Nosso Alpinisimo”
Mountaineering, Topographical Nationalism, and the Material Meanings of Brazil
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9874479 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Arthur Cowan (0000-0001-7024-1828, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 437-467 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Hispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182168-12488219 |
| OpenAlex | W7146977749 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
Interwar Brazil saw an explosion of excursionismo (excursionism), with dozens of clubs linked to but distinct from a broader culture of elite athletics. Excursionists aimed to reorganize space, constructing wilderness and making it intelligible to urbanites. This entailed what I call topographical nationalism, which sought to “conquer” Brazil's peaks and valleys; to extol its national landscape to disparate and competing publics, foreign and domestic; and to define what and where Brazil was and to whom it belonged. This essay argues that the growth of Brazil's organized adventure sports reflected complicated and conflicting mandates to define Brazilians alongside Brazil as a material place, to familiarize the former with the latter, to liken Brazil's topography to that of Europe, and conversely to declare Brazil's landscape and recreationists in competition with and superior to European counterparts
Adventure · Competition (biology · Elite · Tourism · Wilderness · Wilderness area · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · History of Medicine and Tropical Health · Sports, Gender, and Society
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |