Goldman 2001

This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice
University ]
On: 18 November 2014, At: 19:48
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer
Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Ethnos: Journal of
Anthropology
Publication details, including
instructions for authors and subscription
information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/
retn20
An Ethnographic Theory
of Democracy. Politics
from the Viewpoint of
Ilhéus's Black Movement
(Bahia, Brazil)
Marcio Goldman
Published online: 02 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Marcio Goldman (2001) An Ethnographic Theory

of Democracy. Politics from the Viewpoint of Ilhéus's Black Movement
(Bahia, Brazil), Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 66:2, 157-180, DOI:
10.1080/00141840120070921
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141840120070921
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of

all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications
on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our
licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as
to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of
the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication
are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views
of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified
with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not
be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands,
costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with,
in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 19:48 18 November 2014
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private

study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,
redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply,
or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
A n Ethnographic Theory of Democracy 157
An Ethnographic Theory of Democracy.

Politics from the Viewpoint of Ilhéus’s
Black Movement (Bahia, Brazil)
No-one should be surprised when votes are
bought with money. It is impossible to give much
to the people without taking even more in return.

Montesquieu
Marcio Goldman
Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
abstract The central aim of this paper is to outline an ‘ethnographic theory of

democracy,’ and so contribute to a deeper understanding of the concrete mechanisms
through which so-called representative democracy effectively functions. After some
general observations, the article therefore focuses on exploring a series of events
surrounding the participation of a segment of the black movement of Ilhéus (Bahia,
northeast Brazil) in the municipal elections of 1992 and 1996. From this ethnog-
raphic base, the paper then seeks to develop an overview of the participation of
electors in the self-named democratic processes of modern nation-states, exploring
phenomena such as electoral promises and vote buying, as well as concepts such as
reciprocity and subjectivity.
keywords Anthropology of politics, elections, Brazil, democracy
T
he anthropologist’s traditional practice usually places him or her in
situations where — by conviction or simple professionalism — the re-
searcher must act as a ‘skeptic’ in the face of persons, groups or even
w hole societies, w hich he or she thinks of as ‘believers.’ Whether this is an
objective fact, a methodological premise, or some kind of ethnocentric pro-
jection is of little interest here. What matters are the effects of this procedure
w hen the anthropologist turns to focus on the study of the institutions, val-
ues and processes of his or her own society.
At an academic meeting some years ago, I attempted to expound on the
importance of the anthropological study of elections with the slightly pre-
tentious assertion that the aim of this kind of work was, in the final instance,
to provide an alternate view of our own political systems — one equivalent to
that produced by Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer, for example. In response, I
w as asked if such a position was not somewhat risky since it appeared to
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

© Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis Ltd, on behalf of the National Museum of Ethnography
iss n 001 4 -1 8 4 4 pr int/ iss n 1 4 69-5 8 8 x online. doi: 1 0.1 08 0/ 001 41 8 4 01 2 007 092 1
158 marc io g oldman
support or extol some form of ‘relativization of democracy ,’ which would

amount to an enormous ethical and political danger. My exact reply at the
time now escapes me, but I remember being slightly startled in the face of an
objection which, if taken seriously , would mean an almost insurmountable
obstacle for the anthropological analysis of our own societies.
The reasons why this position tends to be frequently assumed in the Bra-
zilian context were immediately clear to me, though. After all, the country ’s
rec ent political history is rec alled in terms of an arduous struggle for its
(re)democratization. After an unstable democratic experience in the imme-
diate post-w ar period, the country w as submerged for more than tw o dec-
ades under a military dictatorship. It only re-emerged from this phase, slowly
and gradually , with the political opening initiated by the military regime it-
self, culminating with the election (still indirect) of a civil president, and with
the first direct elections after almost thirty y ears in 1 98 9. Fate was such that
the elected president underwent a process of legal impeachment, w hich in
practice meant that it was only the 1 994 elections and their winner (an intel-
lectual— a past opponent of the military regime and a supposed social-demo-
crat) that were seen to mark the true instigation of democracy in Brazil.
Naturally , this account contrasts with others that, in Brazil, focus on the
anti-democratic stance assumed by the elites and the media, on the imper-
fections of an outdated electoral sy stem, and on the lack of political educa-
tion among an impoverished population. Nevertheless, it is perfectly under-
standable that against an historical backdrop dominated by the motif of
‘redemocratization,’ even those who believe that Brazil still fails to live in a
perfectly democratic regime strongly distrust any attempt— real or supposed
— to ‘relativize’ democracy.
It is not ‘relativization’ that I wish to deal with here, though. For now, let
us suppose that ‘democratic State’ may be taken to denote a regime:
which appeals to the principles of political democracy, whose government pro-
ceeds by free elections (in the sense that its citizens can effectively choose be-
tw een genuinely different candidates for power), which practices some form of
separation between the legislative, executive and judicial orders, which on a more
general plane recognizes that conflicts make up social life and, at least in principle,
affirms that negotiation is the best means of resolving them, and which admits
that the Law’s function is to guarantee liberty to the people (and to their prop-
erty) and their equality before the law (Châtelet & Pisier-Kouchner 1 983 :1 7 0).
Even if we accept such a definition, it is difficult not to agree with Michel

Offerlé (1 993 : 1 3 9–1 40) that one of the enabling historical conditions for the
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

A n Ethnographic Theory of Democracy 159
existence of a sy stem thus conceived is the production of an ‘elector’ who is

not excessively passive, but who, at the same time, is not too active and only
participates in the political process at foreseen instances and moments. For
Offerlé, this implies an entire ‘domestication of the elector,’ a ‘social ortho-
pedics’ that remains inseparable from democracy. Or we may note the same
idea phrased by Michel Foucault:
the 1 8 th century undoubtedly invented various kinds of freedom, but it also pro-
vided these with a deep and solid sub-soil — the disciplinary society which we still
depend on (Foucault 1 97 5 : back cover).1
It is not a question here of entering into the subtle debates of political science
or philosophy, but simply of recognizing that one of the possible way s for
comprehending phenomena that the analy sts themselves ‘believe’ demands
a kind of ‘ethnographic detour.’ That is, as an attempt to apprehend these
phenomena from the point of view of those who retain a certain skepticism
in relation to them. This is precisely what happens in terms of ‘politics,’ un-
derstood as electoral and party politics. Here everything appears to take place
in a form very different from the usual, since it is our informants who are
usually skeptical about politics and the anthropologists w ho are more or less
credulous.
When studying the effective functioning of a political system, the ethnog-
rapher is faced with a series of practices that cannot be reduced to perfect
ideal models. And this situation is not confined to the anthropologist intend-
ing to convert ‘the production of the elector’ or the ‘disciplinarization’ of so-
ciety into immediate objects of study. It suffices that he or she is dedicated to
the profession’s essence: that is, to produce what could be called an ‘ethnog-
raphic theory of democracy.’
As we know, Malinowski introduces the idea of ‘ethnographic theory’ in
Coral Gardens and their Magic (Malinowski 1 93 5 : 2 nd vol.; also see Tambiah
1 968), with the aim of constructing a model for the understanding of lan-
guage and magic that, although produced from and for a particular context,
could potentially function as a matrix for deciphering these phenomena in
other contexts. This, I believe, is one of the alternatives at anthropology ’s
disposal that enable it to escape the known paradoxes of the particular and
the general. In the specific case of ‘democracy,’ this kind of approach also
has a complementary advantage: it helps to prevent value judgments — almost
inevitable when a topic so central to our own lives is at issue — from entering
into the analysis.
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

1 60 marc io g oldman
It is in this sense that w e are faced here not with a discussion of what a
‘true democracy ’ would be, nor with evaluating to what point the Brazilian
state is or is not ‘democratic,’ but with producing a model capable of confer-
ring a minimum of intelligibility to very real processes taking place within
the limits of a regime that the agents tend to consider as a democracy. A post-
ure of this type can only be thought ‘critical’ in the sense in which Michel
Foucault claims that to turn an institution such as a prison ‘intelligible’ is to
turn it ‘criticable’ (Foucault 1 984a:5 9).

