Democracy and the Organization of Class Struggle in Brazil (original) (raw)
Related papers
Understanding Contemporary Brazil by Jeff Garmany and Anthony Pereira (review
Luso-Brazilian Review, 2020
When asked what they know about Brazil, most people probably respond with one of these four attributes: soccer, Carnaval, the Amazon forest, and racial diversity. Understanding Contemporary Brazil (2018) takes on these and other popularized stereotypes about Brazil and disentangles them at political, economic, and social levels. Understanding Brazil is an ambitious project. The book is an analytically rich and accessible volume written by Anthony Pereira and Jeff Garmany from the London King's College Brazil Institute. It provides an overview of Brazilian history since the colonial period and reflects the thematic expertise of the two authors. Pereira is a political scientist who studies the political drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, the landless worker movement MST, authoritarianism and the rule of law, and the rise of national populism and its impact on democracy in Brazil. Garmany is a political geographer with a particular interest in race, ethnicity, inequality, and urban displacement. As the authors make clear from the beginning, "Brazil is not for beginners" and is a land replete with contradictions. How can a country's national identity rest on the ideology of racial democracy, but its Black population lives in poverty and fear of violence? Why are Brazilians so proud of their natural environment, but push for the logging of the Amazon forest? How can one nation bring together the 'first world' lifestyle of a country like Belgium, and the widespread poverty of 'third world' India? The authors set out to make sense of such disparities and the roles globalization, informality, and development play. While a significant part of the book is historical background, the authors connect this to ongoing legacies of racial prejudice, segregation, and social resistance. There are several critical themes addressed across the chapters. Central to the authors' elucidation is that Brazil's colonial history is fundamental to understanding the roots of current inequality, including economic development, environmental management, and governance. No other country had an enslaved population as large as Brazil's. These complicated and delicate power structures laid out during colonial times, shaped the invention of Brazil's rather new national identity, another key theme of the book. The authors guide the reader through features like soccer and brasilidade, that bind the nation together, but also exclude oppositional voices, thus shedding light on important current social debates and conflict. Central to all these questions is political governance, public policy, and federalism in Brazil, which are explained in detail in the third and fourth chapters of the book. Building on these chapters, the reader gets a basis to ponder the role of the state, the rule of law, and democratic processes (or lack thereof) key debates that span every chapter in the book. The authors draw connections between Brazil's extreme multi-partyism, a pronounced division between rulers and ruled, and fragmented political representation to glaring economic inequality and chronic
Brazilian Perspectives: Society, Stratification and Income Distribution
Asian Journal of Applied Sciences, 2020
This paper aims to present a general evaluation on the inequality, income distribution and social mobility in Brazil between 2002 and 2014, under the governments of the Workers' Party. In this way, from the methodological point view, it is based on both a review of the literature about that subject and an investigation of the primary sources of the Brazilian social policies. Among the results found out, it can be highlighting the following sample: 1) historically, Brazilian society has been marked by inequality in several ways, and this is probably a consequence of his colonial legacy; 2) In the period between 2002 and 2014, Brazilian social inequality declined; 3) the decline of inequality can be explained by income growth, higher schooling levels and labor formalization, but the targeted social program, Bolsa Familia, also contributed to income convergence; 4) Brazil slashed poverty from 25 percent of the population in 2004 to 8.5 percent in 2014, and extreme poverty declined ...
Brazilian State and Society Towards a Global Interpretation
symposium on "The Comparative Analysis of the Whole Society, " World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Uppsala, Sweden, August, 1978
Presented is a historical synthesis of the development of the modern Brazilian state since its patrimonial origin. The peculiarity of its patrimonialism is examined against the historical background of Spanish-American patterns of state building. The process of bureaucratization & the institutionalization of a legal-rational pattern of authority during the nineteenth century is examined through the role of the Guarda Nacional, a corporation of freemen & honoratiores in care of administrative tasks. The dynamics of the modern state are interpreted by examining the trends toward increasing centralization & bureaucratic authoritarianism as well as the collective demands for social & political participation. The role of the positivist ideology, well adjusted to the centralized character of the new bureaucratic administration, is examined. Dynamics are also illustrated by examining two approaches to education in the second quarter of this century: the liberal & scientific strategy sponsored by the U system in Sao Paulo vs. the technical & positivist one sponsored by the federal administration. Original, historical sources are interpreted. (Copyright 1978, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.).
Political Economy of the New Brazil
2013
"Over the course of the last fifteen years, Brazil has emerged as a global player in both the political and the economic field. The research paper aims to understand Brazil’s current economic and political condition through the theoretical framework of Latin American Structuralism and Global Political Economy. First, the research paper seeks to investigate the historical and structural developments fostering the rise of Brazil, including an analysis of the country’s history with emphasis on Brazil’s dependency on other countries and the period of industrialization. This is followed an analysis of modern Brazil with attention on historic developments during the totalitarian regime as well as the establishment of Plano Real. The second part of the research paper seeks to give an in depth analysis of the presidential terms of “The New Brazil”, Cardoso, Lula and Rousseff including an investigation of Brazil’s international relations, followed up with an analysis and discussion of the country’s current structural challenges. It is here looked into if these challenges can threaten the newfound strength and stability by analyzing aspects of Brazil’s current challenges such as the newly increased consumer class, infrastructure, the manufacturing industry, and tariff barriers. In the light of these challenges, the third and final part of the research paper aims to discuss the prospects for maintaining and improving Brazil’s position as an emerging global political and economic power. This has been executed by exploring Brazil’s changing trading patterns and discussing the inherent challenges of Brazil’s manufacturing industry. Through this three-part analysis, this research paper concludes that both internal and external forces have led to recent developments and rise of “The New Brazil”. Through the three above-mentioned presidents, further macroeconomic and social stability as well as a new social model has been achieved. Still, Brazil faces many challenges in creating a more competitive society and manufacturing industry aimed towards obtaining a bigger market share of the global market. This requires an enlargement of both welfare programs and state investments as well a continuation of the country’s regional focus in order to secure Brazil’s new position as an emerging global political and economic power."
