Citizenship as consumption: new cleavages of stratified citizenship in Brazil (original) (raw)

This ambivalent expansion course of goods and services to citizens is consistent with a new development model focused on the State, but which did not retroact regarding the changes designed for the market they defined in the 1990s. This model which emerged in Latin America in the 2000s took over an intermediary position between the orthodox neoliberal model which preceded it, and the ambitions of the universalism of equal rights that characterized post-war European welfare. This intermediary model in which Brazil is included, has been defined as embedded neoliberalism and is characterized by the State’s return to promoting economic production by means of active interference from the supply-side, including discounts on exportation, credit and employment expansion, without disrupting the commitments of commercial agreements and the capital account. This way, the expansion of the middle class gained functionality in terms of stratified development of goods and services which coincided with the fiscal depletion of the State. The fundamental notion of rights that should articulate the relations and norms to public policies was replaced by consumption capacity.