Brazilian Labour History - Recent Trends and Perspectives: An Introduction (original) (raw)
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Brazilian Labour History Recent Trends and Perspectives: An Introduction1
In recent years, Brazilian labour and working-class history has made great strides. New generations of historians, both in Brazil and abroad, have extended the scope of the field to include new and little explored areas, such as gender, ethnicity, informal labour, and the connections between forced and free work.2 This expanding scholarship has also shed new light on more standard topics, such as strikes, unionism, political participation, and the role of labour policies and labour law in redefining workers strategies of struggle for their rights, as well as in shaping new understandings on working-class citizenship.3 They have also expanded the geographical scope of the studies, originally confined to the main industrial areas (particularly, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), offering a much broader and complex picture of the regional diversity that characterises a semi continental country marked by huge inequalities and by coexistence or even integration between archaic and modern productive processes and labour relations.4 Many of these studies have analysed specific occupational and local communities, focusing on the different cultural, political and social aspects of the working class formation in the country. The use of new sources, such as the social and political police archives (opened to the public during the 1990s) as well as judiciary papers, alongside the extensive use of oral history interviews, has contributed tremendously to the expanded scope and depth that characterise this new scholarship. There is no doubt that the political scenario of the country since the redemocrati-sation process of the 1970s and 1980s has impacted on the academic production and influenced to a great extent the labour historians' research agenda. From the labour his
Brazilian Labour History in Global Context: Some Introductory Notes
International Review of Social History
This article introduces the main topics and intellectual concerns behind this Special Issue about Brazilian labour history in global context. Over the last two decades, Brazilian labour history has become an important reference point for the international debate about a renewed labour and working-class history. It has greatly broadened its conceptual scope by integrating issues of gender, race, and ethnicity and has moved towards studying the whole gamut of labour relations in Brazil’s history. Furthermore it has taken new perspectives on the history of movements. As background to this Special Issue, this introduction embeds current Brazilian labour historiography in its development as a field and in the country’s broader political and social history. Presenting the contributions, we highlight their connections with current debates in Global Labour History.
Labor and Dictatorship in Brazil: A Historiographical Review
International Labor and Working-class History, 2018
This article analyzes recent Brazilian scholarship on workers and trade unions during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), emphasizing the relative absence of studies and the neglect of worker organization. By focusing on working-class agency and the dilemmas the labor movement faced due to the regime's economic policies and fierce repression, this essay offers a better understanding of the political scenario after 1964. The second part of the article examines the themes of the most recent studies about workers and the labor movement during the military regime, emphasizing existing blind spots and future challenges for scholarship. In 1967, almost three years after Brazil's civilian-military coup, director Glauber Rocha, icon of the 1960s Brazilian cinematographic movement known as New Cinema (Cinema Novo), released his film Terra em Transe. The film provides an important glimpse into how the role of workers in the dictatorship was interpreted by intellectuals, politicians, leftist militants, and conservatives. In one scene from the renowned film, there is a striking dialog between a journalist, an aide to a populist politician, and a union leader, while they are surrounded by a priest, young activists, and politicians. The journalist enthusiastically calls on the union leader, Jerônimo, saying, "The people are Jerônimo. Speak, Jerônimo, speak!" Silence. A machine gun fires shots into the air. The populist politician adds his condescending plea. "Don't be afraid, my son. Speak, you are the people. Speak!" he implores. Jerônimo looks at the people around him, trying to force a word out, but he is unable to break the deafening silence that the long and uncomfortable scene has established. Finally, he turns to the camera and says, "I am a poor man, a worker, I am president of the union, I am engaged in the class struggle, and I think that everything is messed up, and I really don't know what to do. The country is going through a huge crisis, and the best thing to do is await the orders of the President." But his speech is interrupted when Paulo Martins, journalist, poet, and aide to the populist politician, representative of the intellectual class, puts his hands over Jerônimo's mouth and says, "You see what the people are like? Imbeciles, illiterate, depoliticized. Can you imagine what it would be like with Jerônimo running things?" 1 This important dialog from Glauber Rocha's film, which sought to tell a cinematographic parable of the history of Brazil at the start of the 1960s, is the point of departure for this article to reflect on the role of workers in studies of Brazil's military dictatorship. Despite some progress in the last few years,
Pelegos" No More? Labour Historians Confront the 'New Unionism' in Brazil
Labour / Le Travail, 1994