The situation here is very similar to the analy sis of so-called ‘Greek demo-
cracy’ effected by Paul Vey ne (1 98 4). Stressing the fact that the only thing
connecting this ‘democracy ’ w ith that which emerged in the 1 8th century is
the name, Vey ne show s that the Greek case was actually based on the coex-
istence and alternation of two very different models: one ‘militant’ — similar to
the ‘mental climate of activist political parties’ (Veyne 1 98 4:5 8 ), where ‘a man
who is disengaged from politics is not seen as a quiet man, but as a bad citi-
zen’ (1 984:60) — and the other ‘realist’ — the government of an active minority,
which counts on a certain passivity from its citizens in terms of political life.
Equally , ‘representative democracy ’ is based on a constitutive ambiguity:
on one hand political representation, on the other political professionaliza-
tion. Like militantism for the ancient Greeks, modern political representa-
tion is one of our ‘semi-ideals’; more than an ideology, since it does not in-
volve simply a falsification of reality or a useful lie, but less than a practice,
since its concretization is ceaselessly inflected by other kinds of mechanisms
(economic, communicational, and so on). In turn, the professionalization char-
acterizing modern politics functions to limit the sphere of those effectively
able to participate in political life (see Bourdieu 1 98 9).
It is not a question here of imagining the ‘ideal’ in opposition to the ‘prac-
tical.’ Much to the contrary , it is only against the backdrop of the semi-ideal
of representative democracy that practices such as those producing the elec-
tor or the professionalization of politics can acquire meaning and function.
In the same w ay, it is only by basing itself on practices of this kind that the
idea of representative democracy can survive and continue to be sustained.
In fact, instead of opposing norms and behavior, it makes more sense to
work with the hypothesis put forward by Foucault (1 984b:3 2–3 3 ) in his studies
on ancient ethics:2 it is clear that there exist both political rules and political
behavior. Democracy, like any political or social sy stem, is made up of these
two dimensions, and if behavior does not correspond to norms — for exam-
ple, if a large part of the electorate fails to turn up at the polling booths in a
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

A n Ethnographic Theory of Democracy 1 61
sy stem such as the Brazilian, where voting is compulsory (w e shall return to

this point)— we can alway s invoke the repressive sy stem or construct elegant
models designed to explain why this discrepancy takes place. Models that, in
the Brazilian case, tend to appeal to the recent nature of its democracy, to
the population’s lack of political education, to the disinterest of the elite, to
gaps in electoral legislation, to the media’s partiality, etc.3 Explanations which
are not false, but which leave aside a third dimension as constitutive of poli-
tics as it is of ethics: the dimension of subjectivity. Not to be confused with

an originary subject, this dimension consists in a certain type of relation with
oneself and with others that necessarily articulates — in distinct way s — rules
and behavior. In the same sense in which Foucault speaks of the constitution
of the moral subject or of a moral conscience, we could speak, then, of the
objectification of a political subject and of a political conscience.
The essential point here is the presupposition that an anthropological study
of our political life must necessarily depart from an ethnographic and theo-
retical stress on this third dimension of politics. At issue, therefore, is no longer
an inquiry into rules and behavior, their concordance and discordance, but
into the way in which rules are actually lived and how behavior is inevitably
conceptualized. Thus, the notion of subjectivity such as it is understood here
is not opposed to the notion of ‘objectivity ’ or of ‘practice’; it derives simply
from the unavoidable truth that when human beings ‘act,’ their conscience is
inevitably involved in their actions, and that, consequently , the dimension of
subjectivity is part of any human activity (see Vey ne 1 987 :7 –8 ).
Context
Between 1 982 and 1 984, I researched possession in the Ewá Tombency Neto,
a candomblé ‘Angolan’ cult center situated in the city of Ilhéus, in the south
of Bahia state, northeast Brazil.4 In 1 98 6, some members of the cult center
founded the Dilazenze Cultural Group, which makes up part of a network of
groups calling themselves ‘A fro blocks’ (Blocos A fro). Organized in the mold
of those from Salvador, the capital of Bahia (of w hich Ilê Aiy ê and Olodum
are the best known), these blocks, as well as parading during carnival, pos-
sess other functions, from acting as a point of c ohesion for y oung black
people in search of diversion to pursuing social work with needy commu-
nities.5
About ten groups of this kind exist in Ilhéus. Four of them, including Dila-
zenze, have their headquarters in Conquista, a large district and the most
heavily populated in the city with nearly 20,000 inhabitants, situated on a
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

hill close to the city center. The area has a poor and mostly black population.
All the groups claim to be part of an ‘Afro-cultural movement,’ in turn itself
part of the city’s ‘black movement.’ The qualificative ‘Afro-cultural’ serves to
distinguish these groups from the local section of the Movimento Negro Uni-
ficado (mnu—Unified Black Movement), a nationw ide movement founded in
1 988 and committed to the fight against racism and discrimination. Mem-
bers of the ‘Afro-cultural’ groups denounce what they consider to be the exces-
sively ‘political’ character of the mnu, claiming that the latter is not inter-
ested in the preservation and dissemination of Afro culture, but in ‘being poli-
tical.’ This means that for these groups, ‘culture’ and ‘politics’ are objectified
as distinct categories and frequently opposed. In 1 989, the Afro-cultural groups
founded the Conselho das Entidades A fro-Culturais (ceac—Council of Afro-
Cultural Entities) of Ilhéus.
Assembling a reasonable number of people (about 1 00 on average for each
group, a number that can easily reach 5 00 during carnival) and lacking any
politico-ideological ideal (in contrast to the mnu which is invariably aligned
with leftist parties), it is unsurprising that Ilhéus’s Afro-cultural movement is
a target for professional politicians canvassing for votes.
In deciding to study politics in Ilhéus,6 my ambition was to try to see poli-
tics from the viewpoint of the city ’s Afro-cultural movement, more particu-
larly , from the viewpoint of the Dilazenze Cultural Group, where I concen-
trated my fieldwork. In more precise terms, my aim has been to articulate so-
called ‘native representations’ — which in this case should be looked upon as
true ‘political theories’ to be taken very seriously — with my own observa-
tions and theories, in a way that enables a true dialogue between these two
viewpoints to emerge.7
Elections in Ilhéus and Brazil

