Bio
Jean Muteba Rahier is Professor of Anthropology and African & African Diaspora Studies at Florida International University (FIU), where he served as director of the African & African Diaspora Studies Program from 2008 to 2016. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the Université de Paris X, at Nanterre, France. He is the author of three books (a fourth is in the works), and the editor or co-editor of five books. He has authored more than 80 articles and book chapters, and was, from January 2002 to the summer 2007, the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. He is currently serving as Director of the Observatory of Justice for Afrodescendants in Latin America (OJALA) at FIU. He is a co-founder of OJALA. His research interests, as shown in his CV, span West and Central Africa, and the African diaspora in the Americas, and mostly in Latin America. His most recent Visiting Scholar positions have been at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador; at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador; the University of Ghana, in Legon, Ghana; the University of Cape Coast, Ghana; and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal. He served as PI on a three-year NSF-funded research project, “A Multifaceted Examination of the Application of Ethno-Racial Law in Contemporary Multiculturalist Ecuador” from August 2021 to December 2024. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES) from August 2021 to December 2025. Some information about what he is working on now can be gathered from looking at the following sections.
Selected Publications
Selected Single (and Collective)-Authored Books
Rahier, Jean Muteba, with Diana Solano-Gómez, Francia Moreno-Zapata, Jacqueline Pabón, and John Anton Sánchez. In Preparation. Afrodescendants and the Judicial System in Ecuador: Race Regulation Customary Law and the Primacy of Indigeneity. We have signed a book contract with Cambridge University Press and will deliver the final manuscript to them by October 1 2026.
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2013. Kings for Three Days: The Play of Race and Gender in an Afro-Ecuadorian Festival. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press.
- Reviewed by Choice in 2013.
Selected Edited Books
Rahier, Jean Muteba and Ibrahima Thiaw (Editors). In preparation. Theorizing the African Diaspora from Within and Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology.
Pierre, Jemima and Jean Muteba Rahier (Editors). 2026. The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity. Boston, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rahier, Jean Muteba (Editor). 2012. Black Social Movements in Latin America: From Monocultural Mestizaje to Multiculturalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- This title was selected by Choice, in its January 2013 issue, as an “Outstanding Academic Title published in 2012.”
Guest Editor of Special Issues or Special Sections of Scholarly Journals
Rahier, Jean Muteba. In Preparation. Guest Editor of a Special Section of the journal Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES) entitled “On the usefulness and limitations of the ‘settler colonial studies paradigm’ in Latin American studies.” to be published in Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES)
Rahier, Jean Muteba, Carlos Agudelo, and Jhon Antón Sanchéz. 2022. Guest Editors of the special issue, “La utilidad relativa y limitada de las ‘leyes étnico-raciales’ para el reconocimiento y defensa de los derechos de los afrodescendientes en su vida diaria y en los sistemas de justicia latinoamericanos,” of the journal Abya-Yala: Revista sobre Acesso à Justiça e Direitos nas Américas, published by the University of Brasilia, Brazil (183 pages). https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/abya/issue/view/2334
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2019. Guest Editor of a special issue of the journal Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES) entitled “Justice for Afrodescendants in Latin America: An Interrogation of Ethnoracial Law.” 14(3) (December): 215-358. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rlac20/14/3?nav=tocList
Recent Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Rahier, Jean Muteba. Submitted. “The Settler Colonial Studies Paradigm as a Discursive Reaffirmation of the Preeminence of Indigeneity in the Field of Ethnoracial Alterity in the Andean Sub-Region.” To be included in the special section “On the usefulness and limitations of the ‘settler colonial studies paradigm’ in Latin American Studies.” Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES).
Rahier, Jean Muteba. Submitted. “‘Home’ as a set of dissonant, multivocal narratives: self-ethnographic vignettes on the microphysics of colonialism in the Belgian Congo and its aftermath.” Transforming Anthropology.
Agudelo, Carlos Efrén, Jhon Antón Sánchez, and Jean Muteba Rahier. 2022. “Derechos Colectivos y Leyes de Igualdad Racial para Afrodescendientes en la Práctica de los Sistemas de Justicia en la América Latina de los 2020s.” Introduction to special issue “La utilidad relativa y limitada de las ‘leyes étnico-raciales’ para el reconocimiento y defensa de los derechos de los afrodescendientes en su vida diaria y en los sistemas de justicia latinoamericanos,” Abya-Yala: Revista sobre Acesso à Justiça e Direitos nas Américas, University of Brasilia, Brazil: 7-22. https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/abya/article/view/40713/32805
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2021. “The Observatory of Justice for Afrodescendants in Latin America (OJALA) as an initiative of engaged anthropology for the promotion and defense of human rights.” Dossier Anthropology on Latin America and the Caribbean today: New Theoretical and Methodological Challenges, Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, Published by the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA), Volume 18, http://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412021v18a811, https://www.scielo.br/j/vb/a/7sQgMNsyjKzjVXHg6SrmQMr/?format=pdf&lang=en
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2020. "From the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to Contemporary Ethnoracial Law in Multicultural Ecuador: The 'Changing Same' of Anti-Black Racism as Revealed with Two Lawsuits Filed by Afrodescendants." Current Anthropology 61(S22): S248-S259. https://doi.org/10.1086/710061
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2026. “Whiteness, Indigeneity, Blackness, and Ethnoracial Mixing in Latin American Ideologies of National Identity, from Monocultural Mestizaje to Contemporary Multiculturalism.” In The Cambridge Handbook for Race and Ethnicity, edited by J. Pierre and J.M. Rahier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137-157.
Pierre, Jemima and Jean Muteba Rahier. 2026. “Introduction: Anthropology and the Legacies of Race.” In The Cambridge Handbook for Race and Ethnicity, edited by J. Pierre and J.M. Rahier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-20.
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2025. “Early European Feminism at the Service of Colonialism in the Belgian Congo.” In The Anthropology of White Supremacy: A Reader, edited by A. Beliso-De Jesús, J. Pierre, and J. Rana. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 109-122.
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2025. “Afterword. The Actual Transnationalization of Black Studies/African Diaspora Studies: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives.” In Black Studies in Europe: An Anthology of Soil and Seeds, edited by Nicole Grégoire, Sarah Fila-Bakabadio, and Jacinthe Mazzocchetti. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 243-264. https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810148758/black-studies-in-europe/
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2020. “Affect and the Memorialization of the Slave Trade: Spontaneous Expressions of Synchronic Global Black Consciousness in the Visitors’ Books at Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, Ghana.” In Private Lives, Public Histories: An Ethnohistory of the Intimate Past, edited by R. Corr and J. Fewkes, New York: Lexington Books, 19-41.
Areas of Expertise
Sociocultural Anthropology, African and African Diaspora Studies, Afro-Latin America, Colonialism, Democratic Republic of Congo, Memorialization of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Degrees
PhD, University of Paris X, Nanterre, 1994