The quilombola question and the field of law

Abstract

Brazil has been setting up the issue of the quilombola since 1988, through different assemblages that culminated in article 68 of the Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act which guaranteed this group’s right to land ownership. However, from that point forward, complex modes of interpretation of the regulations of the constitutional text appeared. In this article we seized on the notion of “field” as it is defined by Bourdieu, in order to discuss the inclusion of the law in the complex discursive dispute about the socially legitimate definition of what quilombolas are. We approached this debate through litigation in the jurisdiction of the Federal Supreme Court about the validity of concepts and characterizations of what constitute quilombolas and their territories as our main focus.