Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil

FIVE • Ethnic Reappropriation in the Country Club Circuit

F I V E  Ethnic Reappropriation in the Country Club Circuit S YRIAN, LEBANESE, OR ARAB nationalisms—in addition to Eastern Christian and Islamic traditions—inspired dozens of social, charity, and religious associations in early twentieth-century São Paulo. Today gaining renown in the colônia and the public sphere, these institutions have become luxurious spaces for the consumption of hummus and caviar, belly and ballroom dances, as well as lute-like oud and karaoke performances. In these hybrid leisure circles, though, socialites of Syrian–Lebanese origin have emphasized Middle Eastern culturalist styles of food, dance, and music that have been popularized in the increasingly diverse Brazilian market. This chapter traces the consumptive formation and transformation of Syrian–Lebanese ethnicity in Brazil through the assimilationist paradigm that lasted until post–World War II times and the diversified service sector model in the late twentieth century. Middle Eastern cultural forms were marginalized in the earlier paradigm but have gained popularity in the current moment. Deemed to be unappetizing, raucous, or exotic by past Brazilian pundits, food, music, and dance with an Arab appeal have been now marketed to those with highbrow and lowbrow tastes. My contention is that Middle Eastern country club directors and members have gained symbolic power in this context and converted it into social capital among (non-Arab) Brazilian elites.1 Situating this development within a large body of scholarship on the politics of food, music, and dance in Brazil, I aim to challenge conventional ways of thinking about cultural appropriation.Whether focusing on feijoada (blackbean stew with meat), Carnival samba schools, or Candomblé, earlier works 122 F I V E emphasized their usurpation by national elites and market forces (Fry 1982; Queiroz 1985). Later work on the same cultural staples has put stress on the ostensible authors, especially their resistance to or contestation of the meanings of the appropriated cultural forms (Browning 1995; Guillermoprieto 1990; Sheriff 1999). I suggest that these approaches employ a similar dichotomy in power relations between “appropriator” and “appropriated.” Even in recent emphases on the agency of the appropriated, scholars depicted appropriators as the primary possessors of power. But what if the appropriated enjoy significant social power? This chapter shows that when a group whose culture is appropriated enjoys such power, it can retake the cultural appropriation in a way that further benefits itself. In the late twentieth century, Middle Eastern culinary, music, and dance forms have been appropriated by the Brazilian national market. Whether it is the lowbrow Habib’s fast-food chain, with more than 150 franchises in the country, or belly dancing in uptown studios and a prime-time soap opera, “Middle Eastern culture”is produced through national circuits (Luxner 2000; Vasconcellos 2000). Ethnic subjects have viewed this popularization of coisas do árabe (things Arab) not as obstructive or degrading, but as a creative integration of Syrian and Lebanese in Brazil. In this milieu, Brazilians of Middle Eastern descent have made claims to more authentic forms of cuisine and dance in their community-owned clubs, despite contracting restaurant staffs and professional dancers from the mainstream market. Inviting influential Arab and non-Arab Brazilians to memorial, culinary, and other events, socialites have converted the newfound symbolic power of ethnic commodities into social capital (Bourdieu 1977: 179–83). Retaking the appropriation of Arab culture, Syrian–Lebanese descendants have sought and gained greater recognition in a consumptively diversified Brazil. “UNSAVORY” DIASPORIC LEISURE CIRCLES IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY Departing Mediterranean harbors to Brazilian ports in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, immigrants traveled alongside emergent Lebanese, Syrian, and Arab nationalist ideas. Such flows resulted in the establishment of more than one hundred Middle Eastern associations in Brazil during the first half of the century. One of the first such entities in São Paulo was the Esporte Clube Sírio (Syrian Sport Club, or ECS), founded by a group of sports-minded moços sírios (Syrian male youth) in 1917. Fundraising in later years enabled the club to purchase a large piece of real estate in the now “noble” neighborhood of Moema. These leisure affairs were romanticized by E T H N I C R E A P P R O P R I AT I O N 123 an Arab Brazilian intellectual as a “spiritual revolution of the immigrant and … a symbol of the idea of civic struggle”(Jamil Safady, as cited...