REZENDE, C. Barcellos - Stereotypes and National Identity

7/29/2019 REZENDE, C. Barcellos - Stereotypes and National Identity

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Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 15:103122, 2008

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1070-289X print / 1547-3384 online

DOI: 10.1080/10702890701801866

Stereotypes and National Identity: Experiencingthe Emotional Brazilian

Claudia Barcellos Rezende

Social Sciences Department, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil

In this article, I examine how stereotypes are deployed in the process of experiencing

national identities. Specifically, I analyse how a group of Brazilian academics

who have studied in Europe and the United States have dealt with stereotypical

notions of Brazilians as warm people who establish friendship easily. Ideas

about a greater emotionality, which were often seen as negative from a European

colonial perspective, are embraced and re-signified by them as a positive feature of

Brazilian national identity, particularly when compared to the supposed closed

nature of some Europeans. I argue therefore that the presence of such stereotypes

contributes to reinforce a subjective sense of Brazilianess and also reveals the

negotiations of power relations in the process of elaborating Brazilian nationalidentity.

Key Words: national identity, stereotypes, Brazil, friendship, emotionality

The notion that identities are constructed through contrasts between

we and them has been present in the social sciences literature for

some decades, particularly due to studies about ethnic groups (Barth

1969; Eriksen 1993; Oliveira 1976). These contrasts are not fixed but

vary according to each situation, so that social identities, likewise, arenot crystallised but rather dynamic, in process. These distinctions are

often a pronounced issue for foreigners, who have to face how others

see them and to question their own ways of thinking in view of local

forms of thought (Schutz 1971). In this context, stereotypes usually

come into play, both as images deployed by the foreigner to under-

stand the local society and as representations with which locals make

sense of the foreign person.

This clash of images is experienced by most immigrants and cer-

tainly by many middle class Latin Americans who migrate. Oliveira

(2000) refers to the discomfort a Uruguayan teacher felt in the United


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104 C. B. Rezende

saw as an ethnic label.1 The growing number of Brazilian immigrants

have to cope with this fracture in various ways. Margolis (1998) dis-

cusses the difficulty that many Brazilian women face when they landjobs in the United States as domestic workers, an occupation they would

never have had at home where they often were the employers. Sales

(1999) also mentions how Brazilian workers in the United States strive

to build an image of hard workers to differentiate themselves from

Hispanics, a category Brazilian immigrants feel they do not fit into.

In this article, I analyse the disjunction between self-image and

experience and its effects on a subjective perception of national iden-

tity, based on the stories of a group of Brazilian academics who stud-

ied in Europe and the United States for their postgraduate degrees. Inparticular, I seek to understand the role played by stereotypes in the

way national identities are subjectively experienced. I argue that,

more than just generalised views produced by others, stereotypes can

also be used by people themselves in the process of elaborating a sense

of belonging associated with national identity.

To do so, I examine how these Brazilian scholars related to a spe-

cific and internationally widespread stereotype that sees Brazilians as

warm and very open people. Specifically, my analysis of how such

emotionality was experienced focuses on how people developed friend-ship abroad. In my previous studies (Rezende 1999, 2002), I showed

that among middle class Brazilians, friendship is seen as both a senti-

ment as well as a relationship. The affective dimension of friendship is

seen as crossing social barriers, and it is this aspect that relates

closely to the idea that Brazilians are open and easily make

friends. For the Brazilian academics I studied, this collective image

became a sensitive issue during their period abroad because most of

them had difficulties making local friends, hence turning into a source

of frustration and receiving great elaboration in their accounts.Furthermore, this problem seemed to point to the fact that they were

seen as more different from Europeans and Americans, questioning

their self-image as cosmopolitan people.

My data come from interviews carried out with white middle class

academics from Rio de Janeirosix women and six men who were uni-

versity teachers of the humanities, with ages between 40 and 55 years

old, who studied for their PhD degree in the United States, England,

France, Belgium, and Germany in the early 1990s. During the year of

2002 I conducted formal interviews with everyone, aside from havingvarious informal conversations with most of them as part of my own


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Stereotypes and National Identity 105

of national identity, an interest derived from the fact that I, as a

Brazilian anthropologist, had studied for my PhD in England. My

years abroad not only prompted many of the projects issues but cre-ated as well a context of empathy and identification with the people

interviewed, so that throughout their accounts I was often asked

about the similarity or difference about my own conditions and feel-

ings as a foreign student.

