Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil (review)

Brazilian racial democracy is a compelling dream, at best fragmentarily realized and at worst a mystification. The concept suggests that Brazil is a crucible in which antagonistic difference can be transformed into serene unity. But is the imagined outcome an intimate fusion – a Brazil "lindo e trigueiro" – or a harmonious pluralism? John Tofik Karam's fine book Another Arabesque underscores the dream's ambiguity, suggesting that it is just as compatible with the assertion of racial and ethnic distinctions as with their dissolution.

Karam's concise, well-wrought account of the intensification of Syrian-Lebanese (i.e., Arab) identity is a significant contribution to a burgeoning literature on ethnicity in Brazil. Every time an ethnographic or historical piece is added to that scholarly puzzle, a new picture emerges. These days, the Casa Grande and slave quarters can barely be discerned, but still they haven't quite vanished: more on that later.

Karam focuses on the increased recognition and prestige accorded to Arab ethnicity during the period of ascendance of Brazilian neoliberalism. Drawing on an impressive range of materials, including historical documents, newspaper reports, ethnographic vignettes, interviews, and soap operas, he provides a rich account of the trajectory of a Brazilian ethnic category. (Less sure-handed and subtle perhaps are his occasional sallies into questions of Arab ethnicity in the United States, which intermittently acts as a foil to Brazil in his presentation.) While the book offers intriguing sketches rather than in-depth explorations of individuals, it compensates by thinking big, historically and geographically.

Here I can offer only a skeletal summary of Karam's innovative argument, which he fleshes out with acute observations on innumerable issues, from intra-ethnic religious differences to the functions of social clubs to the meanings of food. "Neoliberalism," a contemporary culture with political and economic correlates, anchors the discussion. Its basic elements are the global economy, an emphasis on transparency in political and economic dealings, and transnational marketing practices aimed at niche consumers. Karam suggests that the Brazilian government's shift from protectionist to neoliberal policies during the 1970s and 80s spurred a heightening of the Arab ethnic profile, both outside and within the group. First, the early immigrants' legendary business acumen, disparaged at the time as the sharp practice of peddlers, acquired new lustre as Brazilian and Middle Eastern governments and traders began to court Arab Brazilians as culturally adept international brokers. Second, the neoliberal insistence on transparency served to sharpen the ethnic boundary in complex, contradictory ways. Over the decades Arab Brazilians, a model minority, came to occupy a disproportionate number of high political positions, rendering them especially vulnerable, in the neoliberal climate, to charges of unscrupulous secret dealings. Accusations against them were often framed in ethnically pejorative terms, as during a recent São Paulo corruption scandal detailed by Karam. Influential Arab Brazilians responded by mounting large-scale, reasonably effective campaigns celebrating the group's heritage and its contributions to Brazilian racial democracy, further underlining and elaborating Arab identity. Finally, global commerce has increasingly targeted Arab Brazilians as candidates for Middle Eastern homeland tourism, again emphasizing their ethnic identity and boosting their ethnic awareness.

Whether or not "neoliberalism" merits the causal prominence that Karam gives it, he certainly has his finger on important political and economic developments that have helped intensify ethnicity in Brazil, and not just among Arab Brazilians. I left his book with new doubts about the prospects of the fusion version of racial democracy. But for me the most fascinating feature of the ethnography was its demonstration that the pluralism variant remains compelling for most Arab Brazilians. Despite (or perhaps because of?) the recent ethnic intensification, Arab Brazilians continue to invoke the mantra of racial democracy. Nor is such invocation simply a recitation of platitudes, a rhetorical assertion of Brazilianness in the public forum. Karam, in some respects a privileged listener because of his own Lebanese ancestry, takes us inside: we hear Arabs speaking to Arabs. Most striking is his discussion of roots tourism sponsored by...