In the absence of any in-depth ethnographic study on the topic, I shall
provide only a brief sketch of Ilhéus’s history. This history is recounted by
its inhabitants in a way that strikes an outside observer as slightly curious.
People emphasize events which took place in the sixteenth century: the founda-
tion of the Hereditary Captaincy of São Jorge of Ilhéus in 1 5 3 5 , its transfor-
mation into a villa thirty y ears later, the extraction of brazil-w ood and the
production of sugar, and attacks by Indians. This is follow ed by a silence con-
cerning almost everything that occurred from the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury until the middle of the nineteenth century. Comments are limited to citing
the region’s ‘decline.’ Finally , the narrative resumes with the introduction and
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

expansion of cacao plantations, Ilhéus’s elevation to city status (1 8 81 ), the

‘land struggles’ (at the start of the tw entieth century ), the ‘highpoint of ca-
cao’ and the ‘w ealth’ w hich it brought (during the 1 92 0s), and its eventual
collapse in the ‘cacao crisis’ (from the 1 980s onwards).8
The municipality of Ilhéus occupies an area of 1 ,7 00 square kilometers. In
1 992, it held a population of around 2 2 0,000 inhabitants, of w hich 65 percent
were living in urban districts (today, this figure is closer to 25 0,000, with an urb-
an population of 7 2 percent). Almost 85 percent of Ilhéus’s population told

the 1 991 Demographic Census that they were ‘black’ or ‘brown.’ (In Salva-
dor, the state’s capital city , the percentage is 7 8 percent; in the state of Bahia,
that percentage is 7 9 percent, and in Brazil in general, it is 47 .5 percent.) The
number of electors able to vote in 1 992 w as 8 6,01 0 people; of these, 64,3 3 2
effectively voted.
Although voting is compulsory in the Brazilian electoral system for every-
one between the age of 1 8 and 7 0, it is optional for those between 1 6 and 1 8 ,
as well as those above 7 0. In addition, the fines for failing to appear at the
polling booths are very mild, which partly explains the invariably high per-
centage of electoral abstentions.
Some other details about Brazil’s arcane and complex electoral system are
required. It consists of a tw o-chamber (Chamber of Deputies and Senate)
presidential sy stem, in w hich general elections are held every four years to
select the President of the Republic, the state governors, and the members of
both federal and state legislative chambers. In parallel, the ‘municipal’ elec-
tions are held every intermediate four years to avoid coinciding with the gen-
eral elections. These elect the city may ors and the city councilors.
In all elections to federal, state, or city chambers, the parties present can-
didate lists for each level in dispute, and the elector votes for just one name
per level. The valid and blank votes are added up, and the total is divided by
the number of seats to be filled. This figure supplies the ‘electoral quotient.’
Only parties with votes above the electoral quotient can obtain seats. The
votes of each party whose total vote is above the electoral quotient are di-
vided by this number, giving the ‘party quotient.’ The quota of seats obtained
by each party is then filled in order according to the number of votes re-
ceived by candidates. Finally , the numbers left over from the calculation are
used to fill remaining seats according to a specific formula. In Ilhéus in 1 992
a party elected a candidate for each 3 ,1 24 votes (the electoral quotient) re-
ceived by the party label, irrespective of the number of votes received by each
candidate; if the party received 6,248 votes, it elected two candidates, and so
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

on. For example, the party with the highest poll in these elections received a
total of 1 5 ,5 7 1 votes, which ensured the election of six councilors for this
party (w ith the electoral ‘remainder,’ that is, the amount left over from the
calculation, already computed). The lowest number of votes received by an
elected councilor was 3 83 , while the highest number was 921 .
‘Politics’ in Ilhéus
In Ilhéus, people have a way of pronouncing the word ‘politics’ which suc-
cinctly conveys to the listener the depth of scorn aroused by the mere men-
tion or recollection of the activity. A quite heterogeneous collection of things
is included in the term ‘politics.’ Naturally , municipal, state, and federal ad-
ministrations make up part of politics. In addition, the electoral period is called
‘politics,’ and ‘politics’ is said to have begun or ended (thereby signaling the
start or finish of the electoral campaign). People also comment that ‘this is a
political y ear’ (that is, an electoral year), and so on. But ‘politics’ also consists
of w hat ‘politicians’ do: agreements, deals, favors, demands, promises, liai-
sons, manipulations, accusations, bargains, etc. This is a circular conception,
of course, since the term ‘politicians’ generally designates those who engage
in ‘politics.’ However, this circularity is not entirely vicious, since the classi-
fication of someone as a ‘politician’ is fundamentally contextual. This means
that at root, politics is not thought of as a domain or even as an aspect of
social life — a substantivism and formalism that constitute the two main modes
of defining it in the academic tradition — but as an activity.
Now, if politics is an activity , even those who are not ‘politicians’ can occa-
sionally practice it — and this applies not just to politics in its official sense.
During carnival, the Afro blocks parade down the city ’s main avenue, in a
competition in which they receive marks from a set of judges. Victory in this
competition is extremely prized by members of these groups. In the 1 999
carnival, rumors spread that someone had tampered with the results of the
competition: this immediately provoked comments like ‘they politicized the
parade’ (fizeram política com o desfile). Similarly, when people suspect that some-
one is conspiring within an Afro group — aiming to expand his or her sphere of
influence, w in a more prestigious position, or obtain some material advant-
age— he or she may be accused of ‘doing politics’ (fazer política). A typical phrase
in Ilhéus is ‘stop politicking’ (deixe de fazer política), meaning, ‘be sincere’.
However, it would be inadequate to say that ‘politics’ is simply a polysemic
term, unless we agree to lend a more sociological meaning to this polysemy.
The different conceptions of politics coexist, interpenetrating and opposing
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

each other within a stratified social space. Thus, ‘electors’ generally tend to
conceive of politics as an activity that, for them, is transitory (it begins and
ends every two y ears), transcendent (it comes from outside the group) and
polluting (it contaminates social relations w ith manipulations and insincer-
ity). But the closer we approach the institutionalized domain of politics, the
more likely we are to encounter a substantialist and morally neutral concep-
tion of politics as a sphere or domain — a definition of ‘politics’ as a field ide-
ally permanent and continuous, immanent and positively valued.
The Case of the Afro-Cultural Center

The w inner of the presidential election in 1 98 9 had campaigned against
w hat he called ‘professional politicians,’ which struck a chord w ith a wide-
spread public unease with politicians in general. This feeling was paradoxi-
cally reinforced by the later impeachment of that same newly elected presi-
dent. This climate still persisted in 1 991 , when a group of people defining
themselves as ‘apolitical’ and claiming to be unhappy with the ‘professional
politicians’ (even though some had already participated in party politics),
launched the ‘Ilhéus Hearts Movement.’
Presenting it as a people’s movement, its activists initiated a campaign that
sought to ‘reveal’ new potential candidates for the city council and for the
post of may or. These candidates were selected on the basis of their cvs, drawn
from people who had never pursued any party-political activity and who en-
joy ed a good reputation in the community.
After a few months, an administrative worker from Ilhéus’s port ended up
being selected and launched as candidate for mayor. About ten names were
put forw ard for the city council, one of them being that of a dock worker
w ho at the time was president of the Council of Afro-Cultural Entities of
Ilhéus (the ceac). These two candidates — both black — formed an alliance
and succeeded in attracting the support of the city’s Afro-cultural movement
(w hile the mnu, Unified Black Movement, a traditional ally of the left-wing
Workers’ Party , pt, remained outside this alliance.)
The candidature for councilor and the influence of the then-president of
the ceac (Council of A fro-Cultural Entities) were clearly crucial for the Afro-
cultural movement’s agreement to back the sociologist’s candidacy. None-
theless, more than this was involved: this support was dependent on a deal
struck with the candidate for may or, who, if elected, would immediately set
about constructing an ‘Afro-Cultural Center’ to shelter, exhibit and sell the
local ‘Afro culture.’ At this site, capoeira (martial arts) academies, Afro groups,
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