Unlike Brazilians who migrate in search of better conditions of life,

these academics were away temporarily and were generally committed

to returning to Brazil, often with the idea of bringing back home spe-

cialized knowledge with which to improve Brazilian universities, in

which many already held teaching positions. This commitment wasstrengthened by the fact that they were funded by government grants

to pay for the studies and life abroad, a practice that dates back to the

1960s. Besides the acquisition of specific skills perceived to be found

only abroad, these academics also saw in those four years the opportu-

nity to live in another society and learn about a different way of life.

Most of them went with their own families, and those who went unac-

companied either lived alone or with other foreign students. Thus, in

all cases, despite a wish to be integrated into the local society through

friendship, none of the people studied shared residence with locals.Although friendship was not an interview topic, they all referred to

the friends they made or not, whether locals or other foreigners, thus

making it an issue connected to their perception of what it meant to be

Brazilian. It is important to stress that, despite native Brazilian

views, which compared peoples different abilities in making friends,

I treat friendship as a culturally constructed relationship, with mean-

ings and practices that vary across time and space (Silver 1989; Bell

and Coleman 1999; Rezende 2002). This anthropological perspective

deconstructs modern Western thought, which takes friendship to be aprivate relationship, anchored only on individual choice and criteria

and on the expression of supposedly natural emotions. As a conse-

quence, friendship is often considered a more or less universal

relationship, brought about by emotions present in everyone, an idea

voiced by the people interviewed. Thus, in this analysis of a Brazilian

discourse on friendship, I point out those meanings that not only

emphasise its culturally specific character but also bear relation to a

particular elaboration of national identity.

In the next section I discuss how concepts of national identity andstereotypes inform my study. Then, I briefly present some Brazilian


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106 C. B. Rezende

National identities and stereotypes

In recent years the notion of identity has been treated as levels ofidentification that are continuously constructedrather than being

determined a prioriand performed according to the various contexts

of interaction (Butler 1991; Hall 1991; Kondo 1997). This approach

rejects earlier views that saw in the concept the crystallisation of an

ontogenetic process (Erikson 1987) that developed through a dialectic

relation with the social world (Kondo 1997; Berger and Luckmann

1985). Thus, the idea that identities have an essential basis tends to

be, nowadays, seen as a rhetoric to which people and social move-

ments resort to affirm and claim rights of recognition (Calhoun 1994).This is particularly the case with national identities, which are

often built on notions of a shared, homogeneous, and essentialised cul-

ture. As many authors (Anderson 1991; Hall 1998; Smith 1997; Verdery

2000) have recently shown, national identities are best seen as cre-

ations, or as narratives in Bhabhas (1990) terms. Such narratives are

actually historically dated, and in each period distinct cultural ele-

ments are selected to form them, often contrasting with those of

elected foreign societies. Despite its frequently essentialised charac-

ter, national identities are the product of a generally diverse societyand, therefore, become the object of negotiation and dispute between

different social groups.

Herzfeld calls for the need to probe behind faades of national

unanimity (1997: 1) and look into the ways in which people use and

re-elaborate official idioms according to personal interests. Just as the

government may resort to the language of intimacy and domesticity in

the pursuit of its goals, citizens engage in a ceaseless business of

shaping the meaning of national identity, often in ways that contra-

vene official ideology (1997: 9). Thus, criticizing the separationbetween the state and the peoplebest seen as a symbolic construct,

Herzfeld sees a common ground that dissolves clearly defined levels of

power, based on his notion of cultural intimacy. It refers to the idea

that national identity contains a measure of embarrassment together

with idealized virtues, which gives insiders a familiarity with the

bases of power that enables, at one moment, creative irreverence and

at the next moment effective intimidation (1997: 3).

Together with the need to analyse how people manipulate national

ideologies, it is as important, as some authors argue (Radcliffe andWestwood 1996; Smith 1997; Verdery 2000), to understand how they

develop a subjective sense of belonging to a nation In other words


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through gender and race (Kondo 1997; Piscitelli 1996; Stepan 1991),

so that people develop various relations to such images and subjectivi-

ties, as well as distinguish themselves from other nationals based onsuch embodied traits.

National identities become particularly salient in situations of con-

trast (Oliveira 2000; Woodward 2000). As I have said, because identi-

ties are built on the distinction between us and them, they tend to

be more visible when different national and ethnic groups face each

other. In such contrastive contexts, people often turn to stereotypes of

the other, having to contend as well with typified images of them-

selves presented by other groups. Each group deals with such stereo-

types differently, whether denying or embracing them (Oliveira 1976),but, in either way, people negotiate such images in the process of elab-

orating their identities.

