Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes “social technologies” created by Cultural Group AfroReggae (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) as a “moral project”. Its emphasis is on the intertwining between emotions and moral conceptions in cultural movements.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with the relationship between morality and emotion in a project for social intervention elaborated by AfroReggae Cultural Group (GCAR). The group was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1993. Its main purpose is to offer alternatives to drug trafficking to young people who inhabit in slums. Among its initiatives one could mention workshops, which are mostly devoted to artistic activities, and projects meant to bridge the gap between distinct groups in Rio's society, particularly policemen and young slum inhabitants. As part of this project, GCAR creates a flow of discourses in different media, such as the internet, movies, and books. Some stories are constantly told in these discourses, composing a kind of "fable". This paper intends to examine this fable's "morals", establishing as main focuses of analysis two oppositions: martyr/survival and utopia/hope. Our hypothesis is that of the existence of a fundamental issue: the idea of responsibility towards the other. This hypothesis justifies the theoretical combination of the concept of "moral project" (Cole, 2003) with the notion of a "micro-politics of emotion" (Lutz and Abu-Lughod, 1990). The data analyzed is composed of several discourses produced by GCAR: movies, books, group members' interviews to television shows and in-depth interviews conducted during fieldwork. Our purpose is to emphasize the central place this fable occupies in the elaboration of the group's self-image.