Prescribing and avoiding remedies: how industrial associations advanced futures out of the Brazilian recession (2014–2016)

Abstract

This article comparatively analyzes the participation of two industrial associations in the politics of signification of the recent Brazilian recession (2014–2016), highlighting the frames they use to define the relevant problem and advance necessary remedies, and the artifacts they deploy to make such frames plausible and elicit support for their claims. In this sense, it contributes to recent debates about the social construction of futures, offering a processual framework to analyze future making by organized business interests in times of a crisis. It emphasizes the peculiarity of (1) crises, as moments in which the present is uncertain and subject to a politics of signification, dependent on the ability of actors to develop framing narratives and deploy artifacts of persuasion to create resonance and public support (2) and of remedies, prescribed futures based on the definition of a problematic situation that may rely on simple takeaway objects.