Call for Papers for the Dossier “Domestic Orders, Consumption, and Contemporary Morals: Romantic Ethics and Conservative Perspectives in Everyday Life”
This call for papers invites contributions investigating the complex reconfigurations of domesticities, consumption patterns, and moral economies among urban middle classes in contemporary Brazil. At the core of this proposal is the hypothesis that recent political, economic, and technological shifts, triggered by the political-institutional crisis of 2013, the 2016 impeachment, and the subsequent consolidation of political-religious conservatism (2018-2022) produced a profound rearrangement in the relationships between the public sphere and private life.
Faced with the dismantling of social safety nets, the erosion of formal social mobility promises, and widespread labor market precarization driven by platform economies and uberization, a systematic re-privatization of the social has taken place. Collective guarantees have been replaced by individual entrepreneurship discourse, transferring the responsibility for social cohesion and economic risk management directly onto the household.
This shift overburdened contemporary homes, transforming them into territories filled with monetary pressures, moral conflicts, and digital visibility dynamics. The dossier encourages an ethnographic, genealogical, and historical perspective on domesticity in Brazil, examining how comfort, romantic ethics, gender roles, and consumer culture are today aesthetically displayable and monetized online (e.g., tradwife movement, evangelical influencers).
However, the re-privatization of social risks and the exacerbation of traditional gender roles carry dramatic consequences. Unpaid care workload, mental fatigue, and the impossibility of sustaining material lifestyle standards generate a 'toxic domesticity', marked by rising misogyny, domestic violence, and femicide.
We welcome contributions from Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science, as well as interdisciplinary approaches that integrate Communication, Religious Studies, and the Political Economy of Platforms, addressing the following thematic areas:
- Platform economies, the precariousness of labor, and the reconfiguration of domestic life;
- Romantic ethics, the ethics of care, and their conservative uses;
- Domestic consumption, moral economies, and symbolic distinction;
- Gender, the division of reproductive labor, and female domesticity;
- The aestheticization of the home, digital visibility, and domestic pedagogies;
- Political socialization, affective dispositions, and everyday conservatism.
Suggested bibliography:
ARIÈS, Philippe. História da vida privada. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.
CAMPBELL, Colin. A ética romântica e o espírito do consumismo moderno. Rio de
Janeiro: Rocco, 2001.
COOPER, Melinda. Family values: between neoliberalism and the new social conservatism.
New York: Zone Books, 2017.
DAMATTA, Roberto. A casa & a rua: espaço, cidadania, mulher e morte no Brasil. Rio de
Janeiro: Rocco, 1997.
DOUGLAS, Mary; ISHERWOOD, Baron. O mundo dos bens: para uma antropologia do
consumo. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2004.
FACCHINI, Regina; SÍVORI, Horácio. Conservadorismo, direitos, moralidades e violência:
situando um conjunto de reflexões a partir da Antropologia. Cadernos Pagu, Campinas, p.
e175000, 2017. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1590/18094449201700500000.
FEDERICI, Silvia. Revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist
struggle. Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
GIDDENS, Anthony. A transformação da intimidade: sexualidade, amor e erotismo nas
sociedades modernas. São Paulo: UNESP, 1993.
ILLOUZ, Eva. O consumo da utopia romântica: amor e as contradições culturais do
capitalismo. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2011.
NAGLE, Angela. Kill all normies: online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and
the Alt-right. Connecticut: Tantor Audio, 2021.
ROCHA, Camila. Menos Marx, mais Mises: o liberalismo e a nova direita no Brasil. São
Paulo: Todavia, 2021.
SOLANO, Esther. O ódio como política: a reinvenção das direitas no Brasil. São Paulo:
Boitempo, 2018.
VAN DIJCK, José; POELL, Thomas; DE WAAL, Martijn. The platform society: public
values in a connective world. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
VELHO, Gilberto. Projeto e metamorfose: antropologia das sociedades complexas. Rio de
Janeiro: Zahar, 1994.
WEBER, Max. A ética protestante e o espírito do capitalismo. São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 2004.
ZELIZER, Viviana. A negociação da intimidade. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2011.
ZUBOFF, Shoshana. The age of surveillance capitalism. New York: Public Affairs, 2019.
Given the evaluation criteria imposed on scientific journals, up to 50% of the articles may be authored by doctoral students; the remaining articles must be authored by at least one PhD holder. All submitted articles will undergo double-blind peer review by external reviewers, in accordance with the journal’s policy. To account for the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches across the different empirical fields and issues to be discussed, articles from the fields of Anthropology and Social Sciences will be given preference, provided they meet the criteria of exogeny in relation to UFF.
Organizers: Laura Graziela Figueiredo Gomes (UFF/Brazil), Patricia Pavesi (UFES/Brazil) and Shirley Torquato (UEMG/Brazil).
Deadline: January 20, 2027.
NOTE: It is mandatory to indicate in the “Comments to the Editors” field that the submission is for the “Domestic Orders” special issue.
Contributions may be submitted until January 20, 2027, via the journal’s online system:
https://periodicos.uff.br/antropolitica/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions
