Paper long abstract:

The quasi-continental dimension and the complex social context of Brazil and its cultural diversity requires and results in identically diverse Anthropological practices, theories and approaches. The questions that have to be faced by Brazilian Anthropology range from problems represented by increasing ethnicization, not only of newly emerging Indian ethnicities, quilombos (maroon societies) and other traditional societies, and gender questions, but also by economic modernization, heavy industrialization and import-export flows, which result in demands for energy, arable land, increased food production, national and international circulations.

This contemporary complex milieu requires imaginative and immediate considerations and appropriate responses from the part of anthropologists, both academics and professionals, who need to revise the existing and developing new theoretical and methodological tools of identical complexity which permit dealing with those situations. This task requires taking into consideration both the local and the global issues, and an attenuated relativistic approach in dealing to the old and new question, and their interactions in plural and multicultural contexts.