Queerly Cosmopolitan

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Be-longing

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. A Middle-of-Nowhere Somewhere

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 3-22

   3. From Terehell to Terenowhere

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 23-39

   4. Chique Distinction in a Big Small Town

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 41-71

3. Queerly Cosmopolitan

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 73-73

      PDF

   2. Nocturnal Bohemia

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 75-95

   3. Black Sheep by Day

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 97-120

   4. Friends of Dusk and Dawn

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 121-141

   5. Epilogue: Queerness as Belonging

      • Timothy Eugene Murphy

      Pages 143-149

4. Back Matter

   Pages 151-157

   PDF

An ethnography of urban citizenship, global belonging, and queerness in a rapidly growing provincial city in the Global South, Queerly Cosmopolitan explores how people develop a sense of belonging in a city understood by many to be “unimportant” and “in the middle of nowhere.” In his exploration of the city of Teresina and its inhabitants’ attempts to establish a sense of belonging and self-worth, Timothy Eugene Murphy creatively employs queer theory to investigate a community of bohemians. As he follows the participants through different realms of life—nocturnal bohemia, work, family, and intimate friendships—Murphy demonstrates how widely circulating cultural forms, from music to sexuality, offer upwardly mobile communities ways to fashion cosmopolitan lives in even the most peripheral locations.  

• Bohemia
• alternative communities
• sexuality
• queer communities
• globalization
• globalized
• queer nightlife
• intimate friendships
• cosmopolitan
• Teresina, Brazil
• Northern Brazil
• urban studies
• middle class
• class consciousness
• upward mobility
• social status
• ethnography
• Latin american studies

“Queerly Cosmopolitan offers a rare anthropological glimpse of a now common global condition: middle-class life in the fast-growing, lower-tier cities of the developing world. How do people construct a sense of belonging and self-worth in a place that, in the Brazilian national imagination, is a provincial “nowhere”? Creatively employing queer theory, Timothy Murphy follows an aspirational avant-garde who attempt to transform their command over global cosmopolitan styles, practices, and norms into the means of claiming a valued place within the local social universe. Murphy deftly demonstrates how widely circulating global cultural forms—from music to sexualities—offer upwardly-mobile communities ways to fashion cosmopolitan lives in even the most peripheral locations.” (Mark Liechty, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, and author of Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal)

“Timothy Murphy’s new book, Queerly Cosmopolitan, is a rich ethnographic portrait of the everyday lives of a self-identified ‘community of bohemians’ (in Brazilian Portuguese, the ‘galera’) in an ‘out-of-the-way’ city in the global South. It explores how work and family, bohemian nightlife, intimate friendships, and alternative sexual and gender identities and communities take shape and give meaning to life in Teresina, Brazil. It brilliantly documents the ways in which even supposedly distant and isolated locations in fact become highly cosmopolitan realities within the global system of the contemporary information age.” (Richard Parker, Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences and Anthropology and Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, USA, and author of Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male Homosexuality and Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil)

“In this beautifully written, engaging, and highly accessible ethnography, Murphy offers an intimate and vivid account of everyday practice of belonging, place-making, identity formation, and self-cultivation in a far-away Brazilian city that is going through profound socioeconomic changes. Exploring the intersection of same-sex desires, bohemian culture milieu, and urban community-building, this innovative book redefines ‘queerness’ and reveals a different kind of cosmopolitanism emerging on the edge of society. Timely and a joy to read!” (Li Zhang, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, USA, and author of In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis)

“Insightful, creative, and engaging, this book is an important contribution to the study of the city and the meaning of queerness. Its vivid description brings the city to life and its rich stories provide an intimate look at the daily life of urban dwellers and how they negotiate the local and global discourses that shape their daily life and subjectivities. It uniquely contributes to how time and space are practiced and illustrates how the interplay between the spatial and the temporal shapes be-longing and different ways of doing and being.” (Farha Ghannam, Professor of Anthropology at Swarthmore College, USA, and author of Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo)

• Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA

  Timothy Eugene Murphy

Timothy Eugene Murphy is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Worcester State University, USA.

Policies and ethics