Moisés Lino e Silva

Moisés Lino e Silva is a social anthropologist, professor at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil and a World Social Science fellow of the International Social Science Council. He is originally from Goiás. The scholar is an editorial board member of Cadernos de Campo, an anthropology journal published by the University of São Paulo. In 2019, he won the Global Religion Research Initiative Award, given by the University of Notre Dame. Lino e Silva was also named an ALARI Fellow (2019-2020) at Harvard University. He was appointed visiting associate professor in women's and gender studies at Harvard University in the Fall 2023, where he taught "Queer Lives in the Global South" and "Queer Ethnographies."

Education

Moisés Lino e Silva has a BA in international relations from the University of Brasília (2002), a master's degree in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (2007), and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of St Andrews (2012). He pursued postdoctoral research in the same area at Harvard University in 2013.

Scholarship

Lino e Silva's field of focus is that of political anthropology, with a specialty in the ethnographic study of liberty and authority. This is examined in relation to issues such as poverty, sexuality, race, and religion. His initial in-field research considered the aspects and issues of freedom as experienced and perceived by slum dwellers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and more recently in Nigeria.

Lino e Silva is the author of Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022, which focuses on Black people, children, and LGBTQ people, especially travestis, in a favela or working-class, poor community in Rio de Janeiro. The author explains in an interview that he wrote this book based on his ethnographic research when he "realized that favela dwellers have developed their own theories of liberalism, for example, which are based on their specific life experiences," also indicating that "this favela knowledge on liberalism does not necessarily follow the same logic of Eurocentric ideas on liberty and freedom." As Cassandra White (Georgia State University) notes in Contemporary Sociology, Lino e Silva "discusses the importance of considering the nuances of practices that are morally and ethically charged and arguably exploitative play in the lives of our research participants/interlocutors," including "[...] work as practiced by his research participants." He has also been interviewed by Reighan Gillam (Dartmouth College) about this book for New Books Network. The book has been translated to Portuguese under the title Liberalismo Minoritário: Vida Travesti na Favela (Edições70, 2023).

Minoritarian Liberalism has been reviewed by different independent outlets, such as the Allegra Lab and in ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America. A review essay by Stephanie Clare in Feminist Theory, published by Oxford University Press, cites this work among "powerful contributions invested in what we might call decolonial freedom." The wider press in Brazil has covered Lino e Silva's scholarship in many outlets. On June 28, 2023, he was interviewed by TV Jornal, a Brazilian TV station in Recife, Pernambuco, as part of their celebration of the International Day of LGBTQIA+ Pride.

In a public endorsement of Minoritarian Liberalism, political theorist Wendy Brown affirmed: "Lino e Silva's remarkable book fulfills its ambition to decolonize the freedom at liberalism's heart. Equal parts erudite political theory and delicate anthropology, it roams a favela in Rio for stories and imaginaries across Blackness, queerness, gender, and class, where it discovers everywhere the bubbling of minoritarian desires and practices of freedom. This beautifully written work does nothing less than bring liberalism--as theory and practice--into the twenty-first century."

The anthropologist's first book, Freedom in Practice: Governance, Autonomy and Liberty in the Everyday, is a collection of eight essays by diverse authors and was coedited with Huon Wardle. It includes a co-written introduction with Wardle and a chapter by Lino e Silva on the concept of "queer liberation" in a Brazilian favela. The book was reviewed by the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI). In his analysis, Luca Parisoli (Universita della Calabria) affirms: "this book is a very interesting contribution to a conceptual issue: why is freedom so rarely a keyword in anthropological analyses?"

Public Engagements

• 2018: Lino e Silva's latest research on freedom, art, and religion in Nigeria was exhibited at the São Paulo Museum of Art.
• 2019: Cadu Oliveira interviewed him for Goethe Institut regarding the current state of theoretical production in the Global South.
• 2020: Djassi DaCosta Johnson interviewed him for the Harvard Graduate School of Design News on his research in Nigeria.
• 2021: Lino e Silva's work was featured in the Queer/ing Ethnography workshop at Harvard University.
• 2022: His research on favelas was featured in Sapiens Magazine, an editorially independent anthropology magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In this same year, he gave a talk for the Brazil Working Group at Rutgers University and had a public debate with Jack Halberstam at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division in New York City.
• 2023: Lino e Silva was invited by Columbia University to organize a panel for the international conference Queer Aqui Rio. Also in this year, he delivered a public lecture at the Engaging Vulnerability Research Seminar at Uppsala University. He also presented his book Minoritarian Liberalism at the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research at the University of St Andrews.

Publications (Books)

• Lino e Silva, Moisés, and Huon Wardle, eds. (2017). Freedom in Practice: Governance, Autonomy and Liberty in the Everyday. Oxford: Routledge.
• Lino e Silva, Moisés (2022). Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lino e Silva, Moisés (2023). Liberalismo Minoritário: Vida Travesti na Favela. São Paulo: Edições70.

See also

• Human rights in Brazil
• LGBT rights in Brazil
• Liberalism in Brazil
• Transgender rights in Brazil