CANCELLED - Anthropology Speaker Series - Marta-Laura Haynes

Please note this talk has been cancelled and will not take place on March 27, 2025. 

We hope to reschedule for the Fall semester, and an update will be provided in due course. 

Please join us for a talk by Dr. Marta-Laura Haynes (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY): https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/marta-laura-haynes-nee-suska.

Fearing the Mangue: Contaminated Landscapes and Politics of Trust in Recife

Co-sponsored with the Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID).

Abstract: In Brazil’s precarious socio-political landscape, where systemic violence, racism, and historical inequalities converge, trust emerges as a fragile yet pivotal axis in the interactions between police and civilians. Drawing from over six years of ethnographic research in Recife and Rio de Janeiro, my book Untrusting: In Pursuit of Democratic Policing in Brazil interrogates the intricate dynamics of trust and its cultural, gendered, and racialized dimensions. Focusing on a chapter that examines Recife’s favelas and development projects in the urban mangroves, this talk will explore how these contaminated landscapes serve as an extension of the Black body. In a city divided into wet and dry, contaminated and pure, Black and white, the racialization of nature is a lingering legacy of tropical medicine and hygienization that continues to shape public policy and policing. By positioning the mangroves as a site of mistrust and radical possibility, this talk interrogates how the intertwined processes of environmental and racial marginalization impact sociality and policing. Ultimately, untrusting becomes a lens to rethink security and democracy as sites of both exclusion and care.