Description
Book SynopsisAn analysis of the Brazilian illegal gambling game in terms of its rituals and symbols and its contribution to Latin American culture.
Trade Review"This book is fascinating and marked by a richness of detail that keeps a reader's attention. It constitutes an important contribution to the understanding of Brazilian and Latin American culture." —Thomas E. Skidmore, Brown University
"For years, anthropologists have been interested in jogo de bicho as a key Brazilian institution. We now have an English translation uniting Roberto DaMatta's theoretical acumen and knowledge of Brazil with Elena Soarez's field work. In Eagles, Donkeys, and Butterflies, they combine a stunningly effective analysis of the game in terms of rituals and symbols with an enlightening analysis of the structural and symbolic significance of the animals and the numbers associated with them. This is a welcome addition to the literature on the game's cultural meaning and its place in the context of Brazilian society." —Conrad P. Kottak, University of Michigan
“DaMatta and Soárez have performed a valuable service to the field of Brazilian studies. . . The book’s essayistic sections make it a useful window on one dimension of the twentieth-century Brazilian anthropological imagination as it explores how the European anthropology of ‘savages’ can be applied to their own modern, urban society. Thus this book is a study of totemism as a concept in itself as much as it is a book about the elusive and omnipresent animal game.” —Journal of Latin American Studies
