For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo, 1920–1964 by Barbara Weinstein

Abstract

356 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in Sâo Paulo, 1920-1964. By Barbara Weinstein. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+ 435; illus­ trations, tables, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 (hardcover); $24.95 (paper). Barbara Weinstein’s investigation of workplace rationalization and worker socialization in Sâo Paulo, the industrial heartland of Brazil, is a major contribution to the growing historical literature on industrial labor in Brazil. Recent studies on this topic have traced the origins of the labor movement and emphasized the agency of workers in resisting or accommodating corporatist governing ar­ rangements. Using a wide range of primary materials, Weinstein shifts the spotlight, focusing on the campaigns for increased produc­ tion and a Fordist makeover ofBrazilian society undertaken by a new generation of industrial leaders after World War I. These campaigns culminated in the creation of two organizations in the early 1940s that were sponsored by the state but bankrolled and overseen by industrialists: the National Service for Industrial Training (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial, or SENAI) and the Industrial Social Service (Serviço Social da Industria, or SESI). SENAI came to enjoy a “neutral” technical image as an agency that promoted scientific management, mechanization, and vocational training, while SESI, whose motto provides the title for the book, was a more “avowedly ideological organization” (p. 138) that administered nu­ merous welfare and educational programs as a bulwark against labor or communist-inspired insurgencies. Weinstein argues that SENAI and SESI were “resoundingly successful” (p. 340) in generating a broad consensus that improved social welfare depended on greater industrial productivity. This study contributes to the historiographical debate on Brazilian labor relations in two important ways. First, Weinstein criticizes the instrumentalist interpretation that sees workplace reform as a strat­ egy for social control. Embracing the “linguistic turn” of discourse analysis, she insists that the “hegemonic discourse” (p. 340) ofratio­ nalization initially appealed both to industrialists, who aspired to new positions of professional authority, and to many workers, who genuinely desired shop-floor innovations. Thus, rationalization rep­ resented a social vision ofmodernization shared across social classes. Second, Weinstein argues that relations between capital and labor in Sâo Paulo industries were not as highly mediated by the “corpo­ ratist” state as scholars have believed. Rather, vanguard industrialists and their technocratic allies maintained close control over the pro­ cess of rationalization by virtue of their domination of SENAI and SESI. These insights are gleaned through a nuanced examination of the intent and execution of SENAI and SESI programs, as well as the reception of these programs by firms and workers. Weinstein TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 357 also analyzes the gender bias of these reform activities to the extent that they stigmatized female wage earning and idealized the “hy­ gienic housewife” (p. 239). Ultimately, the rationalization project promoted by the industrial bourgeoisie was undermined by its ra­ cially tinged view of the working class as morally deficient, by its ambiguous relationship with the emerging populist alliance in post­ war Brazilian politics, and by the challenge of militant labor organi­ zations, whose influence in the political arena began to offset their weakness in the rigidly hierarchical workplace. By the early 1960s, SENAI and SESI had become handmaidens for industrialist collabo­ ration with the military forces that seized power and “resorted to more conventional means of insuring social peace” (p. 12). Despite its achievements, the book is limited by its preference for treating SENAI and SESI primarily as cultural products. Weinstein pays scant attention to these organizations as symptoms of the socio­ economic constraints on Fordist production in Brazil during this period. She makes little attempt to correlate workplace rationaliza­ tion with the economic performance of industry. Nor does she seri­ ously consider how enduring social inequities in Brazil, which SESI’s welfare programs obviously failed to amend, restricted the domestic market for manufactured goods. While Weinstein was borrowing concepts from French scholars, she might have looked at regulation theory, a post-Keynesian school of economic thought that has thrived in France since the 1970s. Led by scholars such as Robert Boyer and Alain Lipietz...