As a form of generalising a reduced number of traits to entire social

categories, stereotyping is usually characterised negatively, reflecting

and reinforcing social inequalities. For many years, stereotypes were

so qualified because they seemed to betray a lack of direct experi-

ence of the people so represented (McDonald 1993: 221). These repre-

sentations of the other, acquired through other means than by direct

experience of the reality represented, were thus deemed erroneous.In a different line, McDonald argues that the recourse to stereotypi-

cal images may result from experience, one of categorical mismatch:

when different category systems come into contact, they do not match

up, hence producing a sense of unpredictability and uncertainty (1993:

222). This mismatch is usually expressed through the discourses avail-

able to understand difference and offers important categories with

which to mark boundaries between us and them. McDonald empha-

sises that the perception of difference, relative to the social and political

maps of the time, is more likely to occur at the boundaries available,wherever they may be, and the lack of categorical fit will usually be

expressed in a dominant discourse. In the end, she argues, it is this

experience of mismatch that produces imagery in stereotypes that

appear very similar, irrespective of the group they attempt to represent.

Because stereotypes are based on the distinction between us and

them, they are also used to create self-images, particularly those

related to national identities. Because national ideologies are gener-

ally based on the assumption of a uniform, commonly shared culture,

stereotyped images help elaborate homogeneous national figures suchas the Brazilian, the English, the American, etc. They frequently


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108 C. B. Rezende

In this sense, it is important to examine how people relate to these

self-stereotypes in various contexts: whether identifying themselves

with them or not, whether affirming or criticising them. McDonald(1993) shows how the image of excitable, fun-loving, sexy people attrib-

uted by the English to the French has been assumed by France and

turned into virtue. When classification systems absorb typifications from

above, forcefully or not, irony may be used as a form of resistance. The

Cretan men Herzfeld (1997) studied resorted to a rhetoric of manliness

as a positive quality, one that was largely marginalized on the national

scene, to manipulate political allegiances. In Brazil, Piscitelli (1996)

shows how prostitutes in the Northeast tried to negotiate some social

ascension by exploiting the images of natural, tropical exoticism attrib-uted to them as women of colour by white foreign tourists. Nevertheless,

as Herzfeld points out, these strategies of resistance or even subversion

often offer[s] more moral satisfaction than change in the material condi-

tions to which the powerful have accorded value (1997: 157).

It is therefore significant to inquire how people relate to stereo-

typed images that are by definition generalising and reductive, leav-

ing, in principle, no room for individual differences and singularities.

In this article, I analyse how a specific group of Brazilians deals with a

particular stereotypethat of the emotional Brazilianin the contextof being a foreigner in the United States and European countries. As I

present in the following section, this image is part of a national narra-

tive that dialogues with wider Western conceptions of emotion and

reason, an exchange that refers back to Brazils colonial past.

In this sense, it is important to stress a point made in postcolonial

studies (Chatterjee 1993; Gandhi 1998): these self-stereotypes are

formed in an unequal dialogue between coloniser and colonised. Accord-

ing to Fanon, the resistance to colonialism involved overcoming the

alienated condition of the colonised, who would not see themselves assubjects but as objects, through the eye of the coloniser: in other words,

the colonised imports his conscience, he is a reflection of the reflection

(Ortiz 1994: 5758). Thus, nationalist movements in colonised countries

inevitably had to deal with their colonial past, specifically with differ-

ences between coloniser and colonised and their representations. In

Brazil the ambivalence surrounding the image of the emotional Brazilian

in some national narratives reflects power relations between the

European colonisers and Brazilian intellectuals, as I show next.

Creating the emotional Brazilian


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of relationships: the proper interpersonal distance, a different form of

physical contact. He was used to greeting women with kisses on the

cheeks and men with a hug and he realised that this behaviour both-ered the Americans he knew. He also had to contend with the image of

Brazilian men as Latin lovers, but he laughed about it. We are hot!

Compared to them, we really are.

Renato and the other men and women interviewed spoke of the

image Brazilians had as warm, hot, physical people. And, as

Renato remarked, they all felt that they were indeed emotional and

affectionate persons, a quality that became particularly appreciated

during their time abroad. These remarks point at two issues: a partic-

ular representation of emotionality and the way in which this image isexperienced.

Tackling the second point first, emotions have been seen as social

phenomena since Durkheim (1971) and Mauss (1980). As Mauss

states, through language people manifest their sentiments to them-

selves as they express them to others and because of others (1980: 62,

my translation). Indeed, much of the later anthropological work on

emotions (Abu-Lughod 1986; Lutz 1988; Rosaldo 1980) focuses on

analysing the meanings of various particular emotional categories in

different societies, questioning the psychobiological basis of feelingsand hence their universality.

