The town of Presidente Prudente is nestled into many a rolling green hill, in the far north-west of the state of Sao Paulo. It’s pretty, grungey, small and provincial - it seems particularly apt that I am reading Middlemarch at the moment. I am staying in a ‘hotel’ which is populated by large groups of starey men (what a surprise), across the road from the Mercado Santa Teresa (which couldn’t be any more unsaintly). So far, I am spending my time checking out archives and talking to academical types at the State University of Sao Paulo, Prudente campus, aka UNESP (not to be confused with UNOESTE, or UNIESP, which the taxi driver did on my first day here, thanks to my superb Argentinian/French/Italian/American accent - no-one ever guesses that I am Australian, something that is perversely pleasing to me). I get out to assentimentos in the region next week, and I really need to finish drafting an article I’ve been working on for about 48 years now. Can anyone give me a ‘for dummies’ rundown of Hans Joas’ ‘The Creativity of Action’? and anything more recent than 1994 by Scott Lash and/or John Urry?
I am intermittently entertained by local TV - particularly the Futura channel, with programmes such as ‘Notas 10′, gorgeously dedicated to educating the peeps on the difference between racial prejudice and racial discrimination, interspliced with right-on ads like this one for AfroReggae that shows a reggae artist, chalk in hand, transforming gunshot marks on the wall into musical notes. I am confused at how Petrobras (petroleum company) appears to be sponsoring everything social (including the government’s Zero Hunger campaign) and Bradesco (a bank) does everything cultural (including free arthouse theatre in Consolocao, Sao Paulo city). And finally - 24 hour evangelical Christian TV would be pure hysteria if it wasn’t real.