Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast (review)
For years, scholars have argued that racial and ethnic identities are constructed, but few have explored that process as well as Jan Hoffman French in her study of two rural communities in northeastern Brazil over the course of the last four decades. In this important book, Hoffman French follows the transformation of two groups of impoverished mixed-race peasants. One group became legally recognized Xoco Indians; the other, legally recognized remanescentes (remnants) of a quilombo, or community of selfliberated slaves. The study's many strengths derive from Hoffman French's use of the methods and sources of cultural anthropology and social history. Her findings depend upon participant observation, but also on "more than 100 interviews with residents, former landowners, lawyers, anthropologists, activists, politicians and government officials," as well as research in government, ecclesiastical and private archives (p. xiii).