craft sellers, and candomblé shell diviners, would share a space that would
hopefully attract a large number of tourists. So, as w ell as making the local
‘A fro culture’ visible, the Center would act as an important source of income
for the groups and people making up part of Ilhéus’s Afro-cultural movement.
When opinion polls indicated the black movement’s candidate as front-
runner, he w as invited by the may oral candidate of a larger party to be that
party ’s candidate for vice-may or. The argument was that the black candi-
date lacked the resources to continue until the end of the campaign. The pro-
posal was accepted and the black candidate withdrew his candidacy for may or
and ran instead as the larger party ’s candidate for the post of vice-may or.
The Afro-cultural movement was immediately informed that the deal to con-
struct the Afro-Cultural Center was maintained; the members of the move-
ment therefore began to take part in the campaign, presenting musical per-
formances in the rallies and canvassing votes for the two candidates.
The new candidate won the elections and the margin of 8 ,45 5 votes that
ensured his victory is cited by the black movement as proof of its importance
in the campaign, since this was precisely the number of votes which their
activists estimated to have won. Three people identified with the ‘Ilhéus Hearts
Movement’ were elected to the council. In addition, the then-president of
the ceac ended up as his party ’s first proxy in the City Chamber. He was also
named adviser to the Office of Industry and Commerce (w hich had the vice-
mayor as its head).9
How ever, after the elections, things began to change. The Afro-cultural
movement started to come up against ‘closed doors’ and failed in its attempts
to gain access to those in municipal power. Despite a large mobilization and
attempts to apply pressure, it was only in 1 995 (i.e. three y ears after the elec-
tions) that the mayor donated an area of land in a wealthy part of the city for
construction of the Afro-Cultural Center. During a large televised party , he
handed over not only a land title deed, but also a personal check as the first
contribution to a fund-raising campaign towards constructing the building.
A week later, the city council annulled the donation, arguing that the land
was located in a conservation area.
Already thinking ahead to the 1 996 municipal elections, the may or and
deputy may or accused the opposition of blocking the Center’s construction.
In turn, the opposition claimed that the donation was nothing more than an
electoral gimmick, aimed once more at obtaining the support of the black
movement for the forthcoming elections. The black movement then asserted
that both allegations were true, that neither the incumbents nor the opposi-
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

tion had really been interested in the Center, and that the movement would
not participate in the 1 996 campaign. Instead, its response was a promise to
w age a negative campaign against the vice-may or and the already ex-presi-
dent of the ceac, who were accused of being the main people responsible for
the situation and both labeled as ‘traitors.’
Despite this, the two main candidates for may or during the 1 996 elections
— the same candidate defeated in 1 992 running for the opposition, and a fed-
eral deputy running for the governing party — still tried to obtain the back-
ing of the Afro-cultural movement. Selecting a black candidate for councilor
(a resident from the Conquista district), the incumbent party organized a se-
ries of meetings and offered money to Afro-cultural groups as a fee for per-
forming in their rallies and other activities. In response, the opposition pro-
claimed that it condemned this kind of deal and stated that it wanted the
black movement’s support in virtue of ‘principles’ and ‘agreements,’ not through
‘pay-offs’ and ‘promises.’ Nevertheless, the opposition also promoted con-
tacts with the ceac, via a black candidate for councilor, another resident of
Conquista.
Finally , a split took place within the Council of A fro-Cultural Entities. Some
of the groups (among them one of the largest) decided to back the local oppo-
sition candidate, w ho already counted on the support of the mnu (Unified
Black Movement) in so far as its candidate for vice-may or came from the Work-
ers’ Party (pt). The other groups (among them two of the largest, including
Dilazenze) took the opposite option and decided to participate in the gov-
erning party ’s rallies. When questioned whether it was not contradictory to
support the forces who, four years before, had ‘tricked’ them, the latter groups
replied either that they w ere not ‘supporting’ the candidates, but ‘working’
for them, or that the real traitors were not the candidate for may or, nor even
the present may or, but the deputy mayor and the ex-president of the ceac —
that is, the people closest to the Council with w hom it had established the
agreement on electoral participation during the 1 992 elections. One of the
groups w hich stay ed with the governing party advertised that it had received
R$ 6,000 (six thousand reais, or about US$ 6,000 in 1 996) for its shows dur-
ing rallies and parades. This money went towards the construction of the
group’s own center. The group’s initial position that these performances were
w ork — and that they didn’t necessarily imply electoral support — was gradu-
ally modified, until by the end of the campaign, it was argued that it was out
of the question to w ork for someone while voting (or soliciting votes) for
another.
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

The argument over the construction of the Afro-Cultural Center was re-
sumed and, by the end of the campaign, it was said that if the governing party
won again, the Center would be built. In contrast, people recalled that in the
previous mandate of the new opposition candidate (between 1 982 and 1 988 ),
the black movement had been discredited, and official support for parades
by samba schools and afoxé music groups had been withdrawn, leading to
the demise of these groups and the introduction of electric music floats (trios
elétricos) in Ilhéus’s carnival, w hich favored the city ’s white elite.

One of the immediate effects of this split within the Afro-cultural move-
ment was the lack of consensus concerning a candidate for councilor. Vari-
ous people put themselves forward as possible representatives, but no one
managed to gain consistent support and no one was elected. The opposi-
tion won the may orship and offered the mnu (Unified Black Movement) sev-
eral posts in the ‘cultural’ sector of the administration. Nothing more was
said about Ilhéus’s Afro-Cultural Center. The groups who had supported the
previous governing party quickly approached the new mayor. They also dis-
seminated a fresh explanation for their alignment w ith the defeated party : in
reality , they had known since the beginning that the opposition would w in
the elections and they had only supported the other candidate for material
reasons. They stressed that the Afro-cultural groups had found themselves
in an extremely bad situation, in part deriving from events during the 1 992
elections. In addition, they knew that once elected, the may or would be un-
able to ignore them since he had promised a more aggressive ‘cultural’ policy.
At the start of 1 998 , Ilhéus’s may or formally announced his support for
the re-election of the president of the Republic. The Workers’ Party (pt), which
provides leftwing opposition to the central government, severed its alliance
with the mayor, and all the mnu members who held positions in the munici-
pal administration renounced their posts. At that moment, the ceac com-
mitted itself to supporting the president of the Republic’s re-election, per-
forming in the rally which the latter staged in Ilhéus and taking part in the
campaign for the candidates to the Legislative Assembly and the Federal Cham-
ber who supported him.
Vote Buying, Lack of Participation, Promises

What should we make of this kind of ethnographic material? Firstly , we
may note that there is nothing here to startle more traditional anthropology.
At least since Evans-Pritchard’s time, our immediate response to more or
less implausible ‘beliefs’ (or apparently contradictory practices) has been to
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ask how reasonable people could act in such a way. We then set ourselves the
task of discovering some kind of underlying logic capable of returning a sense
of ‘normality’ to the data and to our informants. I think that the same could
be done when faced by politics in our own societies. However, it is appar-
ently easier to be ‘relativist’ about the Azande than about ourselves.
On the other hand, it is necessary to recall that one of the central themes
of ‘electoral sociology ’ in Brazil has alw ays been the compatibility (or other-
w ise) between the ‘interests’ of electors and the electoral choices effectively
practiced by them (see, for example, Lavareda 1 991 ; Nunes Leal 1 949; San-
tos 1 987 ; Soares 1 97 3 ). That is, why should electors vote election after elec-
tion for candidates who rapidly come to be thought of as remote, incom-
petent, or even dishonest? The same applies to Ilhéus and it is indeed dif-
ficult for someone who ‘believes’ in politics to listen, without prejudice or
anger, to the repeated assertions that all politicians or all parties are exactly
the same.
Leaving aside problematic notions such as alienation, deprivation, or ig-
norance (terms which the elites and intellectuals generally tend to use in at-
tempting to explain this situation), I think that the only way of making sense
of these claims is to treat them anthropologically — that is, by ethnograph-
ically restoring the sense that such claims possess for the agents, and by try-
ing to ascertain the connections betw een them and other dimensions of ex-
perience, in a way which agents themselves do not generally do.
Even anthropologists, though, tend at times to subordinate the very con-
crete practices and ideas encountered in the field to general principles that
supposedly serve to elucidate what was really observed. Thus, it is easy to be
seduced into ‘explaining’ voting as an outcome of a system of mutual depend-
encies that are said to characterize ‘Brazilian society’: that is, voting patterns
are evidence of ‘patronage’ or a system of ‘personal favors’; they are bolstered
by values such as ‘honor’ or ‘commitments’; or they function on the basis of
grand principles such as exchange and reciprocity.
Although they possess some virtues, these approaches — which I would
typify in a loose way as ‘culturalist’— present a series of difficulties (see Herzfeld
1 98 4:43 9). On the basis of the ‘social drama’ briefly narrated above, I pro-
pose an alternate perspective, albeit in a somewhat preliminary form. In doing
so, three themes will be tackled. Firstly , ‘vote buy ing’ — generally seen as a
correlate of a society (or a social class) regulated by values of patronage and
reciprocity. Secondly , skepticism and lack of political participation — gener-
ally seen to derive from a weak adherence to democratic values. And thirdly,
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