More recently, interest has fallen on how these emotional categories

are used in discourse, with an emphasis on performance and its effects

on social life. As Abu-Lughod and Lutz propose, rather than seeing

them as expressive vehicles, we must understand emotional dis-

courses as pragmatic acts and communicative performances (1990: 11).

With this approach, careful attention is given to the context in which

emotional discourses are conveyedthe power relations that produce

contested meanings and realities. As a consequence, emotion and dis-course are treated as related variables, thus rejecting views that place

emotion in an inner private realm of experience and discourse in a

public social world. In this sense, with regard to the Brazilians stud-

ied, their experience of emotionality was not only informed by cultural

categories that constructed how and when emotions should be felt and

expressed in the process of making friends but also gained relevance

in specific contexts when national identity was at stake.

Before discussing Brazilian national narratives, it is important to

note that the image of the emotional Brazilian has been elaboratedwith reference to modern Western discourses on emotion. In this


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opposed to reason, as feeling to thought, and are consequently identi-

fied with the body, which is more natural in contrast to the mind.

Emotions are most of the times associated with irrationality, chaos,vulnerability, lack of control, all of which tend to be qualified nega-

tively. However, emotion can also be valued when associated to life

force and commitment and opposed to alienation and estrangement.

In both ways, women are labelled as the emotional gender. As Lutz

puts it, emotion is, at one time, a residual category of almost-defective

personal process; at others, it is the seat of the true and glorified self

(1988: 56).

The notion of Brazilian emotionality was part of a well-known nar-

rative about national identity, developed after the 1920s. SinceBrazils independence from Portugal in 1822 and its subsequent proc-

lamation as a republic in 1889, there was much discussion about its

status as a modern nation, marked by a longing desire to be seen as a

civilisation according to European standards. The 1930s represented a

turning point in these debates about national identity, with a greater

focus on characteristics that were genuinely Brazilian, compared to

previous discussions that openly emulated European views about

nation and civilisation.

One of the pillars of authentic Brazilian culture became the newlyvalued racial and cultural mixture of Portuguese, African, and indige-

nous peoples, which gave Brazilians their hybrid quality. The anthro-

pologist Gilberto Freyre (1981), who wrote about various aspects of

such hybridity, argued for the harmonious relations between the

races (although later he was much criticised by sociologists for over-

looking racism and discrimination). Re-signified positively then as a

founding myth, such mixture had for many years earlier anguished

intellectuals, who took racial intermarriage to produce inferior beings,

as shown by Seyferth (1989), thus making it virtually impossible forBrazil to achieve its civilised (hence white) status.

Another important trait of national character was the emotional

nature of Brazilians, often perceived as responsible for the crossing

of social and racial distances.2 The historian Srgio Buarque de

Holanda, for instance, argued in hisRazes do Brazil that the Brazilian

contribution to civilisation will be that of cordiality (1982: 106),

defined by him as a way of behaving moved by all that comes from the

heart.3 As a symbolic figure representative of our national character,

cordial man sought in social life the escape from his fear of livingalone; it is rather a form of living through others (1982: 108). But


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collective reasons. This ambivalent perception of an emotionally based

cordiality would become an outstanding feature of one of the most

enduring narratives of the Brazilian nation.The view of the emotional Brazilian had been present much before

the 1930s, in the early accounts of European travellers who came to

Brazil during its colonial period. These texts became the source of

many references for the works of Srgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto

Freyre, and Paulo Prado. Furthermore, the very idea of an outpouring

emotionality had been one of the recurring European representations

about the colonial world. This emotionality was seen to be a reflection

of a rather primitive stage in physical and psychological development,

one in which reason had still to be mastered in its control of emotions.Thus, savages were more emotional and hence closer to nature, since

reason revealed the action of culture understood as civilisation (Lutz

1988), both of which had yet to be instilled through the colonial rela-

tion. If the colonised saw themselves through the eyes of the coloniser,

this was certainly the case with respect to the idea of Brazilians

greater emotionality.

However, unlike other colonial settings, Brazil was a Portuguese

colony that ruled over a previously existing savage people for a very

short time only. With the rapid decimation of most of its indigenouspeoples, the country was effectively occupied through the descendants

of the Portuguese coloniser, African slaves, and their mixed offspring.