FROM THE MOMENT THE MILITARY took power in Brazil in 1964-with negligible working-class opposition-the apparent weakness of Brazilian labour frustrated scholars and activists alike. Brazil was, after all, the most developed nation in Latin America, and Sào Paulo, its industrial epicentre, was a smokestack-ringed metropolis of international dimensions. If a real proletariat existed anywhere south of the Rio Grande, it was in Sâo Paulo's booming automobile plants, metalworking factories, and working-class neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the paulistano labour movement appeared, as late as 1976, incapable of asserting its right to share in the fruits of Brazil's vaunted "economic miracle." Not surprisingly, the historiography of Brazilian labour reflected this pessimism, and sought to account for what was seen primarily as a story of failure. In the last decade and a half, however, Brazilian labour has experienced an extraordinary resurgence, particularly in Sâo Paulo. Starting in 1978, a series of major strikes paralyzed auto plants throughout the city's industrial suburbs-the so-called "ABC" region of Santo André, Sâo Bernardo do Campo, and Sâo Caetano do Sul. The President of the Sâo Bernardo metalworkers' union, Luis Inacio da Silva C'Lula"), rose to national prominence as the expanding strike wave became a lightning rod of opposition to military rule. These strikes announced the emergence of a different kind of workers' movement, soon dubbed the "new unionism," that seemed to overturn years of tradition by taking a stronger stand against
Work in Brazil. Essays in Historical and Economic Sociology
In this book, Adalberto Cardoso presents his arguments with analytical freshness and vigour, which unravels the entanglement between structure and sociability, leaving us face to face with the crucial aspects that singularize contemporary Brazil. It is no accident that freshness and vigour are in the book’s subheading: through the use of historical sociology tools, the author leads us toward an understanding of the singular way through which social institutions, class relations, identities, and political actions are forged. A mode that not only marks the so-called "world of work", but which also allows us to unravel decisive facets of contemporary Brazil. Thus, this is not merely a book on sociology of work. If work is the thread through which the author pursues an understanding of social transformation in the country, the narrative is nurtured through a reckoning between our (labour) institutions’ past and present. The book assembles an extensive bibliography for the foreign reader, and especially for the overseas student recently introduced to Brazilian studies. The most important authors, Brazilian and Brazilianists alike, are present. Sociologists, historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and economists have their ideas systematically and carefully put into dialogue. These interpretations matter for their ability to expand what we know about contemporary capitalism’s different configurations and the various ways through which labour societies are (re)recreated. Nadya Araujo Guimarães Full Professor of Sociology at the University of São Paulo Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2021
common tendency to see them as opposite and mutually exclusive is a mistake. The Brazilian case shows repeatedly that even normative power, the core of corporatist complaints against labour justice, does not lead to workers' loss of control and autonomy. In fact, the evidence presented in Workers before the Court suggests the opposite: labour courts incited workers to strike and fight for their rights, and they represented a recognition of the existence of class conflict. The path that leads to labour justice generally implies a failure of negotiations and even strikesor the threat thereofto get a good deal in court. The labour courts also played an important role in underwriting private agreements between the parties, presenting two models simultaneously: legislated labour relations with heteronomy; negotiated labour relations with autonomy. Workers before the Courts challenges established ideas about labour justice in Brazil, and in doing so also defies preconceived ideas about the links between models of industrial relations and political systems. By placing debates about the nature of labour justice in their historical context and restoring the voices of the protagonistsespecially those of workers-Teixeira dismantles a long-held ideological consensus linking labour justice with a corporatist political project and workers' subjection. This book is both a point of arrival for the author and an inescapable departure point for those approaching the study of work and workers in the future.
In 2014, Brazilians solemnly observed the 50th anniversary of the military coup of 1964. The Comissão Nacional da Verdade (National Truth Commission, CNV), entrusted by the government to thoroughly analyze and publicize (but not punish) the massive human rights abuses of the military regime published a 4,300 page final report in December 2014 that detailed the pervasive attacks on civil, legal, and political rights as well as the illegal imprisonment, torture, and forced exile of tens of thousands and the direct political assassinations of 434 leftwing oppositionists. 1 In emotional events throughout the year, family members, friends, and comrades of the victims held homage and public monuments were dedicated by state officials and social movements in several cities. The extensive media coverage of the events was accompanied by the publication of a plethora of new scholarly books, memoirs, autobiographies, and journalistic investigations as well as the release of documentaries and display of historical exhibitions to coincide with the anniversary. 2 It was a profound experience of national reckoning 1 The full report in Portuguese may be downloaded here: http://www.cnv.gov.br/index.php/outros-destaques/574-conheca-e-acesse-o-relatorio-final-dacnv.
Brazil: The Swinging Pendulum Between Labor Sociology and Labor Movement
Work and Occupations, 2009
In this article, the authors analyze the relationship between labor sociology and trade unionism in Brazil by focusing on its three key phases. Against the backdrop of successive political and economical scenarios, the authors go from the first generation of labor sociologists to the most recent period, trying to identify the transition points in this trajectory. This study develops the hypothesis that labor sociology in Brazil was first characterized by a search for affirmation and professionalization (1950-1960). Later, it developed a strong political—social engagement, and assumed a public character, by claiming particular social identities (1970-1980). Finally, it flowed toward policy sociology (1990-2000).