‘electoral promises’ — generally seen to be linked to a social universe ruled by

personal relations.
These topics should be approached from the angle of three principles that
I believe fundamental for the understanding of electoral process and politics
in a society such as our own: pluralization of categories, identification of comple-
mentary asymmetric mechanisms, and recognition of processes of subjectification. In
contrast to notions such as ‘reciprocity ’ or ‘personalism,’ these are purely
operational abstract principles, designed only to confer intelligibility on the

phenomena under study. In this sense, they depend entirely on ethnographic
observation (w hich does not mean that they derive mechanically from it).
Pluralism, Power, Subjectivity

As we saw, the successful attempt to attract the black movement during
the campaign for a candidate for may or centered largely on the ‘promise’ to
construct an ‘A fro-Cultural Center.’ Members of the black movement un-
animously attribute their involvement in the campaign to this pledge. They
particularly focus on the fact that they worked without receiving any thing in
immediate pay ment, as is the custom during electoral campaigns.10 ‘We hunt-
ed for votes,’ people say , ‘without eating,’ and ‘on empty stomachs.’ It was
only in 1 995 , that is, already in the run-up to the new municipal elections of
1 996, that the elected candidate fulfilled his pledge by donating an area of
public land — a donation which was subsequently blocked by the majority op-
position.
As a result, while from the black movement’s point of view the campaign
work and the construction of the Afro-Cultural Center may be seen as ele-
ments of a — let’s say — restricted exchange, the same does not apply w hen
we examine the phenomenon from the viewpoint of the candidates and poli-
ticians. From their point of view, the commitment to build the Afro-Cultural
Center appears primarily as a kind of debt whose repay ment can be deferred
or ‘put off.’ In actual fact, it is carefully postponed until the moment at which
it can be embedded w ithin a new transaction. In turn, this is part of a cy cle of
transactions already embedded in other elections. This explains why, in a
certain sense, debts cannot be paid: their open character ensures the con-
tinuance of the relationship and the votes.
Thus, as we saw, it w as only when a new electoral campaign had already
begun that the then-may or of Ilhéus took an initiative that could have re-
sulted in fulfillment of the promise. However, he chose the most difficult route
— one which w as certainly not the only one at his disposal: he presented the
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

building project to the Council Chamber. The latter, controlled by the oppo-
sition, refused the project, calculating that the may or would thus not benefit
from the electoral work and votes of the Afro-cultural movement’s members
in any future election. For his part, the mayor could argue that he had at-
tempted to fulfill his promise (settling his debt) and that responsibility for
the ‘non-pay ment’ now fell to the opposition. In this sense, the may or was
successful in ‘transferring’ his debt to the opposition, who had blocked the
project for constructing the Afro-Cultural Center. In fact, the black move-
ment did tend to blame the Council Chamber, and not the may or, for failing
to fulfil the promise. The vice-prefect and ex-president of the ceac were also
held responsible to the extent that they were the negotiators for the deal. In
addition, from the black movement’s point of view, they had lacked the in-
fluence necessary to ensure that the Council Chamber approved the project
for constructing the Afro-Cultural Center. As members of the group, they
began to be considered as real traitors.
In parallel, this process demonstrates what would be an imaginary error,
one frequently made that politicians and members of the elite always oper-
ate in way s assumed to be more modern, selling and buy ing votes and influ-
ence according to a market model, while the members of the black move-
ment are necessarily dominated by a logic of reciprocity. During the 1 996
carnival, a candidate for councilor, who had assisted an Afro group by dis-
tributing T-shirts bearing his name, later accused its members of being trai-
tors for not supporting him in the municipal elections held in the same y ear.
The group’s members contested this interpretation of events, since from their
point of view the transaction that had taken place during the carnival ended
there and then. It had been ‘professional,’ a ‘business deal.’ In contrast, the
politician had attempted to use it as the key to a relationship of reciprocity
implying, as such, both a future bond and a commitment. In similar fashion,
w e may recall that during one moment of the 1 996 campaign, members of
the Dilazenze alleged that their performance in the rallies of a specific can-
didate did not imply that they had to support him in the actual elections.
This shows the need for a pluralization of categories. As Paul Veyne (1 97 6:
81 –82 ) has demonstrated, we need to replace grand and vague notions such
as ‘reciprocity ’ or ‘redistribution’ with a precise terminology more faithful to
reality. Thus, although gift, present, exchange, redistribution, trade, homage,
prestation, indebtedness, investment, buy ing and selling, and so on, undeni-
ably make up part of a common socio-semantic field, we should not subsume
these kinds of relationship under a single category such as ‘reciprocity.’ Rather,
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

the opposite: we should use terminological diversity as a tool to account for

the diverse uses of reciprocity, thereby developing a sociological pragmatics
rather than a semantics or syntax.
This ‘pluralization’ is the way to unraveling the complicated question of
‘vote buy ing.’ Our tendency is to consider this practice a true abomination,
an act which conspires against the foundations of democracy. I’m unsure,
however, if this aversion isn’t due to the fact that it brings us face-to-face, in
a rather obscene fashion, with the very nature of a sy stem ideally ruled by
individual action and concretely anchored in generalized equivalence; that
is, in the representative democracy of capitalistic social formations. As w e
have seen, reality in the ‘field’ is somewhat different. The buying and selling
of votes appears as an element of various discursive and non-discursive stra-
tegies: it is possible to condemn someone for practicing it, but it is equally
possible to invoke it as a means of justify ing positions which at times are dif-
ficult to admit (for example, after shifting to support a candidate previously
considered as entirely unsuitable). Notions such as ‘reciprocity ’— even w hen
qualified as ‘negative,’ ‘balanced,’ etc.— appear especially inadequate here, as
they tend to obscure not only strategic procedures, but also the diversity of
the mechanisms effectively put into action.
The second point concerns the fact that at least since 1 98 8 , Ilhéus’s Afro-
cultural movement has been trying, w ithout success, to elect a councilor to
‘represent’ it. In the 1 98 8 elections, a member of the family at the center of
the Dilazenze group received what was judged a good result, but was still not
elected. Some of his brothers blamed his defeat on the fact that he had gone
in search of support among the local ‘bourgeoisie’ — that is, among the city ’s
white middle class — instead of concentrating his efforts on the candomblé
cult centers and the Afro groups. By acting in this way , people claimed he
had lost part of the latter’s support, without managing to compensate for
this loss among the elite, which, it is commonly supposed, would never back
a candidate who was both black and poor.
In 1 992, as w e saw, the then president of the ceac managed to attain the
position of his party ’s reserve, and had even taken up the post on a number
of occasions. Nonetheless, the non-construction of the Afro-Cultural Center
quickly severed his relations with the black movement, until finally he was
removed following internal restructuring and the selection of a new direc-
torship for the ceac. In 1 996, a series of candidates divided the black move-
ment’s support. Not one of them w as elected, although one did manage to
win sufficient votes for him to remain active in politics. Finally, since the middle
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

