Race and Employment Practices in Northeast Brazil’s Ecotourism Industry: An Analysis of Cultural Capital, Symbolic Capital, and Symbolic Power

Abstract

The ethnographic study of tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean offers the opportunity to examine the ways that racial ideologies perpetuate social inequality, debunking the myth of racial democracy in countries such as Brazil. In the case of Brogodó, in Bahia, Brazil, structural inequality and racial ideology limit the equal participation of Brazilians of African descent in the local ecotourism industry. This article draws on evidence from ethnographic research to investigate the relationship of structural inequality, racial ideology, and cultural and symbolic capital. In the ecotourism industry, employer discourses emphasizing the limits of local community members’ cultural capital conceal their preference for employees exhibiting both the habitus and phenotypic traits associated with whiteness, reflecting broader social and economic practices that discriminate against African-descendent Brazilians. The ability to naturalize habitus and disguise racial ideology behind discussions of education and qualifications reflects employers’ and members of the dominant classes’ symbolic power.

Effects of Cultural Capital on Children’s Educational Success: An Empirical Study of Vietnam Under the Shadow of Bourdieu’s Cultural Reproduction Theory

“…Moreover, the contentious debate on symbolic versus skill producing mechanism in prior scholarship may be limited due to distinct measurement and operationalization of CC. For example, [77], conclude that CC has no any function of symbolic except possession of books reading. In addition, scholars were interested in investing the symbolic function of CC should also employ a subjective measure despite of a standardized test scores to elude symbolic role.…”