João Afonso Baptista | University of Lisbon (original) (raw)
Books by João Afonso Baptista
The Good Holiday explores the confluence of two powerful industries: tourism and development, and... more The Good Holiday explores the confluence of two powerful industries: tourism and development, and explains when, how and why tourism becomes development and development, tourism. The book further explores the social and material consequences of this merging, presenting the confluence of tourism and development as a major vehicle for the exercise of ethics, and non-state governance in contemporary life.
Papers by João Afonso Baptista
JRAI, 2022
Doing research on fishery commodities in Portugal led us to an enigma: for a dead fish to be fres... more Doing research on fishery commodities in Portugal led us to an enigma: for a dead fish to be fresco (fresh) it must be alive. This paradox manifests at a popular, commercial, and legal level. It denotes the interruption of the difference between being dead and being alive in the commodity form. In Portugal, we suggest, the commercialization of peixe fresco (fresh fish) is based on the production and consumption of edible
‘zombis’: seafood corpses technologically and symbolically crafted as undead. An open concept, ‘edible zombis’ is part of an experimental vocabulary that foregrounds the productive agency of undeadness, both biological and commercial, in the seafood economic complex. It relates to the ordinary practice of necromancy in the commodity-based world. Edible zombis are commodity fetishes that fetishize their producers and consumers, suspending them from the capitalist system in which they live.
American Ethnologist
I submit bodyland as a fruitful ethnographic concept for theorizing human-land relations, and as ... more I submit bodyland as a fruitful ethnographic concept for theorizing human-land relations, and as an intervention in discussions about the legitimation of human presence in places.
A small text I published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, in which I explore the relationship... more A small text I published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, in which I explore the relationship between Catholic priests, God, and society and compare it with the relationship ocean scientists have with the ocean and society in Portugal.
This provides a basis for the reader-viewer to think about the silence of words, human-honey rela... more This provides a basis for the reader-viewer to think about the silence of words, human-honey relations, and fieldwork.
Environmental Humanities, 2018
Knowing forests through absence and distance is not just a potent contemporary form of knowledge ... more Knowing forests through absence and distance is not just a potent contemporary form of knowledge that qualifies as a way of ruling the forests, but is also integral to widespread (neo)colonial processes of distinction and separation: the knower and the known, the representer and the represented, the " cosmopolitan intellectual " and the " rustic bestial " Other.
[2018] In "International Encyclopedia of Anthropology." Hilary Callan (Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Tourism Recreation Research, 2017
I contend that the integration of virtues such as morality and cosmopolitanism in tourism derives... more I contend that the integration of virtues such as morality and cosmopolitanism in tourism derives considerably from the deliberate inclusion of the sensory in tourism activity.
Ethnos, 2018
I discuss the ways in which infrastructures of statecraft reverse the social purpose that they id... more I discuss the ways in which infrastructures of statecraft reverse the social purpose that they ideologically embody. I focus on the road EN140 and the village of Cusseque in Southeast Angola. EN140 was a long-sought popular aspiration, finally concretised in 2010. Since then, it has been promoted, conspicuously by the Angolan government and national media, as an instrument of extending progress, social union, and equality into rural areas. However, rather than spreading it, EN140 helps convert progress into a field of personal quests, individually privatised in rural societies. In Southeast Angola, the social ideal of progress advocated by the national politics of (re)construction is unfeasible by the effects of certain material infrastructures built in the name of such an ideal. Although it is based on a regional perspective, this article demonstrates a universal phenomenon: the role of inorganic materiality in the production of subjectivities.
African Identities , 2016
In this article, my goal is to contribute to the debate about the relation between sociality and ... more In this article, my goal is to contribute to the debate about the relation between sociality and individualization. It is under this perspective that I discuss the subject of conflict as social relationing. Concretely, I explore how everyday experiences of conflict between 'individuals' in an Angolan rural village can neutralize contemporary threats of asocialization between those same individuals and, in turn, promote commonality. I refer to this affective agency in present-day rural Angola as the ethopolitics of conflict. Although I approach the two subjects, this article is not specifically about individualization or conflict. Rather, it is about the social terrain where the two intersect.