of 1 999, a number of candidates for councilor have been try ing to attract the
black movement’s support, provoking a series of internal conflicts.
I do not think that this ‘failure’ can be attributed, as is sometimes done, to
a lack of organization, political education, or commitment. Rather than ap-
pealing to these grand causes, we should identify the mechanisms that tend
to produce this type of result. Firstly, we may recall that the conception of
politics held by Ilhéus’s black movement tends to associate it w ith a pollut-
ing, transitory, and transcendent activity. As such, it is possible to imagine

that a relative’s defeat in an election may not be so bad, since his or her de-
feat at least prevents him from becoming a ‘politician’; that is, someone w ho
is imagined to possess a vast array of moral defects. In addition, the introjec-
tion of politics into spaces conceived as undivided introduces divisions and
inequalities that attain a negative value (see Heredia 1 996:68). So, although
the group may seem anxious to find someone to act as its ‘representative,’ it
also seems to fear the irruption of mechanisms of internal hierarchization —
one more of the ‘double binds’ contained at the heart of representative de-
mocracies (Goldman & Sant’Anna 1 996:3 3 –3 5 ).
Further still, a series of mechanisms for diluting power are continually put
into action. When sought out by different candidates in search of electoral
support, family heads, candomblé priestesses, and directors of Afro groups
often organize a ‘division of votes.’ That is, they decide, w ith vary ing degrees
of success, that members of the family , cult center or cultural group should
vote for different candidates. Now, this hesitation in centralizing power, as
w ell as the refusal to accept the introjection of mechanisms of hierarchiza-
tion, clearly parallel w hat Pierre Clastres denominated ‘counter-State:’ a con-
junction of mechanisms that, in societies otherwise known as ‘State-less,’ avert
the constitution of a centralized power (see Clastres 1 97 4; 1 97 7 ). How ever,
in contrast to Clastres, I do not believe w e have any reason to limit the use of
this term to ‘primitive’ societies. Rather, we can extend it to socio-political
processes which take place in societies that possess the State (Deleuze & Guat-
tari 1 98 0:441 –446).
In the same fashion, the fact that the segmentations that cut across the
Afro groups (oppositions betw een the different groups, between the districts
where they operate) and the poorest lay ers of Ilhéus’s wider population (small
differences in territory, color, income, etc.) obviously do not produce a ‘seg-
mentary society’, is not a reason for being unable to effectively use the no-
tion of segmentarity. As Deleuze and Guattari (1 980:25 4–2 83 ), Herzfeld (1 992),
and others have show n, State and segmentarity can be in opposition (as tra-
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ditional anthropology tended to believe), but also in mutual composition. A

family may divide the votes of its members between the different candidates
to w hich it feels it owes something, or in which it deposits some hope or
interest. An Afro group may support a candidate in order to obtain an ad-
vantage that other groups will not obtain. An entire neighborhood may sw ay
towards a candidate who, it is supposed, will bring improvements to the dis-
trict. The successful politician, however, is usually capable of channeling these
different logics and local oppositions to his own benefit, ensuring that blocks
of heterogeneous votes deriving from different situations add up in favor of
his election. If a candidate is capable of exploiting the series of binary divi-
sions among the various Afro groups, he or she can prevent them from coa-
lescing around a single candidate and, at the same time, may obtain a reason-
able number of votes for his or her election.11
The point here is that the various logics put into action are neither extrin-
sic — as is the case with the transcultural comparisons which generally occu-
py anthropology ’s attention — nor sy mmetrical. They coexist and interpene-
trate, subordinating, opposing, and composing each other in a heavily strati-
fied space. The identification of complementary , asy mmetric mechanisms
therefore emerges as another axis of investigation into the effective function-
ing of elections and wider political processes.
The third point to be approached concerns the need for a recognition of
subjectivity — or the forms and processes of subjectification — in politics. As
an example, we may take the case of electoral promises. What do we make of
the fact that, campaign after campaign, the same electors are capable of lis-
tening to more or less the same promises, claim that they know they will not
be fulfilled, vote for the politicians who make them still and, after the elec-
tions, see their suspicions confirmed that nothing had been any more than a lie?
Firstly , it is necessary to recognize that a promise cannot be identified by
its ow n characteristics alone. It is the context, the debate and the negotiation
which determine w hether a proposition becomes a promise, a pledge, a lie,
or w hatever. As we saw, in the 1 992 municipal elections, the construction of
the Afro-Cultural Center was initially accepted by the black movement as a
‘pledge’ left unfulfilled, it then became defined as a promise, and soon after,
as an ‘unmet promise.’ The question of whether a ‘lie’ w as involved (that is,
whether its proponents had already know n that they wouldn’t act out their
offer) w as still an object of debate in 1 996. A similar process happened to a
more far-reaching proposal: the implantation, in Ilhéus, of a Zone for the
Processing of Exports, which would generate ‘more than 1 0,000 jobs.’ In the
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

1 996 campaign, the two propositions were taken up again but without suc-
cess. From the outset, they were overwhelmingly dismissed as false promises.
In second place, it is necessary to note that everyone expects politicians to
make promises. The fact that in 1 996 the opposition candidate claimed to be
a ‘modern’ politician who didn’t work on the basis of ‘empty promises,’ was
for the most part negatively interpreted as his way of avoiding having to make
pledges. In effect, as philosophers of language have already demonstrated
(Austin 1 95 5 , 1 95 7 , 1 961 ; Searle 1 969), promises do not justify themselves by

an objective referent, which is exterior to them, and by which their veracity
could be measured. At the same time, we should heed Bourdieu’s warning
that the illocutionary force of expressions cannot be found in the words them-
selves, but only in the institutional nature of language, in the authority of the
person using it: ‘The sy mbolic efficacy of words is exercised only in so far as
the target-person recognizes the speaker as one properly able to exercise it’
(Bourdieu 1 98 2:95 –96).12
In this sense, political promises are directly linked to the question of sub-
jectivity. They serve to establish relations of identification and opposition
between agents. While they are doubtless an object of rhetorical manipula-
tion, they are also part of a continuous debate in which forms of subjectivity
are constituted and refashioned. In some ways, the promise, even when un-
fulfilled, signals a recognition of the elector on the part of the politician, a
recognition which is linked to a particular identification of the former with
the latter: ‘I vote for so-and-so’ is an expression frequently abbreviated to
‘I’m with so-and-so,’ ‘I’ll go with so-and-so,’ or even ‘I’m so-and-so.’ 13
Between the reasons for supporting someone and actually voting for some-
one, that is between ‘political ideals’ and ‘political behavior,’ lies this dimen-
sion of political subjectivity — one w hich causes different people to vote for
the same candidate for completely different reasons, and for different candi-
dates for the exact same reasons. Even what is generally taken to be purely
economic and self-interested exchange necessarily takes place within this di-
mension of subjectivity. What most irritated the members of Afro groups du-
ring the 1 996 elections was not the low pay for their performances in rallies,
nor the fact that sometimes they didn’t even receive what was promised —
but the canceled presentations, the criticisms of their musical quality , and
the disdain w ith which they felt that they had been treated.
Writing on the elections held in Brazil during the 1 9th century , Richard
Graham was able to argue that their true function w as not actually to choose
the governors, for the governors almost alway s won power by fraudulent tac-
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

tics or by the open use of violence. Recalling that ‘a broad suffrage did not
signify a democratic polity ’ (Graham 1 990:1 08 ), Graham suggests that the
elections functioned as ‘dramas in w hich participants used the language of
social rank to distinguish among voters rather than to exclude them’ (1 990:
1 09).
By producing biennially the space where these dramas mixing participa-
tion and exclusion continue to be played out— delegitimizing other means of
political expression, participation, and protest — elections in fact produce