The colonial administrative functionaries born in the Americas

thought of themselves as Europeans because they shared with the

Portuguese ancestry, language, religion, and culture. As Anderson

(1991) points out, Europeans, however, saw them as inferiors for hav-

ing been born in savage land. Thus, from early on there was a desire

among the educated Brazilian natives to be recognised as equalsas

Westernerswhich was denied by the European colonisers.As a consequence, the emotionality imputed through European eyes

became ambiguously perceived as a Brazilian cultural element. From

a negative point of view, emotionality would not only reveal little or

even a complete lack of reason, and hence become a sign of inferiority

but was also seen as conducive to an anarchic sort of individualism

endangering life in society. Thus, we find in the Brazilian narratives

of the 1930s a certain way of disowning this emotionality in the

detached style of writing which seemed to remove the author from the

text, creating the impression that his was a foreign viewclose to aEuropean gazeof Brazilian society.4


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could bring closer different races and social classes, promoting a pecu-

liar form of solidarity that coexisted with a hierarchical social order.

As we see next, many of these ideas are found in the present, albeit innew and varied ways.

Friendship and frustration

Teresa made few friends while she lived in the United States with her

husband, a PhD student as well, and their children. She explained her

difficulty in making friends with Americans due to the fact that she

studied at home most of the time. She said she grew stressed

because she saw her husband and children as more adapted: I sawthat they had friends and they began to find me a little weird, you

know? I was the person who still spoke the worst English, who stayed

at home, who could not make friends. The children had very nice

friends. Teresa had other foreigners as friends. For her, the difficulty

with Americans was not due to the fact that she was Brazilian. For

example, with these Dutch people, we identified ourselves, shared a

lot of things. So I dont think it had to do with being Brazilian,

although it involves it as well. Her perception of herself as a Brazilian

changed a lot.

I began being Brazilian there. I changed a lot, you see? I didnt drink

coffee. I began drinking coffee there. You begin to perceive certain

things, a certain estrangement from Brazil . . . When I arrive in the US,

I realised that religion, Carnival, many things that we take for granted

here are not in fact, they are things that distinguish us from them.

Marcelo replied that his only difficulty during his four years in

Belgium was not having made as many Belgian friends as he had wished.

It would be easier to attribute this to the closed character of the

Belgians, I dont know . . . But Im such a spontaneous person, so easy to

make friends that I tend to think this is a negative aspect of . . . I dont

know if Europeans in general . . . I think that perhaps in order to pre-

serve this democratic freedom, this is the price they pay many times,

this sense of opposition between society and community . . . Its a percep-

tion of a very strong individualism which made it difficult for me to cre-

ate encounters, because I like to be with people very much.

Marcelo found that his PhD in Belgium gave him a certain qualified


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In Silvias PhD course in France, there were no other Brazilians

than herself. From the start, she and her colleagues, French and other

foreigners, formed a very close group of friends. She thinks her situ-ation was rather exceptional since in other French universities, most

courses are loosely structured around a fixed class group, as was her

course, so that the many Brazilian students end up sticking together.

Besides this, Silvia chose not to stay close to Brazilians, aside from

those whom she already knew from Brazil.

I pretended I wasnt Brazilian so that I wouldnt enter the Brazilian

network . . . because I had to do fieldwork there and I needed to speak

French; I didnt speak any . . . The Brazilian group always hung togetherin feijoadas, churrascos [typical food parties] . . . Some of those who

heard about it thought I was pretentious, disgusting, but I had to do it.

Silvia did not consider that living abroad affected how she perceived

herself as a Brazilian. It did change how she thought about our cul-

ture, our way of being, questioning various situations, such as the

habit of touching people when talking to them . . . When I came back, I

had a more French perspective.

For most of the university teachers studied, going abroad to get aPhD was their first experience of living outside of Brazil. In their thir-

ties at the time, one of the motivations to study abroad was the wish to

learn about and live in another culture. From the start, they had to

experience different codes and values through the university institu-

tions they were enrolled in, having as well to master a foreign lan-

guage to attend classes. In this sense, they were different from most

Brazilians who migrated to the United States and Europe, relying

heavily on ties with other Brazilians to find jobs, housing, etc., and

often maintaining their social life within the Brazilian community(Margolis 1998; Ribeiro 1999).

Although they did not live in these communities, these academics

did have Brazilian friends, as well as other foreign friends, mostly

students, on whom they counted for various kinds of support. The

former were often reduced in number and were frequently relation-

ships established previously before leaving Brazil. If sociability and

some sort of identificationgenerally in terms of values and world-

viewswere significant, everyone emphasised how important these

friends had been in terms of emotional and practical support (e.g.,helping at the time of arrival and departure and caring through

illnesses) The also stressed ho the still keep in to ch ith these


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However, the creation of local friendship relations was both a goal

as well as a constant difficultythe source of great frustration for

many. Despite their wish to experience another culture, few of theacademics interviewed felt they had achieved the local social insertion

they aspired, with their social lives restricted basically to university

circles. Most of the supervisors chosen were people who knew Brazilian

society fairly well, often having other Brazilians under their supervision.

