From Social Gaze to Bureaucratic Standards: Doing Race in Affirmative Action Practices in Brazil

拟议的项目分析了巴西扶持行动政策背景下的种族分类程序。集中在最近建立的公开招标程序的评估做法，我们问种族作为一个类别的差异是如何建立和相关的过程中，官僚，行政和法律的行动。 为此，我们研究了种族如何在三个不同的环境中表达：在评估实践中，配额候选人的自我分类是“验证”的;在负责制定相应标准的政府机构中;在配额候选人要求对其自我进行负面评价的法律的案件中，分类为“黑色”。我们不是问候选人在这些程序中是否被“正确”分类，而是对所谓的“社会凝视”的运作感兴趣，这被认为是巴西人对种族的看法的结构，评估委员会应该用它来看待候选人。因此，我们的研究将遵循以下研究问题：1）“社会凝视”是如何制定和实施的评估程序？2)政府和准国家机构如何将这种“社会目光”转化为官僚标准和指标？3)委员会决定的证据是如何产生的？什么算证据？该项目采用的理论方法强调，只有通过产生、稳定和维持目标的具体做法，目标才具有相关性，其主要目标是从人种学的角度了解巴西在扶持行动做法中如何处理种族问题。从方法上讲，主要战略将包括：a）对评估委员会进行无声观察; B）与委员会成员和各机构工作人员进行访谈，并与他们交往和跟踪; c）参与评估委员会成员培训和讲习班的观察; d）对法律的案件和政府准则进行文件分析。这种密切的伴奏的总体研究目标将是了解不同的行为者如何执行和描述评估实践和种族分类，而不是从政治或道德上判断这项工作。将科学技术研究中的后殖民方法与分类实践，官僚制人类学和公民研究的研究领域联系起来，该项目对种族的人类学研究作出了重要贡献。此外，我们提供了一个新的采取在巴西的平权行动的问题（以及在其他设置比较，以及）通过集中在分类的做法，并通过人种学分析在这一领域的官僚行动和评估的做法-一个方面，到目前为止已经得到很少的关注。

The proposed project analyzes racial classification processes in the context of Brazilian affirmative action policies. Focusing on recently established assessment practices for public tender procedures, we ask how race as a category of difference is established and made relevant in the course of bureaucratic, administrative and legal action. To this end, we examine how race is articulated in three distinct settings: in assessment practices in which quota candidates’ self-classification is 'verified'; in governmental institutions that are responsible for the setting of the respective standards; and in legal cases in which quota candidates appeal to negative assessments of their self-classification as 'black'.Instead of asking whether candidates are classified ‘correctly’ in these procedures, we are interested in the workings of the so-called 'social gaze', which is assumed to structure Brazilians’ perception of race and with which the assessment commissions are supposed to look at the candidates. Our study will therefore be guided by the following research questions:1) How is the 'social gaze' enacted and operationalized in the assessment procedures? 2) How do governmental and quasi-state institutions translate this 'social gaze' into bureaucratic standards and indicators?3) How is evidence for the commissions’ decisions produced? What counts as evidence?Using theoretical approaches which emphasize that objects only become relevant through concrete practices that produce, stabilize and maintain them, the project’s main objective is to gain an ethnographically grounded understanding of how race is done in affirmative action practices in Brazil. Methodologically, the primary strategies will consist of a) silent observation of assessment commissions, b) interviews as well as socializing with and shadowing of commission members and staff at the respective institutions, c) participant observation in trainings and workshops for members of assessment commissions, d) documental analysis of legal cases and governmental guidelines. The overall research aim of this close accompaniment will be to learn how the different actors carry out and describe the assessment practices and the classification of race, not to judge this work politically or morally.Linking postcolonial approaches within Science and Technology Studies with the research fields of classificatory practices, the anthropology of bureaucracy and citizenship studies, the project makes an important contribution to the anthropological study of race. In addition, we offer a new take on the question of affirmative action in Brazil (and comparatively in other settings as well) by focusing on the very practices of categorization and by ethnographically analyzing bureaucratic action and assessment practices in this field – an aspect that until now has received little attention.