Closeness and critique among Brazilian philanthropists

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on philanthropy within a Brazilian family business, this article proposes a “critical ethnography” of wealth elites. This family’s narrative of historical commitment to social responsibility is crucial to the success of delicate succession processes within the family firm. By insuring the reproduction of the wealth and status of elite families, such business succession processes serve in turn to maintain the structural inequalities shaping Brazilian society. In this family’s account of its past, however, a series of very different activities— rooted in philanthropy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), labor legislation, and commerce—are collapsed within a single, coherent narrative of historical commitment to social responsibility, which sits at odds with alternative versions of this history presented by sources outside the family.

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

“…At a time when anthropologists are increasingly evaluated in terms of ‘impact’ metrics (Andersson ; Stein 2018) and project management ontologies that demand certain classes of deliverables , they increasingly encounter similarly responsibilised broker‐entrepreneurs in their various field sites (Marouda ). Yet the convergence of anthropologists and their objects of study is not just the result of downward social mobility for anthropologists coinciding with a long‐overdue broadening of the anthropological gaze to include what Laura Nader () once called ‘studying up’ (Gilbert P ; Gilbert and Sklair ; Glucksberg ; Salverda and Skovgaard‐Smith ; Sklair ). This convergence of observer and observed is further implicated in a complex and highly ambiguous mix of political, economic and technical changes that have transformed many of the descendants of anthropology's traditional interlocutors into highly networked, media‐savvy auteurs in their own right.…”