Call for papers: dossier Feasts and cities: festive rites and difference in contemporary public space

2026-04-15

Organized by: Hugo Menezes Neto (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Leonardo Leal Esteves (Universidade Federal da Paraíba) e Luciana de Oliveira Chianca (Universidade Federal da Paraíba)

Public feasts often play a central role in city life. Amidst the growing individualism and processes of social disintegration experienced in urban centers, festive rites reinforce community ties, organize time, revive traditions and memories, imprint shared meanings on life, and project, freely and creatively, other futures for our way of being in the world. Furthermore, collectively occupying the streets and public spaces, on these and other occasions, becomes an opportunity to guarantee processes of sociability, exchange, and coexistence among different bodies, subjects, and collectives in urban centers. Given the creative, mobilizing, and often transgressive potential of some public feasts, these events have, however, been the target of attempts at control and repression throughout history.

In addition, urban centers, where these events take place, have become business environments focused predominantly on the interests of investors, tourism agents, and other social actors involved in the real estate and financial markets, rather than just places of residence and encounter between different individuals. In this context, public feasts have been increasingly accompanied by processes of segregation, tensions, and disputes between different social actors who seek to interfere in the dynamics of these events and the spaces where they take place.

In this dossier, we seek to bring together works that reflect on the relationship between public feasts and cities in contemporary times. In particular, we welcome articles resulting from ethnographic research on this theme that align with one or more of the following different axes:

  • Feasts and cities,
  • The difference in public space in the festive context,
  • Control of bodies and subjects in public feasts,
  • Feasts and issues of gender, race, and sexual diversity,
  • Feasts as spaces of segregation, tension, investment, or consumption,
  • Feasts, heritage, memory, and tourism

We hope to receive submissions from different institutions and regions of Brazil and other countries, prioritizing the interface between anthropology and other areas of the humanities. We accept works in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.

 

You can also submit papers in a continuous stream to the FREE SECTIONS. In this case, submissions should be made in the ARTICLE, TRANSLATION, REVIEW, or INTERVIEW sections.

Submission deadline: August 15, 2026