Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the anthropologist as "owner" of particular fieldsites and areas of study in Brazilian anthropology, how this is related to the production of hierachies in the field and in anthropology departments, and how it is obscured by declarations of environmental emergency.

Paper long abstract:

My first foray into the place that would become my field-site for my doctoral research was overcast by a conflict between two professors: my supervisor and the supervisor of two undergraduate students who had already gone to the same site. I got the sense of being an invader very quickly, an invader not into an indigenous realm, but the realm of other Brazilian anthropologists. The weight of expectation bore down on me, and my failure to ask permission to senior colleagues who had already done some research in that place was met with persistent disapproval. Very soon after arriving in the field, as my maroon hosts tried to include me in specific meetings with another senior anthropologist and government officials about Brazil nut extraction, my presence was blocked by the same anthropologist. ‘She has always been very possessive,’ my hosts explained.

Probing my own arrival and research experience in maroon communities in the Brazilian Amazon, this paper will probe relations of ownership, jealousy and possessiveness over fieldsites and interlocutors in Brazilian anthropology, the social hierarchies produced as a result, and what happens when anthropological owners ‘stop talking’ to their friends. It will also delve into how environmental and political emergencies are used to obscure challenges to how anthropologists work in the field.