Abstract
In this article, I examine the ways in which health activists from Afro-Brazilian religions deploy ethnic identity politics within the Brazilian public health arena to gain recognition and respect for their beliefs and practices, as well as public health goods for their communities. I also discuss the creation and enactment of “culturally competent” healthcare initiatives for members of Afro-Brazilian religions. Finally, I examine the tension between universal particular identity frames that emerges within the political discourses of health activists from Afro-Brazilian religions. Throughout, I place this case study in dialogue with similar scholarship on minority health politics and cultural competence initiatives in other parts of the world.
Highlights
The debate about health care within Afro-Brazilian religions raises ethnic and racial issues because it involves spiritual factors that are molded by African ancestrality....Our health care model, practices, and instruments are all associated with a worldview that is neither Afro-Brazilian nor Japanese—it’s African. (Pai Mário, May 2009)2
Through his simultaneous roles as health activist, public health administrator, and religious authority, Pai Mário helps to enact a new paradigm of public health policy in Brazil— one that is infused with a politics of racial and ethnic difference
Another striking case taken from recent headlines is the ceasing of the construction of the Belo Monte dam in Brazil; President Dilma Rousseff ordered the project to halt, despite its potential for lucrative economic returns, after a determined group of indigenous activists repeatedly undermined construction efforts in protest of environmental damages and indigenous displacement caused by the project
Summary
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press
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