In N. Salazar and F. Graburn (eds), Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches (pp. 125–144). New York: Berghahn Books, 2014
Biodiversity & Ecology, 2013
In southeast Angola, there is a rural village known as Cusseque that, similar to many other socie... more In southeast Angola, there is a rural village known as Cusseque that, similar to many other societies, has developed a particular relationship with the surrounding landscape. In contrast to the prevailing literature on land practices, I attempt to demonstrate that the global circulating concept of “land use”, which assumes the land is a field of human governance, is not appropriate for grasping this relationship. In Cusseque, I encountered a creative system of utilization based on residents’ reliance on the virtues of the land’s ability to self-govern. Therefore, I explore an alternative conceptual tool and demonstrate that, in addition to “land use” and other analytical constructs, we should view human ecology through the lens of land utilization. This perspective, I suggest, functions on the basis of relational complementarity among all the agents on the land as it realizes the living world as integrative.
Time & Society , 2014
Through its moving frontiers, the ideology of sustainability prescribes or challenges orderings i... more Through its moving frontiers, the ideology of sustainability prescribes or challenges orderings in the imaginary of societies. Accordingly, sustainability leads to obvious struggles between different systems of representations worldwide, and temporal orderliness is at the core of these battles. In this article, I focus on the future. Domesticating the future by sustainability is a central element, in particular, of the cultural confrontation between the ‘West and the Rest’. Moreover, the ideology of sustainability proves to be self-contradictory: on one side promotes cultural diversity, but on the other side operates only under a singular and homogeneous construct of the future.
American Anthropologist, 2012
This article is about the role of tourist moral agency in governing. The affiliation between vaca... more This article is about the role of tourist moral agency in governing. The affiliation between vacationing and governing is illustrated through the examination of a case study: the village of Canhane in Mozambique. The main touristic attribute of the village lies in residents’ performance of a society in need, seeking outside solutions and guidance. Virtuous tourism in Canhane is the effect of a capitalist expansion in which ethics, community development, and governance are conflated with tourists’ consumption. Specifically, the commodifying logic that emerges from the presence of virtuous tourists in the village derives primarily from three subjects: tourists’ self-aspirations, residents’ ambition to integrate into the broader socioeconomic order, and the politicization of virtue stimulated by the development industry. Ultimately, this article shows how the cultivation of ethics through tourism consumption has become an ally for the exercise of nongovernmental governance over public spheres.
Tourism has become part of the 'development' agenda. As an agent of post-modernity, tourism helps... more Tourism has become part of the 'development' agenda. As an agent of post-modernity, tourism helps increase the commodification of what were previously regarded as uncommodified matters of social life. Accordingly, 'development' is now a tourist commodity in many localities in the so-called 'South', where the tourists in turn assume a moral consumer style. This paper is primarily about (strategic) representations of the tourist-other as a protagonist of assistance in the realm of what I call developmentourism. My argument is to a large degree empirical, based on two villages in Mozambique. In particular, the two cases studied indicate the interlaced relationship between tourism and 'development', and its repercussion on the discursive activity and representations of the members of the two villages. Moreover, both cases analysed in this paper inform the broader non-governmental economic and moral order in which they are situated.
The Mozambican village of Canhane has been frequently cited as a successful case of 'community de... more The Mozambican village of Canhane has been frequently cited as a successful case of 'community development'. This is the result of the implementation of a 'community-based' tourism venture, which began in 2004. However, this positive image hides conflicting social processes that have been caused by the emergence of 'untraditional' modes in the village. This article shows how new perceptions of water and forms of its control, which were an outcome of the project's tourism 'benefits', are shaking up social relations in Canhane. With profound water shortages persisting in the village, its residents decided to invest revenue generated through tourism initiatives in a water supply system. Since its completion, however, the village has experienced apparently contradictory social upheaval. Although the water system is functioning, in practice it is not being used. Based on empirical fieldwork, this article addresses the reasons behind the water supply conflict in Canhane. By showing how inhabitants of Canhane responded to 'tourism benefits' and how these responses caused changes in customary practices of control over water, this article discusses how social organisation relies on spatial forms of the control of the commons and, in turn, the importance of such spatial forms of control for ordering the social.
The Good Holiday explores the confluence of two powerful industries: tourism and development, and... more The Good Holiday explores the confluence of two powerful industries: tourism and development, and explains when, how and why tourism becomes development and development, tourism. The book further explores the social and material consequences of this merging, presenting the confluence of tourism and development as a major vehicle for the exercise of ethics, and non-state governance in contemporary life.
