M.A. Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais 2007
B.A. Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais 2005

Specialties

Amerindian and state relations, international borders, shamanism, mythodology and obviation, production of knowledge, human and non-human interaction, social relatedness, assemblage of appropriate human beings, personhood and conviviality; Lowland Amazonia.

I am interested in looking at native Amerindian models used not only to conceptualize the state and its effects, but also to guide routine interactions between the Amerindian and non-Amerindian populations. Right now I am working with the Makushi people, who are spread across the international borders of Brazil and Guyana. The ethnographic data drawn from short field trips conducted in 2011 and 2012 in the circum-Roraima region of Brazil and Guyana is driving my current research question: it appears that the Makushi think of and deal with the state as they would with other non-human beings that inhabit the world – through shamanism. If that is the case, the Euro-American notions of the state, citizenship, civil, political, and social rights might not coincide with native notions, thus losing their efficacy as an explicative model. I am interested in determining how shamanic practices are used as a medium to interact with the state and why this interaction has to be done in such a way.

Selected Publications

Carneiro de Carvalho, Lucas (2015). "Consuming the Nation-State: Reflections on Makushi Understandings of the Person in a Transnational Context," Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 10, 137-150. 
Available at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol13/iss2/10