DaMatta: cronista de duas culturas

Abstract

The fact that Roberto DaMatta lived for a long time as a visiting lecturer at Notre Dame University in Indiana provided him with the opportunity of undertaking an ethnographic observation of the behavior of the American people. Such observations were carried out through his frequent contacts with university staff members and mainly in his daily life activities. Through his long walks along the streets of Salt Bend, he drew his comparisons with the observations carried out in Brazil. An author of a classical text on the role of the street in Brazilian culture, it was only natural that he focused his attention on the meaning of the street to Americans. During his stay, he produced numerous chronicles for many Brazilian newspapers. Many of those chronicles were compiled into a book