Themes of Structural Violence and Struggles of Love in Northeastern Brazil

Alison SteinbacherDepartment of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University

Abstract

Connection

TheoriesDeath Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday

Life in Brazil

References

This poster presents a visual and textual consideration of Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ research and work in Northeastern Brazil with women, child rearing, and healthcare practices, relating this work to theories introduced in anthropology by Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Marvin Harris. Scheper-Hughes found that the people of Alto do Cruzeiro face everyday structural violence and conditions of scarcity, particularly affecting women in the community. These factors occur due to lack of governmental and economic support, as well as lack of healthcare and health related resources. These constraints on the community over many decades have led to sickness, poverty, death, hunger, psychological strain, and most importantly loss within the community. This loss remains most prominent in infant mortality, and relates back to how mothers and other members of the community situate themselves with grieving, loss, and love in ways much different from the average American. By examining Scheper-Hughes’ work, this poster relates the factors of scarcity and structural violence back to the important core concepts of Psychology in Anthropology and the theory of Cultural Materialism.

In Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ ethnography, a chronicle of the struggles of life in the community of Bom Jesus de Mata is discussed. This community deals with troubling and difficult health and social issues, caused by the stark and disturbing past history of colonization efforts in the area. These effects continue today with the subsequent social and physical depression of middle and lower-class peoples in Bom Jesus. In particular, Scheper-Hughes focuses on a feminist perspective, looking at the lives and struggles of women, child bearing and rearing practices, and the struggles of motherly love that remain much different from our Western perspective of the mother-child relationship. This work provides a shock to the Western reader, but one realizes the cultural modifications to be necessary in the violent lives of Bom Jesus residents. Overall, this ethnography provides an insightful, straightforward look into the issues of health, hunger, and scarcity, looking at how these issues affect the social lives and relationships in Bom Jesus de Mata (Scheper-Hughes 1992).

Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead: These women brought a unique and unprecedented view into anthropology through a feminist perspective previously unbeknownst to the field. Cultural psychology, a main theme in their work, states that the personality of the individual remains influenced by culture (Moberg 2013).

Marvin Harris: A proponent of cultural materialism, he argued that technological and economic influence play a role in shaping society. This theory looks at the effects of materials on culture and society, giving a largely etic perspective. Harris, like Marx, utilized the term “mode of production” to explain the material base of society, twisting the term to solely refer to the resources present in a society (Moberg 2013: 248-249).

Moberg, Mark

2013 Engaging Anthropology: A Social and Political History. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy

1992 Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.

Scheper-Hughes’ work alongside the theories of Ruth Benedict , Margaret Mead, and Marvin Harris show the application of theory to cultural lives. In Bom Jesus de Mata, poverty and death remain extremely influenced by the “mode of production,” or the material base of society, which Scheper-Hughes identifies as cane sugar. This incredible overtake of a single cash crop turned the community away from self sustaining agriculture, and led them into massive food shortages for the poor, but also to low wages for long hard work in the sugarcane fields.

Psychologically, the people of Bom Jesus have adapted to the incredible difficulties placed upon them, in particular relating to the every day violence of child death. Women develop a delayed sense of connection to their children within the community of Bom Jesus, largely due to the incredible amount of childhood death that occurs. This delayed attachment remains a controversial topic, but shows the crucial understanding of differentiation of love, death, and how humans deal with these facts of life psychologically across cultures. Structural violence within this incredibly problem ridden community plays an obvious and incredibly detrimental role in the lives of those in Bom Jesus de Mata.

Table 7.2 retrieved from: Scheper-Hughes 1991:307.

Child Funeral in Bom Jesus. (Scheper-Hughes 1991:498).

Leonardo at his younger cousin’s grave (Scheper-Hughes 1991:424).

Young boy eating sugarcane (Scheper-Hughes 1991:35).