And few people managed to make friends with the local Americans,

English, French, and Belgians.

Most people explained their problems in terms of perceived aspects

of the local society. For example, the strong competition felt among

native colleagues was a difficulty frequently mentioned, particularlyemphasised by those who studied in the United States. Although they

stressed that they would return to Brazil after the completion of their

degrees and thus were not competitors in the local job market, they

still considered such competition as hindering the development of

friendship ties. Among those who studied in Europe, the idea that

English, French, and Belgians were reserved, closed people, making

it hard to approach them as friends, appeared recurrently. Such char-

acteristics contrasted with an idea of friendship present among these

and other middle class Brazilians (Rezende 2002) that placed a strongfocus on spontaneity and display of affection as part of the process of

developing the intimacy and trust expected from the relationship.

Indeed, even when intimate relationships were not established, the

emotional component was still much valued so that friendship could

be seen as a sentiment widely displayed.

On the other hand, everyone had other foreign friends, generally

students as well, besides a group of Brazilian friends. As Silvias

account illustrates, nearly everyone interviewed mentioned that they

avoided relating only to Brazilians, since they did not want to seemlike a ghetto. With the former, their common condition as foreign

students going through a similar process of adjusting to a different

society became a strong affinity that brought them together. They

came from various places, such as Holland, Germany, Japan, and the

Middle East. Their common situation as foreign students apparently

neutralised cultural particularities.

The few or no local friends made were constantly singled out as one

of the most significant difficulties people had in their experience

abroad. Developing friendship was seen as an important requirementfor adaptation in the host society, as Teresa explained. Even more


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it was friendship as a sentiment, rather than as a particular relation-

ship, which bridged social distances. Nevertheless, such belief dis-

played the value placed on being connected to others, so thatfriendship became an idiom with which to establish these ties, even if

discursively only. Thus, when abroad people did not make friends as

wished, it was as if they lacked social ties.

Consequently, their status as foreignershence in the margins

seemed even more emphasised by this problem, since their friends

were mostly restricted to other equally foreign students. It was not

that these ties were devalued but rather that not having local friends

meant not belonging socially. Hence, their dislike to remain among

Brazilians only, since it made them feel excluded, as if in a ghetto. Infact, these difficulties seemed to emphasize the perception that they

were so different from locals that there were not the necessary affini-

ties considered important for friendship. Actually, it was during their

years abroad that they came into contact with representations of

Brazil as a non-Western society. Before, they had a more cosmopoli-

tan, Western view of themselves. These were urban middle class intel-

lectuals who consumed a host of globalised goods and worked with a

Western body of knowledge. Like the middle class people Norvell

(2002) studied, before leaving Brazil, they seemed to relate little to thenational images and symbols of Brazilianess, which they would

embrace afterward.

It was therefore by contrast to the host society that their Brazilian

identity stood out. Most people perceived themselves to have become

more Brazilian during their stay abroad. They discussed how being

in another country reinforced their Brazilian identity. In some cases,

such as Teresas, people saw themselves as becoming Brazilians once

they were away. They described what it meant to be Brazilian through

internationally shared meanings and symbols such as football, coffee,Carnival, or stereotypes such as the emotional Brazilian to define

what they saw as Brazilian identity. Despite the development of a crit-

ical stance toward Brazilian society, as in Marcelos self image as a

qualified nationalist, it was common for them to value the emotion-

ality and informality taken to be Brazilian traits. As in Renatos words

quoted earlier, they liked being a warm people.

It seemed then that Brazilian easiness in making friends was

associated with such spontaneous emotionality, perhaps even its

consequence. It was therefore a feature discussed chiefly by those whoidentified themselves strongly as Brazilians and who also had greater


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In fact, Brazilian codes for behaviour became taken for granted as a

standard against which different codes were compared and measured.

Thus, problems in friendship were attributed only to others culturalspecificity, whereas their own characteristics were seen basically as

personality traits, as in Marcelos views.5 In a rather evolutionist fashion,

differences in friendship practices became one of degree onlyin some

societies, people had a closed character as opposed to the open

approach of others, with the latter being valued as the desired/

appropriate way of being. Because they saw themselves as holding the

standard values of friendship, problems lay in those others whose

behaviour differed from their own.

