Abstract
The number of adults with little schooling being elected to local government positions has increased considerably in Brazil lately — especially in the case of city councils that were traditionally controlled by representatives of mainstream groups. The aim of this paper is to examine the conflict inherent in this process of ascent of the unschooled to positions of power where the functioning rules follow mainstream bureaucratic patterns. The analysis is based on data collected during a city council session in which the mayor of a small town in a nonindustrialized region submitted a budget draft; other sources of data included diaries and recorded interviews. Through ethnographic and discourse analysis we show that the almost illiterate councilmen (small farmers). although they have the majority of votes, do not have access to discussions and do not significantly affect outcomes, since such things are controlled by the local government bureaucracy. The relationship among literacy, mainstream institutional metapragmatics, and democracy is also discussed.
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