Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
110
in 2006, its publication in English will
bring to a wider audience one important
text that can be read in relation with a
brilliant group of investigations about the
anthropology
of
politics, or
antropologia
da politica
, produced in Brazil.
The book seeks to explain how
democracy works. Focusing on a dialogue
between native theories and the
interpretations of the ethnographer, the
discussion aims at generating an
ethnographic theory of politics. Goldman
elaborates a matrix of intelligibility to
provide a better understanding of our own
political system and of democracy as part
of what he calls ‘Western political
Systems’.
The book analyses politics in Ilhéus,
a city South of Bahia. The analysis is
centred on the involvement on different
relations that can be address as political
among a group of people belonging to the
Black movement and who are part of a
Terreiro (adepts of the Candomblé). This is
explained by Goldman’s trajectory that
involved the study of Candomblé, the
production of Lévy-Bruhl and, then,
politics. Goldman’s book shows that it is
not necessary to study politicians, political
parties or movements to address politics.
On the one hand, Goldman looks at
theories of social representation. As he is
doing ethnography of his own society he is
careful to treat ideas, beliefs, practices and
actions in a critical way. He also addressed
the complexities and differences that exist
in this society. This is one of the most
important points of the book because he
shows the distinct ways in which politics is
lived, understood and constructed by
different actors. On the other hand, and
related to this, he engages in what he calls
becoming-native (see Prologue and pp. 8-
9) to address the central issues from the
natives’ point of view.
Criticizing the substantivist and
formalist theories of politics and in line
with mainstream anthropology of politics,
Goldman says he has ‘sought to avoid
conceiving politics as a specific domain or
process, objectively definable from the
outside. On the contrary, it was an attempt
to investigate phenomena related to that
which, from a native point of view, is
considered as political
’
(p. 19). This does
not mean, as he clarifies, that we must
become imprisoned by local explanations.
What can be defined as political, he
argues, is always so in relation to the
agents’ lived experiences. For Goldman
anthropology should carefully avoid
approaches made in negative terms and, he
maintains, a true anthropology of politics
denies the central distinction between the
central and the peripheral.
This perspective allows Goldman to
widen the range of analysis to include a
group of people who are not dedicated to
politics. The principal activity of the Afro-
Block is musical; and yet they are involved
in politics in many ways. Goldman
intention was to take their ideas about
politics as seriously as their ideas on music
or religion.
While examining politics over a
period of fifteen years, the text does not
follow a chronological order. There are
many flashbacks. This style of writing
keeps the reader’s attention and also brings
out the complexity of social relations and
processes, which of course do not follow a
linear path.
‘The history of the Afro-cultural
Centre remained at the heart of the
