Lawyers and Anthropologists? The Brazilian Ministério Público Federal and the Production of Historical Memory

FAIN: FT-59093-11

Jan Hoffman French
University of Richmond (Richmond, VA 23173-0001)

My project is an institutional ethnography of a unique Brazilian institution, a division of the Ministerio Publico Federal (often referred to as the fourth branch of government) known as the Sixth Chamber for Indians & Minorities, consisting of lawyers and anthropologists charged with fulfilling one of the ministerio publico's roles in Brazilian society - to defend and protect the interests of indigenous peoples, fugitive slave and riverine communities, and gypsies (roma and calon). Using ethnographic methods and anchored in the anthropology of law and justice, I will focus on cooperation, tensions, and conflicts between lawyers and anthropologists and between those two groups and the people they are charged with protecting in order to develop an understanding of the collaborative production of historical and collective memory for the purpose of government recognition and resources. This is part of my continuing investigation of the relationship between law and ethnoracial identity.