domination, but not in the form that is usually imagined. In elections, during
voting, and in politics as a whole, we find much more than what people in
Ilhéus, politicians, or even political scientists would call ‘politics.’ There are
powers, agencies, processes, subjectivities— an entire series of variables whose
fundamental and almost imperceptible nature demands more and better eth-
nographic theories.
Translated from the Portuguese by David Rodgers
Acknowledgments
A first version of this paper was presented in Portuguese at the Symposium
‘Brazilian Anthropologies at the Turn of the Millennium,’ and in English at the
‘Friday Seminar’ of the Department of Anthropology at the London School of
Economics. I wish to thank Miguel Vale de Almeida, João Leal, Chris Fuller, and
Peter Gow, who kindly invited me to make these presentations. I must also
thank David Rodgers, who perfectly translated the Portuguese original in its
various stages. Finally, I wish to show my appreciation for the comments made
by the three anony mous readers of Ethnos and, in particular, for the editorial
scrutiny of Don Kulick, who enabled the improvement of my argumentation.
Notes
1 . ‘This is the hypothesis that modern liberal democratic regimes were only pos-
sible after a long preceding work of “disciplinarization” of their citizens’ (Pizzorno
1 98 8:2 44). Obviously, the point here is not belief or disbelief in democracy , but
to avoid being ingenuous and to recognize, along with Michael Herzfeld, that
‘democracy (or, better, “democratization”) is not necessarily equivalent to greater
tolerance’ (Herzfeld 1 996:83 ), and that, as with any regime, this one also involves
a politics of exclusion (1 996:1 1 1 ).
2. I am indebted to Emerson Giumbelli for the approximation between the theme
of moral subjectification and what we could denominate ‘political subjectifica-
tion.’ As Vey ne said, the individual is not opposed to society , nor even the State:
‘the individual is affected to the heart by public power in so far as he is affected
in his image of himself, in the relation he has to himself, when he obey s the
State or society ’ (Vey ne 1 98 7 :7 ).
3 . Traditional approaches to electoral politics ‘tend to be “negative,” in the sense
that the explanation for the questions raised — basically , why the electo r votes in
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

a particular way — are in general found in the lack of some element taken as
essential a priori: rationality, information, party tradition and organization, gov-
ernmental efficiency , etc.’ (Goldman & Sant’Anna 1 996:22 ). It seems to have
been necessary for one member of their group to achieve power in Brazil for in-
tellectuals to begin to perceive that they are capable of behaving politically in
the same way as they used to imagine only the ‘people’ did ( justify ing their vote
by the personal qualities of the candidate or rationalizing a posteriori deep changes
in their political positions).
4. Put very simply, candomblé can be described as a religion of African origin, brought
to Brazil with the traffic of slaves. Here in their new setting, Yoruba and Bantu
cosmologies intermixed, blending with indigenous beliefs, popular Catholicism
and European spiritualism. The essential feature of candomblé is a cult centered
on a pantheon of divinities called Orishas, who are ‘embodied’ in certain ritually
initiated followers.
5. Many exist in Ilhéus. Although there are no official statistics for unemployment,
it is estimated that the current level is somewhere above 3 0 percent.
6. Part of a broader inter-institutional project entitled ‘An Anthropology of Poli-
tics.’ This project brings together a number of researchers, working on themes
usually taken to belong to ‘politics.’ Diverging from traditional ‘political anthro-
pology,’ we strived to avoid conceiving ‘politics’ as a specific domain, or even
process, which could be objectively defined from outside. Instead, our aim was
to investigate phenomena, which are considered ‘political’ from ‘the native point
of view.’
7. Paulo Rodrigues dos Santos worked as assistant on this research in 1 996 and is
responsible for collecting a large part of the material used here. In 1 997 and
1 998, Thereza Cristina Cardoso Menezes and Ana Cláudia Cruz de Silva undertook
field research in Ilhéus towards their Master’s dissertations, supervised by myself,
at ppgas, Museu Nacional, ufrj (see Menezes 1 998 and Silva 1 998). Some of the
information used here was obtained or completed by them. I especially thank
Ana Cláudia Cruz de Silva, who frequently discusses the ethnographic material
from Ilhéus with me. Since 1 997 , Miguel Vale de Almeida has been working in
Ilhéus on a research project parallel to my own (see Almeida 1 999).
8. See, for example, Adonias Filho 1 97 6; Andrade 1 996; Barbosa 1 994; Heine 1 994.
For a perspective more in tune with contemporary historiography, see Mahony
1 998.
9. Consulting a work on the 1 992 elections in Ilhéus (Gasparetto 1 993 ), it is inte-
resting to note the complete absence of any reference to the black movement’s
involvement. I believe this is not an outcome of a particularity of local sociolo-
gical production, but a tendency common to sociology and political science,
which subtracts all agency, possessed by socially non-privileged actors in processes
of this kind. The result is a passive acceptance and a kind of duplication of the
ideology of representative democracy: the only agents are the elites and the poli-
ticians; the ‘electors’ — these fictitious beings whose existence is limited to a few
moments in an electoral bo oth or to the pages of some manuals — only appear as
values compiled in tables of statistics.
1 0. In 1 996, between US$5 and US$1 0 was paid for canvassing in the streets. Some
people received US$5 0 for working for a candidate’s campaign for a whole month.
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

1 1 . In the terms of Deleuze and Guattari (1 97 2; 1 980), it could be said that poli-
ticians ‘overcodify ’ multiple heterogeneous local codes. This ‘overcodification’
is, according to the authors, the fundamental mechanism in the constitution of
the State.
1 2. As Tambiah has shown (1 981 :1 28 ), it is necessary to combine the philosophy of
language’s idea of ‘performative’ with the idea of ‘performance,’ in the sense of
acting. See also Herzfeld 1 982 .
1 3 . Ethnographies such as those of Scotto (1 994) on the 1 992 municipal elections in
Rio de Janeiro, and Chaves (1 993 ) on the national elections of 1 989 and 1 990 in
Buritis (Minas Gerais), clearly reveal the functioning of a complex system of

