Paulo G. Pinto earned his PhD in Anthropology from Boston University. He has done fieldwork in Syria since 1999 and with the Muslim communities in Brazil since 2003. He is author of articles and books on Sufism and other forms of Islam in contemporary Syria, as well as on Arab ethnicity and Muslim communities in Brazil. His recent publications include: "Oh Syria, God Protects You’: Islam as Cultural Idiom under Bashar al-Asad,”“The Anthropologist and the Initiated: Reflections on the Ethnography of Mystical Experience Among the Sufis of Aleppo, Syria." “Arab Ethnicity and Diasporic Islam: A Comparative Approach to Processes of Identity Formation and Religious Codification in the Muslim Communities in Brazil,” and "Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East."
He co-edited with Baudoin Dupret, Thomas Pierret and Kathryn Spelman-Poots "Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performancesand Everyday Practices." He is currently co-editing with John Karam and Maria del-Mar Logroño-Narbona a to-be-pubished book titled "Crescent of Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean and Latino USA."
The Shattered Nation:
Protest, Violence and Social Fragmentation in the Syrian Uprising
Paulo G. Pinto
Professor of Anthropology and
Director of the Center for Middle East Studies,
Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
Join the discussion on the social and political dynamics of the 2011 uprising in Syria. The talk will cover the social actors involved in the uprising; the use of Islamic vocabulary, symbols and spaces as cultural idiom in the protests; the impact of the repressive strategies of the Ba’thist regime; and the local issues that are being expressed through the political idiom of anti-Ba’thist protest.
