the assessment commissions are supposed to look at the candidates. Our study therefore was guided by the following research questions: How is the social gaze enacted and operationalized in the commissions? How do governmental and quasi-state institutions translate this social gaze into bureaucratic standards and indicators? How is evidence for the commissions’ decisions produced? What counts as evidence? Using theoretical approaches which emphasize that objects only become relevant through concrete practices that produce, stabilize and maintain them, the project’s main objective was to gain an ethnographically grounded understanding of how the social gaze is operationalized and how race is done in affirmative action practices in Brazil. Methodologically, the primary strategies consisted of a) silent observation of assessment commissions, b) interviews as well as socializing with and shadowing of commission members and staff at the respective institutions, c) participant observation in trainings and workshops for commission members, d) documental analysis of legal cases and governmental guidelines. The overall research aim of this close accompaniment was to learn how the different actors carry out and describe the assessment practices and the racial classifications employed therein, not to judge this work politically or morally. Linking postcolonial approaches within Science and Technology Studies with the research fields of the anthropology of bureaucracy and citizenship studies, the project makes an important contribution to the anthropological study of race. In addition, we offer a new take on the question of affirmative action in Brazil by focusing on the very practices of categorization and by ethnographically analyzing bureaucratic action and assessment practices in this field.
Publications
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Claiming citizenship rights through the body multiple. Citizenship Studies, 23(7), 637-651.
Netz, Sabine; Lempp, Sarah; Krause, Kristine & Schramm, Katharina
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With the eyes of society? Doing race in affirmative action practices in Brazil. Citizenship Studies, 23(7), 703-719.
Lempp, Sarah
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“Jair Bolsonaro and Affirmative Action: Political Rupture or Escalation?” Allegra Lab. April 3, 2019.
Lempp, Sarah
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Encountering the Face—Unraveling Race. American Anthropologist, 122(2), 321-326.
M.'charek, Amade & Schramm, Katharina
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“Operationalizing the Social Gaze: Doing Race in Affirmative Action Practices in Brazil.” PhD thesis. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth
Lempp, Sarah
