Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents: The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism

Gilberto Freyre's work on race relations in the Global South has been challenged by a new volume that reinterprets his Luso-tropicalist arguments and critically engages with the historical complexity of racial concepts and practices. It includes interdisciplinary scholars from Brazil, Africa, Asia, and Portugal to challenge conventional understanding of twentieth-century racialization and offer new insights into controversial topics.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 346 pages
Publication date: 01 November 2022
Publisher: Berghahn Books

Modern perceptions of race across much of the Global South are indebted to the Brazilian social scientist Gilberto Freyre, who in works such as The Masters and the Slaves claimed that Portuguese colonialism produced exceptionally benign and tolerant race relations. This volume radically reinterprets Freyre's Luso-tropicalist arguments and critically engages with the historical complexity of racial concepts and practices in the Portuguese-speaking world. Encompassing Brazil as well as Portuguese-speaking societies in Africa, Asia, and even Portugal itself, it places an interdisciplinary group of scholars in conversation to challenge the conventional understanding of twentieth-century racialization, proffering new insights into such controversial topics as human plasticity, racial amalgamation, and the tropes and proxies of whiteness.

ISBN-13: 9781800736368