In Attention to Pain: Governance and Bodies in Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ethnographies of bodies have become entry points for understanding the sensorially rich ways that worlds are generated and lived. Here, I adduce a slow-paced ethnographic mode that centers how bodily pain and touch orient attention, with a focus on gendered and racialized violence in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. In doing so, I make explicit the expectation in Rio’s urban governance that resilience means toughening through pain. In turn, I detail how Pentecostal practices of ‘healing touch’ link pain and hope together, demonstrating the religious work, care, and governance involved in producing and maintaining hope under conditions of violence.