Society with the State: Indigenous politics, voting and elections

Abstract

Born from the discussions held in the Working Group “Indigenous Policies in Non-Indigenous Politics” at the 31st Brazilian Meeting of Anthropology in 2018, and supported by a project developed at the Laboratory of Research in Ethnicity, Culture, and Development (Laced) at the National Museum, the book Antropologia da Política Indígena [Anthropology of Indigenous Politics] (Verdum & De Paula, 2020), with just over 500 pages, brings together articles by Brazilian and Latin American researchers on the participation of indigenous peoples from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, and Ecuador in municipal-level electoral processes. Predominantly ethnographic in nature, most of the chapters that make up the work explore the wide range of situations faced by indigenous people in their attempts to engage with non-indigenous political structures of representation, listing the main obstacles and difficulties that must be overcome by this form of indigenous politics. The book reveals the importance of a multidisciplinary perspective in the study of the phenomenon and the dialogue with an emerging anthropology focused on the study of voting, elections, and political parties.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/uniknowindevolp-145