Return from the World - by Gregory Duff Morton

About the Book

"In Return from the World, anthropologist Gregory Duff Morton traces the migrations of landless Brazilian peasants who choose to leave cities and the opportunities they offer to return to their home villages. Exploring this phenomenon in cities such as Belo Horizonte and the surrounding villages of Rio Branco and Maracujâa, Morton seeks to understand what it means to deliberately turn one's back on the promise of economic growth. Leaving cities and giving up their positions in factories, construction sites, and as domestic workers, rural migrants travel hundreds of miles back to villages without running water or dependable power. There, they often take up farming, engaging in subsistence agriculture or laboring as hired hands in nearby plantations. Bringing their stories vividly to life, Morton dives into the dreams and disputes at play in finding freedom in the shared rejection of accumulation"--

Book Synopsis

An anthropologist's investigation of why some Brazilians choose to leave behind a booming economy and return to their villages.

In Return from the World, anthropologist Gregory Duff Morton traces the migrations of Brazilian workers who leave a thriving labor market and return to their home villages to become peasant farmers. Morton seeks to understand what it means to turn one's back deliberately on the promise of economic growth.

Giving up their positions in factories, at construction sites, and as domestic workers, these migrants travel thousands of miles back to villages without running water or dependable power. There, many take up subsistence farming. Some become activists with the MST, Brazil's militant movement of landless peasants. Bringing their stories vividly to life, Morton dives into the dreams and disputes at play in finding freedom in the shared rejection of growth.

Review Quotes

"Morton's findings are original and important. . . . Highly recommended."-- "Choice"

"Return from the World is firmly rooted in well-composed ethnography, with beautiful writing and bold argumentation. Through the lives and stories of working-class Brazilians, Morton provides a highly original and thoughtful analysis of the meanings of growth, which will make a very important contribution to Latin American anthropology and social theory."--Sean T. Mitchell, author of "Constellations of Inequality: Space, Race, and Utopia in Brazil"

"This book will become a landmark ethnography of contemporary Brazil as a compelling story of counterdevelopment. It tells how migratory patterns to the city are also the mark of return migration to a MST-influenced region where a conscious peasant lifestyle is chosen as an act of resistance and asserted with decisive forcefulness."--Enrique Mayer, emeritus, Yale University

About the Author

Gregory Duff Morton is assistant professor at City College of New York, where he teaches anthropology and Latin American studies. This is his first book.