It was not a coincidence then that Silvia, one of the very few whohad local French friends, thought that she became somewhat French

in her attitudes after her return. Having been concerned from the

beginning with learning local codes, she became critical of some of her

previous codes of behaviour. When she returned to Rio de Janeiro, she

changed the way she made friends in the workplace, maintaining a

greater distance than expected. By doing so, she altered limits as to

how and when the emotionality expressed through friendship should

be present, therefore rejecting a fundamental symbol of Brazilian

identity.

Making friends and being Brazilian

During her years in England, Gisele counted on Brazilian and Dutch

friends but not on English ones. She felt her difficulty with the lan-

guage explained to some extent her feeling of having witnessed from

outside the English way of living, without actually taking part in it.

I felt that I was watching everyone from a shop window, because no onehad invited me in. I was a spectator. But it was nice, it was interesting.

Marcos said that he only perceived himself as a Brazilian when he

went to study in England, because he had never before been outside of

Brazil. It was a shock, he told me.

Its very weird because youre very different. And they see you as being even

more different that you actually are. So really there is a lot of prejudice . . .

and a difficulty in understanding what are your codes as well. So being

Brazilian . . . there were some positive things, particularly if you were a

white Brazilian. Brazil is also seen in certain respects as a relatively neu-

tral country. It is not really civilised but it is not barbarous either.


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not as equalsas the Western intellectuals who held a significant

social status back home. In the process of dealing with this form of

participation, friendship with the locals became a sensitive problem,which made Gisele feel as an outsider looking into a shop window.

There are four major issues that I emphasise in the analysis of

these stories of frustrated friendships. The first referred to the desire

to learn about a different culture as one of the reasons for studying

abroad. This desire reflected, on the one hand, the value placed on

knowledge of the other, almost a sort of cultural relativism, as an

aspect of this middle class ethos. It comes close to what Clifford (1998)

has called an ethnographic subjectivity, which is aware of cultural

conventions and has the perception of the subject as being in a cultureat the same time as observing it.

On the other hand, the wish to experience another culture was also

marked by the fact that most of the cities chosen for residence abroad

were seen as First World capitals. Thus, it was not just any different

culture that interested them, but it seemed a more or less common

(post)colonial desire to experience life in the metropolis and to learn

(more) about its way of seeing the rest of the world, including its

images of Brazilians.

The second issue present was the idea that, to feel adjusted to thenew society, it was important to develop friendship relations with

local people. It did not seem enough to study in a local institution,

with local teachers and colleagues; having local friends appeared to be

the most significant index of good adjustment. Friendship relations

were considered to be a fundamental form of mediation in any new

social situation and, moreover, became translated into a sign of social

inclusion, something that since the 1930s had been a crucial element

in many Brazilian national narratives.

Third, despite the significance of local friends, most people haddifficulty making them. Their problems in creating local friendships

seemed to mean the opposite of what was wishedinstead of being

adapted and included, feelings of frustration and exclusion appeared

more common. With most of their friends being either foreign or

Brazilian students, their marginal position as foreigners was rein-

forced rather than attenuated and accentuated their difference from

the locals. As academics trained in Western traditions of thinking,

who had until then considered themselves to be cosmopolitan people,

they had to deal with images of Brazilians as non-Western locals, asdifferent and inferior others.


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118 C. B. Rezende

Brazilians came a greater value placed on emotionality and the way in

which Brazilians established friendship. Brazilian standards became

universal features and variations among different societies wereunderstood in terms of a greater or lesser distance in degree from the

so-perceived universal referents, rather than as culturally distinct

meanings and values. Thus, the difficulties with friendship that lead

to a perception of social difference and exclusion became reinterpreted

as problems locals had and privilege Brazilians held, thus contribut-

ing to a greater perception of their national identity.

This last issue takes me back to the initial question about how peo-

ple relate to national stereotypes. As we have seen, these university

teachers referred to various symbols to define Brazilian identity, mostof which they related to ambiguously before living abroad. The idea of

emotionality was also pointed out as a characteristic and stereotypical

feature of Brazilians, recognized as well in their own behaviour. But,

unlike other symbols, this emotionality was strongly embraced and

actualised in how friendship was established or not. Thus, we can say

that these typified images informed peoples subjective sense of a Bra-

zilian national identity.

