Based on a 2016 gathering in Rio de Janeiro, this edited volume focuses on the concept of lusotropicalism, the idea of Portugal's tolerance for racial mixture that supposedly made its colonies places of exceptional biological innovation and social harmony. The essays explore lusotropicalism's geopolitical and intellectual contexts, placing both the philosophy and its best-known champion, Gilberto Freyre, in broad interrelations: to academics from Brazil, Portugal, the United States, France, Mozambique, Timor, Angola, and multinational bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); to academic fields of eugenics, genetics, medicine, anthropology, biotypology, and sociology; and to political regimes from fascist and segregationist to liberal and multicultural in the contemporary sense. The volume thus documents the life and times of a long-lived, politically highly useful idea.
With this intellectual history, the editors seek to fortify the long-standing project of debunking lusotropicalism. Perhaps the most effective way they do...
