Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore the continuities and discontinuities of the use of racial and cultural ideas about "Black culture" and "Black bodies" in the crafting of public policies of tourism in Bahia, while assessing the impact that successful policies in the field of tourism can have in other areas of statecraft.

The ideas of racial difference in Brazil were always to a certain extent enmeshed with ideas about cultural difference. However, from the 1930s onwards, and particularly since the 1960s, one can trace a definite shift from an emphasis on the biological "race" to an emphasis on "culture" as the basis of State discourses that deal with "difference". By the turn of the 21st century, and particularly after the participation of Brazil in the UN Conference Against Racism, held in Durban in 2001, racialised public policies resurfaced in Brazil.

By analysing how the idea of "Black Culture" was deployed in the crafting of a "uniqueness" of Bahia that formed the basis of public policies in the field of tourism in this brazilian state, we aim to show not only how this ideas of "cultural" difference was implicitly in dialogue with ideas about "biological" difference, but also how the relative success of tourism policies in Bahia allowed to bring through the back door the notion of Blackness as biological difference in other fields of public administration.