Jean Muteba Rahier

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, and the editor or co-editor of four 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, spans 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 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador; the Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador; the University of Ghana, in Legon, Ghana; the University of Cape Coast, Ghana; and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal.  He currently serves as PI on the NSF-funded research project, “A Multifaceted Examination of the Application of Ethno-Racial Law in Contemporary Multiculturalist Ecuador.”  Since August 2021, he also is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES). 

Selected Publications

Selected Single-Authored Books 

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  In preparation.  Theorizing the African Diaspora in the 21st Century: From Synchronic Approaches to Diachronic Orientations, and Back.

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  2014.  Blackness in the Andes: Ethnographic Vignettes of Cultural Politics in the Time of Multiculturalism.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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 (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.”

Rahier, Jean Muteba, Percy Hintzen, and Felipe Smith (Editors).  2010.  Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press.

Hintzen, Percy and Jean Muteba Rahier (Editors).  2003.  Problematizing Blackness: Self-Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States, New York and London: Routledge. 

Guest Editor of Special Issues 

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 

 Rahier, Jean Muteba.  2003.  Guest Editor of a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology on “Mestizaje, Mulataje, and Mestiçagem in Latin American Ideologies of National Identity.” 8(1): 40-171. 

Recent Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles 

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  Forthcoming.  “El afecto y la conmemoración de la trata transatlántica de esclavizados: Expresiones espontáneas de conciencia negra global y sincrónica en los comentarios escritos por visitantes negros de los castillos-calabozos de Elmina y Cape Coast, en Ghana.”  Sociocriticism (published by the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France), Dossier Diasporas Negras, Nº XXXVI.

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

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  2019.  Introduction- "Evaluating the usefulness of contemporary ethnoracial law for Afrodescendants in Latin America through the examination of court cases and the appreciation of the state’s processual nature." Special issue guest edited by J.M. Rahier, "Justice for Afrodescendants in Latin America: an interrogation of ethnoracial law," Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES), 14(3): 215–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2019.1673531 

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters 

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. 

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  2019.  “Perspectiva general sobre las independencias africanas.” In De colonias a estados nacionales: independencias y descolonización en América y el mundo en los siglos XIX y XX.” E. Ayala Mora, editor.  Quito and Buenos Aires: Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar-Ecuador y Ediciones Corregidor: 257-275

Rahier, Jean Muteba.  2019.  “The Multicultural Turn, the New Latin American Constitutionalism, and Black Social Movements in the Andean Sub-Region.”  In The Andean World, edited by L. J. Seligmann and K. S. Fine‐Dare, New York, London: Routledge: 389-402.   

Areas of Expertise

Cultural Anthropology, African Diaspora Studies, Afro-Latin America, Colonialism, Democratic Republic of Congo, Memorialization of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Degrees