Now, we may ask if this more or less straightforward acceptance or

use of stereotypes was due to the contrastive situation people experi-enced, heightening their perception as Brazilians. In this context they

had to deal with images of Brazil present in their host society, images

that have long banked on the association between emotionality and

the tropics. Although these local stereotypes were often ambiguously

considered in foreign eyes as well as in some Brazilian national narra-

tives, they became positively valued by the Brazilians studied, trans-

formed into an advantage even when it came to the creation of

personal relations. The ambivalence present in the national narratives

of the 1930s gave way to a re-signification of difference as privilege; tobe spontaneous and emotional was no longer understood as a sign of

inferiority but rather of superiority.6 Thus, if the process of

(re)elaborating their national identity involved seeing themselves

through the eyes of these metropolitan societies, the local stereotypes

about Brazilians acquired new meanings and particularly new

strength, making them a positive element present in the subjective

sense of being Brazilian.

Stereotypes are therefore important in the analysis of how national

subjectivities are formed. As elements in the process through whichidentities are constructed, they have to be considered in terms of the


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groups of peoplewhether organised according to class, ethnic, reli-

gious, or national divisionsis itself permeated by power relations,

often stemming from and reinforcing social and political hierarchies.A discursive weapon of power, as Herzfeld names it, stereotyping

actually deprives the other of a certain property (1997: 157). These

power relations are, furthermore, rarely based on straightforward dom-

inance or submission, being more generally marked by ambivalence as

well as processes of negotiation and re-appropriation.

Thus, as in the case presented here, stereotypes were used to make

sense of what it meant to be Brazilian in the particular context of

being a foreigner in the United States and in Europe, during which a

host of images recalling colonial relations came to the fore. It was inthis specific condition that stereotypical ideas about emotionality

often seen as negative in other situationsbecame re-signified as a

privilege Brazilians have over others, especially their former

colonisers.

Implications for practice

There are four aspects examined in this article that have important

practical implications: the dynamics of identity construction, experi-ences of temporary migration, lived emotionality, and a particular set

of Brazilian values and meanings.

First, the article deals with identity politics on a micro level, as

experienced by a group of people. Although it does not focus on formal

groups or social movements, it discusses the dynamics of identity

construction, in particular of national identities, and its recourse to

stereotypes as revealing negotiations in power relations. As such, this

analysis can be helpful to the understanding of subjective processes

that are also part of more formalized claims for identity recognition.Specifically, it shows how stereotypes can be manipulated in the elab-

oration of national identity, whether by individuals or larger

movements.

Second, it presents how people relate subjectively to such stereo-

typical images in the specific context of being a foreigner, away from

home. In this sense, this study examines experiences of migration

in this particular case, temporary onesand their effects on subjec-

tivities and social relations. More importantly, it deals with the

experience of representations produced in an unequal dialoguethatbetween Europe and the United States and migrants from the colo-


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120 C. B. Rezende

of studies that treat emotions as cultural categories rather than uni-

versal traits stemming from a psychobiological basis. As such, this

analysis may be of use to professionals that deal with emotionalexperiencespsychologists, therapists, and health practitionersand

seek to understand them as part of specific cultural contexts.

Lastly, as a study of a particular group of Brazilians, it probes

values and meanings regarding emotions, friendship, social differ-

ences, and national identity, which are shared with other middle class

Brazilians. It thus offers material for those who work with Brazilian

society, as an object of study or intervention.

Notes

Received 6 December 2005; accepted 27 February 2007.

This article is based on the research project Are we Westerns? The construction of

national identity among intellectuals supported by the Programa Pro-Cincia of the

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. I thank Maria Claudia Coelho and Mark

Harris for having read and commented on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Address correspondence to Claudia Barcellos Rezende, Department of Social Sciences,

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rua Ipu, 24, Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ22281-040, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]

1. In contrast, Uruguayans in Spain deal with a lack of stereotyped images that apply

to them and see themselves, together with Argentinians, as more Europeans than

the rest of Latin Americans (Paredes 2005).

2. I analyse elsewhere (Rezende 2003) how this notion of the emotional Brazilian is

developed in some of the works of intellectuals in the 1930s.

3. All English translations from Portuguese are mine.

4. This particular form of distancing themselves from a Brazilian identity is also shown

in Norvells (2002) analysis of how these authors write about racial miscegenation. In

an ambiguous way, they vary from treating Brazilians as a product of the mixture ofthree races/peoples to seeing Brazilians as continuations of the Portuguese, who as

active subjects mixed only with Indians and Africans.

5. In this sense, this groups notion of friendship approached a wider Western concep-

tion which considers individual criteria and choice as the fundamental pillars of the

relationship (Allan 1989; Silver 1989).

6. Chatterjee (1993) discusses a similar process in India that particularly valued its pat-

terns of domestic life in comparison to its Western equivalents.

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