This article offers a political economy interpretation of the mass protests that took place in Brazil in June-July 2013. This interpretation is based on a review of two development strategies-import-substituting industrialization and neoliberalismand the class structures associated with them. Examining them helps to locate the sources of current social and political conflicts in the country, and the demands of rival social groups. These strategies are analyzed in light of the forms of protest that have emerged under neoliberalism. They lead to the conceptualization of the "lumpenization of politics" and the "facebookization" of protest in the country.
Global Labour Journal, 2021
Crises and Social Regression in Brazil is an exemplary exercise in the interpretive synthesis of transformations; scrupulously sequenced, it reconstructs the socioeconomic and structural basis of the historical and current problem of social and economic development in Brazil, and of the neoliberal logic that underlies its scheme of reproduction. Although not omitting the theoretical approaches that have traditionally inspired the debate on the "Latin American Problem", such as for example development theory, the author makes a precise selection of the lines of analysis that allow him to successfully locate and delimit the singularities of the case of Brazil. Placing the genesis of inequality in the legacy of slavery and other injustices, which we also find in other countries with a similar context, Véras de Oliveira establishes an unequivocal descriptive analytical target: the failure of successive attempts to consolidate a system of labour regulation that benefits the working class and, by derivation, its expansion to Brazilian society as a whole as a culmination of the development process. However, the weight of the non-capitalist production relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to industrial backwardness, strongly tied to the expansion of export agriculture. This constellation emerged as a centre of gravity which acted as a drag on development. From the beginning of industrialisation in the 1930s, this dynamic acted as a spur for the establishment of a segmented structure. This structure evolved throughout the twentieth century based on economic dynamics, but also had, and in a particularly decisive way, a social nature. The result of these constant obstacles and evasive turns with regard to the construction of a welfare state presents itself as a scenario of unparalleled inequalities. The timid attempts to establish an entry point for the legal regulation of the labour market recognised the status of salaried workers and the access to welfare that is inherent in the formal labour relation. However, this went along with largely excluding a whole range of workers, including agricultural workers, from the protection of the state. This imbalance has been widely observed and registered, as Véras de Oliveira points out, by dualist paradigms, strongly conditioned by a dichotomous interpretation of the social structure. By characterising the labour market based on opposite realities of different parts of the working class, these approaches place the problem of development in Brazil in a controversial perspective. This binary understanding of Brazilian reality facilitated a negative perception of the working class, since it has been attributed with individualistic behaviour with little inclination to enter into relations of waged work. This theoretical focus was inspired by the few empirical studies on the Brazilian social
DEVELOPMENT, BRAZILIAN SOCIAL FORMATION AND PUBLIC POLICIES
the revolution inside the order', but also restore a status quo ante, in whiche the called 'democratic franchises' only would have effectiveness for possessing classes and their political elites" (FER-NANDES, 2011, p.157-158). 3 According to Pnad Contínua (IBGE-1st quarter of 2019), there are 36 million hired workers among private, public and domestic sectors. 4 See the news: <https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/economia/2019/04/bolsonaro-descobriuo-responsavel-pelo-desemprego-elevado-o-ibge : Access in April 30, 2019.
Latin American Politics and Society, 2001
Interpretations of Underdevelopment in Brazil Interpretations of Underdevelopment in Brazil
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, 2020
Brazil is a vast and highly complex country that is subordinated to its central hegemonic poles and that combines both backwardness, modernity, progress interrupted by unfinished cycles of growth, and extreme inequality. Paradoxically, it is on the one hand ranked among the nine most advanced capitalist countries in the world and, on the other, listed as one of the nine countries with the worst income distribution. Attempts to interpret these dilemmas, historical disjunctives, and impasses have produced a plethora of original intellectual work that deals with the specificities of this most dynamic and yet highly contradictory national space. A select few authors have produced extensive work on the subject and have legitimized themselves as the pinnacle of classical interpreters of Brazilian social and political thought. The originality, broad scope of analysis, and ingenuity of these great national thinkers have made them the authors of choice for those seeking to better understand Brazil as a nation. Their classics have formulated key and critical questions relating to the often-interrupted construction of this nation and the truncated, material, and spiritual or immaterial development of the Brazilian civilization as a whole, which began as a former Portuguese colony founded on slave labor. These are very comprehensive formulations, with a long-term historical perspective produced by those who have taken a very profound and highly structural look at Brazil, shedding light on aspects of its hitherto-obscure or unquestioned reality, enlightening and inviting to think more coherently, boldly, and consequently about its present and, indeed, future. Among the main contributors are the likes of Caio Prado Júnior, Celso Furtado and Florestan Fernandes, who have developed approaches to help unveil the nature and characteristics of the processes of dependence and underdevelopment that are so specific to Brazil’s peripheral capitalism.