Everardo Rocha

Everardo Pereira Guimarães Rocha (born October 1, 1951) is a Brazilian anthropologist dedicated to the study of consumption, advertising, and Brazilian culture. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the National Museum of Brazil at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1989. He is a Professor in the Department of Communication and its graduate program at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where he has taught since 1976.

In his works, Everardo Rocha articulates perspectives from the fields of Anthropology and Communication. He has been indicated as one of the first anthropologists in Brazil to focus their research on consumption.

Since the 1980s, he has contributed to the consolidation and expansion of studies in the anthropology of consumption. First published in 1985, his book titled ''Magia e Capitalismo'' [''Magic and Capitalism''] is acknowledged for stimulating the development of research on consumption from an anthropological perspective in Brazilian academia.

Everardo Rocha's work explores advertising and consumption as phenomena similar to the classification system known as totemism, as Claude Lévi-Strauss studied it. Hence, he suggests consumption and advertising representations are central spaces for the expression and experience of magical thought in contemporary urban cultures. According to Roberto DaMatta, Everardo Rocha's contribution “is characterized by an intelligent and resolute investigation of the modern world as a gigantic structure of consumption, magic, ideological persuasion, and (...) dreams.”

Furthermore, Rocha has contributed to studies in Social Anthropology and Brazilian culture through books such ''O que é Etnocentrismo'' [What is Ethnocentrism] and ''O que é Mito'' [What is Myth]. He also participated in the research for Cacá Diegues’s film ''Quilombo''. Provided by Wikipedia