An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.     

Filiation as a crossroads in Bahia

Drawing on ethnographic material collected in Bahia (Brazil) between 2004 and 2011, this article presents an alternative account of the notion of ‘filiation’ that avoids the equivoques concerning this concept that are dominant within contemporary anthropological discourses on kinship. The story of a lay preacher whose faith responds to her lack of a father figure illuminates how the constitution of personhood is based on filiation as a triangulation.