JRAI, 2022
Doing research on fishery commodities in Portugal led us to an enigma: for a dead fish to be fres... more Doing research on fishery commodities in Portugal led us to an enigma: for a dead fish to be fresco (fresh) it must be alive. This paradox manifests at a popular, commercial, and legal level. It denotes the interruption of the difference between being dead and being alive in the commodity form. In Portugal, we suggest, the commercialization of peixe fresco (fresh fish) is based on the production and consumption of edible
‘zombis’: seafood corpses technologically and symbolically crafted as undead. An open concept, ‘edible zombis’ is part of an experimental vocabulary that foregrounds the productive agency of undeadness, both biological and commercial, in the seafood economic complex. It relates to the ordinary practice of necromancy in the commodity-based world. Edible zombis are commodity fetishes that fetishize their producers and consumers, suspending them from the capitalist system in which they live.
American Ethnologist
I submit bodyland as a fruitful ethnographic concept for theorizing human-land relations, and as ... more I submit bodyland as a fruitful ethnographic concept for theorizing human-land relations, and as an intervention in discussions about the legitimation of human presence in places.
A small text I published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, in which I explore the relationship... more A small text I published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, in which I explore the relationship between Catholic priests, God, and society and compare it with the relationship ocean scientists have with the ocean and society in Portugal.
This provides a basis for the reader-viewer to think about the silence of words, human-honey rela... more This provides a basis for the reader-viewer to think about the silence of words, human-honey relations, and fieldwork.
Environmental Humanities, 2018
Knowing forests through absence and distance is not just a potent contemporary form of knowledge ... more Knowing forests through absence and distance is not just a potent contemporary form of knowledge that qualifies as a way of ruling the forests, but is also integral to widespread (neo)colonial processes of distinction and separation: the knower and the known, the representer and the represented, the " cosmopolitan intellectual " and the " rustic bestial " Other.
[2018] In "International Encyclopedia of Anthropology." Hilary Callan (Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Tourism Recreation Research, 2017
I contend that the integration of virtues such as morality and cosmopolitanism in tourism derives... more I contend that the integration of virtues such as morality and cosmopolitanism in tourism derives considerably from the deliberate inclusion of the sensory in tourism activity.
Ethnos, 2018
I discuss the ways in which infrastructures of statecraft reverse the social purpose that they id... more I discuss the ways in which infrastructures of statecraft reverse the social purpose that they ideologically embody. I focus on the road EN140 and the village of Cusseque in Southeast Angola. EN140 was a long-sought popular aspiration, finally concretised in 2010. Since then, it has been promoted, conspicuously by the Angolan government and national media, as an instrument of extending progress, social union, and equality into rural areas. However, rather than spreading it, EN140 helps convert progress into a field of personal quests, individually privatised in rural societies. In Southeast Angola, the social ideal of progress advocated by the national politics of (re)construction is unfeasible by the effects of certain material infrastructures built in the name of such an ideal. Although it is based on a regional perspective, this article demonstrates a universal phenomenon: the role of inorganic materiality in the production of subjectivities.
African Identities , 2016
In this article, my goal is to contribute to the debate about the relation between sociality and ... more In this article, my goal is to contribute to the debate about the relation between sociality and individualization. It is under this perspective that I discuss the subject of conflict as social relationing. Concretely, I explore how everyday experiences of conflict between 'individuals' in an Angolan rural village can neutralize contemporary threats of asocialization between those same individuals and, in turn, promote commonality. I refer to this affective agency in present-day rural Angola as the ethopolitics of conflict. Although I approach the two subjects, this article is not specifically about individualization or conflict. Rather, it is about the social terrain where the two intersect.
In N. Salazar and F. Graburn (eds), Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches (pp. 125–144). New York: Berghahn Books, 2014
Biodiversity & Ecology, 2013
In southeast Angola, there is a rural village known as Cusseque that, similar to many other socie... more In southeast Angola, there is a rural village known as Cusseque that, similar to many other societies, has developed a particular relationship with the surrounding landscape. In contrast to the prevailing literature on land practices, I attempt to demonstrate that the global circulating concept of “land use”, which assumes the land is a field of human governance, is not appropriate for grasping this relationship. In Cusseque, I encountered a creative system of utilization based on residents’ reliance on the virtues of the land’s ability to self-govern. Therefore, I explore an alternative conceptual tool and demonstrate that, in addition to “land use” and other analytical constructs, we should view human ecology through the lens of land utilization. This perspective, I suggest, functions on the basis of relational complementarity among all the agents on the land as it realizes the living world as integrative.
Time & Society , 2014
Through its moving frontiers, the ideology of sustainability prescribes or challenges orderings i... more Through its moving frontiers, the ideology of sustainability prescribes or challenges orderings in the imaginary of societies. Accordingly, sustainability leads to obvious struggles between different systems of representations worldwide, and temporal orderliness is at the core of these battles. In this article, I focus on the future. Domesticating the future by sustainability is a central element, in particular, of the cultural confrontation between the ‘West and the Rest’. Moreover, the ideology of sustainability proves to be self-contradictory: on one side promotes cultural diversity, but on the other side operates only under a singular and homogeneous construct of the future.
