Elena Reichl M.A.

As a social and cultural anthropologist at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas) at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz I am working – together with Elena Hernández – as a research assistant and doctoral candidate on Project B04: "Sorting with Care: Human Differentiation in Contact Zones of Support,” directed by Heike Drotbohm. Within that project, I am responsible for the Brazilian case study.

The focus of my work is the question of which human differentiations, in which form and intensity, are embedded in the everyday practices of collectives that are committed to providing support to the poor, homeless or otherwise marginalized. During my field research in 2022-2024, which spanned one year in the cities of São Paulo and Curitiba, issues of redistributive justice were the subject of intense debate due to the presidential election campaign.

Through participant observation I integrate myself into the everyday practices of community kitchens, urban land occupations and Christian communities to investigate the linguistic forms and bodily performances assumed in these mostly asymmetrical constellations, in the negotiation of social roles in concrete interactions, the imaginations of humanity associated with them, and how these manifest in political notions of distributive justice. The focus of my research is on both the (gendered, racialized and milieu-specific) self-classification and classification by others of those organizing and providing support, and on those in need of, receiving, questioning, or rejecting support.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich