Karine Narahara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas (UNT). Dr. Narahara is an Afro-Brazilian anthropologist with a long experience working with environmental public policy in Brazil, and collaborating with Black, Afro-Indigenous, and Native American communities in Brazil and Argentina. Her research interests include Environmental Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, Ethnographic Methods, and Latin America. In her recent book, based on her Ph.D. dissertation, she presents an ethnography about the Mapuche people and their conflicts with the oil industry in Patagonia, including the impacts of this industry on public health. A brief explanation of her research with the Mapuche people can be found here. More recently, she is investigating the academic production of Black and Native American scholars, looking on how they affect the concept of "Other". Based on the works of these scholars, she is also exploring aspects of environmental racism that cross Western (cosmo)politics. Dr. Narahara is a member of the Ilê Asé Aganju Isolá, a Candomblé community (an Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice) in Rio de Janeiro, and collaborates with the Legitime Defense Collective, a Black theater group from São Paulo (Brazil).

Education

2018, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

2011, M.A., Cultural Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

2017, Lic., Social Sciences, Lutheran University of Brazil

2003, B.S., Biological Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Selected Publications

Narahara, Karine L. and Thiago M. Cardoso. Dossier Which World in Ruins? The Anthropocene in Question, Revista de Antropologia Social - R@U (forthcoming 2023).

Narahara, Karine L. and Inara Nascimento. Special Issue When the 'Other' is the Anthropologist: Reflections on Contemporary Ethnographic Productions, Revista Mediações, v. 27, n. 3, Dec. 2022.

Narahara, Karine. 2022. L. In Mapuche's Territory: Petroleum Companies and Cosmopolitics in Argentinian Patagonia. Rio de Janeiro: Ape'ku. 380 p.

Narahara, Karine L. Petroleum companies and cosmopolitical practices in Mapuche's territory. Tellus, Campo Grande, MS, ano 21, n. 46, p. 185-212, 2021.

Selected Presentations

Narahara, Karine L. 2020. "An Anthropology Beyond the 'Other': Reflections of A Black Anthropologist Among the Mapuche". Paper presented at the 32nd Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA).

Narahara, Karine L. 2021. "Petroleum Companies and Cosmopolitical Practices in Mapuche's Territory". Paper presented at the XIII Biennal Conference of the Society for Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), University of Virginia.

Art Production

Diáspora so(u)l, dance performance by Camila Daniel and Karine L. Narahara, directed by Camila Daniel. Creative Alliance Center, Baltimore, MD, December 7, 2019.

Between the Margin and the Center, directed by Karine L. Narahara, edited by Marcelo Bichara, 2011.