identification, recognition, and subjectification.
References
Adonias Filho. 1 97 6. Sul da Bahia: Chão de Cacau (Uma Civilização Regional). Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.
Almeida, Miguel Vale de. 1 999. Poderes, Produtos, Paixões: o Movimento A fro-Cultural
numa Cidade Baiana. Etnográfic a, 3 (1 ):1 31 –1 5 6.
Andrade, Maria Palma. 1 996. Ilhéus: Passado e Presente. Salvador: BDA-Bahia.
Austin, John L. 1 95 5 . How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—. 1 95 7 [1 961 ]. A Plea for Excuses. In Philosophical Papers, pp. 1 7 5 –204. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
—. 1 961 . Performative Utterances. In Philosophical Papers, pp. 23 4–2 5 2. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press.
Barbosa, Carlos Roberto Arléo. 1 994. Notíc ia Histórica de Ilhéus. Itabuna.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1 98 2. La langage autorisé: les conditions sociales de l’efficacité du
discours rituel. In Ce qui parler veut dire: l’économie des échanges linguistiques, pp.
85 –96. Paris: Fayard.
—. 1 98 9. A Representação Política: Elementos para uma Teo ria do Campo Político.
In O Poder Simbólico, pp. 1 63–2 07 . Lisboa: Difel.
Châtelet, François & Pisier-Kouchner, Evely ne. 1 98 3 . A s Concepções Polític as do Século
XX: História do Pensamento Político. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Chaves, Christine Alencar. 1 993 . Festas, Política e Modernidade no Sertão. Buritis/ MG.
Master’s Dissertation. PPGAS/ Universidade de Brasília.
Clastres, Pierre. 1 97 4. La société contre l’état. Paris: Minuit.
—. 1 97 7. Archéologie de la violence: la guerre dans les sociétés primitives. In Recherches
d’anthropologie politique, pp. 1 71 –207 . Paris: Seuil.
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari. 1 97 2. L’A nti Œdipe. Paris: Minuit.
—. 1 98 0. Mille plateaux. Paris: Minuit.
Foucault, Michel. 1 97 5 . Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.
—. 1 984a. Du pouvoir: un entretien inédite avec Michel Foucault. L’Express, 1 7 22 :
5 6–62 .
—. 1 98 4b. Histoire de la sexualité 2 . L’Usage des plaisirs. Paris: Gallimard.
Gasparetto, Agenor. 1 993 . Política & Pesquisa: A Sucessão Municipal no Sul da Bahia.
Itabuna: Sócio Estatística Pesquisa & Consultoria Ltda.
Goldman, Marcio & Ronaldo dos Santos Sant’anna. 1 996. Elementos para uma Análise
Antropológica do Voto. In A ntropologia, Voto e Representação Política, edited by
M. Palmeira & M. Goldman, pp. 1 3 –40. Rio de Janeiro: Contracapa.
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Goldman, Marcio & Ana Cláudia Cruz de Silva. 1 998 . Por que se Perde uma Eleição.
In Candidatos e Candidaturas: Enredos de Campanha Eleitoral no Brasil, edited by
I. Barreira & M. Palmeira, pp. 2 5 –5 7 . São Paulo: Anablume/ UFC.
Graham, Richard. 1 990. Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Heine, Maria Luiza. 1 994. Passeio Histórico na Capitania de São J orge dos Ilhéus. São
Paulo: GRD.
Heredia, Beatriz M.A. de. 1 996. Política, Família, Co munidade. In A ntropologia, Voto
e Representação Política, edited by M. Palmeira & M. Goldman, pp. 5 7 –7 1 . Rio de
Janeiro: Contracapa.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1 982. The Etymology of Excuses: Aspects of Rhetorical Performance
in Greece. A merican Ethnologist, 9(4):644–663 .
—. 1 98 4. The Horns of the Mediterraneanist Dilemma. A merican Ethnologist, 1 1 (3 ):
43 9–45 4.
—. 1 992. Segmentation and Politics in the European Nation-State: Making Sense of
Political Events. In Other Histories, edited by K. Hastrup, pp. 62–81 . London:
Routledge.
—. 1 996. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. London: Routledge.
Lavareda, Antônio, 1 991 . A Democracia nas Urnas: O Processo Partidário-Eleitoral Brasileiro.
Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ/ Rio Fundo.
Mahony, Mary Ann. 1 998 . Afro-Brazilians, Land Reform, and the Question of Social
Mobility in Southern Bahia, 1 8 80–1 920. In A fro-Brazilian Culture and Politics:
Bahia, 1 7 90s to 1 990s, edited by H. Kraay, pp. 90–1 1 6. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1 93 5 . Coral Gardens and their Magic: A Study of the Methods of
Tilling the Soil and of A gricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands. London: George
Allen & Unwin.
Menezes, Thereza Cristina Cardoso. 1 998. Tradição, Hospitalidade e Turismo: Um Estudo
Sobre Produção de Identidades em Ilhéus. Master’s Dissertation. PPGAS-Museu Na-
cional-UFRJ.
Nunes Leal, Victor. 1 949. Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto: O Município e o Regime Representativo
no Brasil. São Paulo: Alfa Ômega.
Offerlé, Michel. 1 993 . Le vote comme évidence et comme énigme. Genèses, 1 2:1 31 –1 5 1 .
Palmeira, Moacir. 1 992. Voto: Racionalidade ou Significado? Revista Brasileira de
Ciências Sociais, 7 (2 0):26–3 0.
Pizzorno, Alessandro. 1 988 . Foucault et la conception libérale de l’individu. In Michel
Foucault Philosophe, pp. 23 6–2 45 . Paris: Seuil.
Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos. 1 98 7 . Crise e Castigo: Partidos e Generais na Política
Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Vértice/ IUPERJ.
Scotto, Maria Gabriela. 1 994. Representação e A presentação: uma A nálise da Campanha
de Benedita da Silva à Prefeitura do Rio de J aneiro. Master’s Dissertation. PPGAS-
Museu Nacional-UFRJ.
Searle, John R. 1 969. Speech A cts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Silva, Ana Cláudia Cruz de. 1 998 . A Cidadania no Ritmo do Movimento A fro-Cultural
de Ilhéus. Master’s Dissertation. PPGAS-Museu Nacional-UFRJ.
Soares, Gláucio Ary Dillon. 1 97 3 . Sociedade e Política no Brasil (Desenvolvimento, Classe
e Política Durante a Segunda República). São Paulo: Difel.
ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Tambiah, Stanley J. 1 968[1 98 5 ]. The Magical Power of Words. In Culture, Thought

and Social A ction: A n A nthropological Perspective, pp. 1 7–5 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
—. 1 981 [1 98 5 ]. A Performative Approach to Ritual. In Culture, Thought and Social
A ction: A n A nthropological Perspective, pp. 1 23 –1 66. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Vey ne, Paul. 1 97 6. Le pain et le cirque: sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique.
Paris: Plon.
—. 1 98 4. Os Gregos Conheceram a Democracia? Diógenes, 6:5 7–8 2.
—. 1 98 7 . L’Individu atteint au cœur par la puissance publique. In Sur l’individu, pp.

7–1 9. Paris: Seuil.
ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Goldman 2001

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Goldman 2001

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Goldman 2001

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice

To cite this article: Marcio Goldman (2001) An Ethnographic Theory

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141840120070921

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private

An Ethnographic Theory of Democracy.

to the people without taking even more in return.

abstract The central aim of this paper is to outline an ‘ethnographic theory of

keywords Anthropology of politics, elections, Brazil, democracy

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

support or extol some form of ‘relativization of democracy ,’ which would

Even if we accept such a definition, it is difficult not to agree with Michel

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

existence of a sy stem thus conceived is the production of an ‘elector’ who is

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

turn it ‘criticable’ (Foucault 1 984a:5 9).

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

sy stem such as the Brazilian, where voting is compulsory (w e shall return to

tics as it is of ethics: the dimension of subjectivity. Not to be confused with

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Elections in Ilhéus and Brazil

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

expansion of cacao plantations, Ilhéus’s elevation to city status (1 8 81 ), the

an population of 7 2 percent). Almost 85 percent of Ilhéus’s population told

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ally permanent and continuous, immanent and positively valued.

The Case of the Afro-Cultural Center

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

elétricos) in Ilhéus’s carnival, w hich favored the city ’s white elite.

Vote Buying, Lack of Participation, Promises

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

‘electoral promises’ — generally seen to be linked to a social universe ruled by

operational abstract principles, designed only to confer intelligibility on the

Pluralism, Power, Subjectivity

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

the opposite: we should use terminological diversity as a tool to account for

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ing, transitory, and transcendent activity. As such, it is possible to imagine

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ditional anthropology tended to believe), but also in mutual composition. A

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

(Austin 1 95 5 , 1 95 7 , 1 961 ; Searle 1 969), promises do not justify themselves by

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

political expression, participation, and protest — elections in fact produce

Translated from the Portuguese by David Rodgers

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Buritis (Minas Gerais), clearly reveal the functioning of a complex system of

ethnos , vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

ethnos, vol. 6 6:2 , 2 001 (p p. 1 5 7 –1 8 0)

Tambiah, Stanley J. 1 968[1 98 5 ]. The Magical Power of Words. In Culture, Thought