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Roberto DaMatta, one of the foremost Brazilian anthropologists, and his colleague Elena Soárez approach the question of gambling in popular culture in general and its treatment in social anthropology in particular. They focus on the "animal game," a kind of popular gambling entertainment or lottery within Brazil in which locals bet on a list of twenty-five animals. They argue that the success of this game, which originated in 1882 with the founding of the first zoo in Rio de Janeiro, and the social release the game provides are significant aspects of Brazilian social history and of the Brazilian "identity." Within the animal game, players "totemize" and identify with various animals. DaMatta and Soárez use this identification as a lens through which to view Brazil’s modernity, society, the significance of gambling, and even the role of animal images in Brazilian and Western society.
Appearing for the first time in English, this well-written work moves smoothly between comprehensive analysis and field observations of specific behaviors and practices, such as the lucky tricks and devices invested with magical thinking by those who play the game. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, Brazilian studies, and Latin American cultural studies.
“DaMatta and Soárez have performed a valuable service to the field of Brazilian studies. . . The book’s essayistic sections make it a useful window on one dimension of the twentieth-century Brazilian anthropological imagination as it explores how the European anthropology of ‘savages’ can be applied to their own modern, urban society. Thus this book is a study of totemism as a concept in itself as much as it is a book about the elusive and omnipresent animal game.” —Journal of Latin American Studies
Robert DaMatta is The Reverend Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and Senior Fellow at The Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame. He has published several books, including A Divided World: Apinaye Social Structure.
Elena Soárez is a scriptwriter.