American Anthropologist, 2012
This article is about the role of tourist moral agency in governing. The affiliation between vaca... more This article is about the role of tourist moral agency in governing. The affiliation between vacationing and governing is illustrated through the examination of a case study: the village of Canhane in Mozambique. The main touristic attribute of the village lies in residents’ performance of a society in need, seeking outside solutions and guidance. Virtuous tourism in Canhane is the effect of a capitalist expansion in which ethics, community development, and governance are conflated with tourists’ consumption. Specifically, the commodifying logic that emerges from the presence of virtuous tourists in the village derives primarily from three subjects: tourists’ self-aspirations, residents’ ambition to integrate into the broader socioeconomic order, and the politicization of virtue stimulated by the development industry. Ultimately, this article shows how the cultivation of ethics through tourism consumption has become an ally for the exercise of nongovernmental governance over public spheres.
Tourism has become part of the 'development' agenda. As an agent of post-modernity, tourism helps... more Tourism has become part of the 'development' agenda. As an agent of post-modernity, tourism helps increase the commodification of what were previously regarded as uncommodified matters of social life. Accordingly, 'development' is now a tourist commodity in many localities in the so-called 'South', where the tourists in turn assume a moral consumer style. This paper is primarily about (strategic) representations of the tourist-other as a protagonist of assistance in the realm of what I call developmentourism. My argument is to a large degree empirical, based on two villages in Mozambique. In particular, the two cases studied indicate the interlaced relationship between tourism and 'development', and its repercussion on the discursive activity and representations of the members of the two villages. Moreover, both cases analysed in this paper inform the broader non-governmental economic and moral order in which they are situated.
The Mozambican village of Canhane has been frequently cited as a successful case of 'community de... more The Mozambican village of Canhane has been frequently cited as a successful case of 'community development'. This is the result of the implementation of a 'community-based' tourism venture, which began in 2004. However, this positive image hides conflicting social processes that have been caused by the emergence of 'untraditional' modes in the village. This article shows how new perceptions of water and forms of its control, which were an outcome of the project's tourism 'benefits', are shaking up social relations in Canhane. With profound water shortages persisting in the village, its residents decided to invest revenue generated through tourism initiatives in a water supply system. Since its completion, however, the village has experienced apparently contradictory social upheaval. Although the water system is functioning, in practice it is not being used. Based on empirical fieldwork, this article addresses the reasons behind the water supply conflict in Canhane. By showing how inhabitants of Canhane responded to 'tourism benefits' and how these responses caused changes in customary practices of control over water, this article discusses how social organisation relies on spatial forms of the control of the commons and, in turn, the importance of such spatial forms of control for ordering the social.
São duas da tarde. O sol, a luz e o calor estão violentos. Dona Rosa, como é seu hábito nesta alt... more São duas da tarde. O sol, a luz e o calor estão violentos. Dona Rosa, como é seu hábito nesta altura do ano, está a descascar marula, a fruta que, dizem aqui, "embebeda até elefante".
Call for papers in English or Portuguese for the panel, Omnipresences: Local Responses to Global ... more Call for papers in English or Portuguese for the panel, Omnipresences: Local Responses to Global Phenomena, at the 8th congress of the Portuguese Anthropological Association (6-10 September 2022, Évora, Portugal)
O mar cobre grande parte do mundo, no entanto o mundo é pensado sobretudo através de ideias e mat... more O mar cobre grande parte do mundo, no entanto o mundo é pensado sobretudo através de ideias e matéria derivadas da terra. Neste painel invertemos esta ordem de pensar o mundo: vamos recorrer ao mar como a principal ferramenta metodológica, teórica e material para interpretar o mundo (social).
Caso o tema lhe interesse, por favor submeta uma proposta de comunicação até 7 de Janeiro de 2019
The sea covers most of the world, yet the world is conceptualized mostly through ideas and physic... more The sea covers most of the world, yet the world is conceptualized mostly through ideas and physical matter originated from the land. In this panel, we invert this order of thinking: we take the sea as the methodological, theoretical, and material tool for knowing and explaining the (social) world.
If you are interested, please submit your proposal by 7 January 2019
This is Pamila Gupta's review of my book The Good Holiday: Development, Tourism and the Politics ... more This is Pamila Gupta's review of my book The Good Holiday: Development, Tourism and the Politics of Benevolence in Mozambique