Legalizing identities becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's northeast - French, Jan Hoffman (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-236) and index
The author shows how law can successfully serve as the impetus for the transformation of cultural practices and collective identity. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal analysis of successful claims to land by two neighboring black communities in the backlands of northeastern Brazil, the book demonstrates how these two communities have come to distinguish themselves from each other while revising and retelling their histories and present-day stories. It argues that the invocation of laws by these related communities led to the emergence of two different identities: one indigenous (Xocó Indian) and the other quilombo (descendants of a fugitive African slave community)