Of utopias, portals and urban anthropologies: Gilberto Velho in Lisbon

Abstract

The article celebrates Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Velho (Rio de Janeiro, 1945-2012) by commenting on his influence and impact on Portuguese scholarship. The author describes her first contact with the book A Utopia Urbana, an original monograph about living in Rio’s Copacabana neighborhood. She describes the impact of the book at a time when Portuguese and Brazilian anthropologists hardly knew of one another; she further describes how that estrangement gave way to intense academic interchange between the two communities, a change in which Gilberto Velho had an important role.