Brazilian Elites Research Articles

Transnational connections: The meaning of global culture in the tastes of Brazilian elites

This manuscript integrates work on cultural taste and inequality with literature on globalization to explain how objects of global culture become markers of elite cultural taste in Brazil. A content analysis of a culture magazine oriented toward Brazilian elites shows that elite culture in Brazil integrates popular and highbrow objects from the United States and Western Europe with limited popular genres from Brazilian culture. A dominant interpretive frame asserted similarity (rather than social distance or exoticism) between Brazilian lifestyles and non-Brazilian culture by drawing on a white, wealthy disposition that relies on prior familiarity with non-Brazilian culture and places.

A agenda da reforma política no Brasil: autores, objetivos, êxito e fracasso (1988-2010)

O tema da reforma política tem ocupado espaço importante nos debates políticos, seja na academia, na mídia ou entre as elites parlamentares brasileiras. Apesar disso, não se têm um inventário das propostas de mudança que permita avaliar quais temas têm ganhado e quais têm perdido espaço no debate sobre a reforma das instituições políticas no país. Este artigo busca contribuir para superar essa lacuna ao analisar as Propostas de Mudança à Constituição (PECs) apresentadas no período de 1988 a 2010, seus autores e objetivos e o êxito dos diferentes atores no avanço do processo de discussão e votação das propostas apresentadas.

The role of internationalisation in the schooling of Brazilian elites: distinctions between two class fractions

This paper analyses tendencies that distinguish the internationalisation of education for two class fractions – owners of medium to large businesses and highly qualified university professors and researchers. We identify the importance of cosmopolitan cultural capital, particularly fluency in English, in strengthening the position of both groups and granting them access to an international field of power from which less privileged groups are excluded. Considering the diverging experiences of the two groups compared with Bourdieu’s own findings of a high level of ruling-class cultural unity, we argue that these differences are reflective of the greater heterogeneity of the Brazilian ruling class.

Sorcery objects under institutional tutelage: magic and power in ethnographic collections

This essay returns to a discussion of two collections of objects taken from two terreiros (places of worship) for Afro-Brazilian cults, namely the Magia Negra (Black Magic) collection at the Museu da Polícia do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Police Museum) and the Perseverança collection at the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Alagoas - IHGAL (Alagoas Historical and Geographical Institute), in Maceió. In both cases we looked at how members of Brazil's elite are involved in sorcery and how members of this elite circulate in candomblé, xangô, umbanda and other terreiros. In this essay, in particular, we examine the subject of the collections in the context of recent changes arising from heritage-listing policies in Brazil that have decisively affected relations between these objects and institutions charged with protecting and preserving cultural heritage.

The right to have a family: ‘legal trafficking of children’, adoption and birth control in Brazil

This paper focuses on one of the ‘child-trafficking scandals’ that occurred in Brazil in the 1990s. Ethnographic research was carried out between 2000 and 2001 within a movement of poor families formed in São Paulo to put pressure on the authorities to review the legal procedures that had led to their children being placed for national and international adoption. Fieldwork was supplemented by other data, including reports by legislative bodies, articles in the press, and case files involving the termination of parental rights. This paper explores views on international adoption among members of the Brazilian elites such as judges, agents in the field of child protection and journalists, in the context of old but persistent neo-Malthusian ideas. Although the Brazilian birth rate is now below the replacement level, it is still common to blame ‘irresponsible’ reproduction among the urban poor for violence in large cities. Drawing a parallel with the routine sterilization of women that prevailed for decades and was encouraged by Brazilian physicians, the paper examines how, in a ‘struggle against poverty’, judicial agents took it upon themselves to enforce ‘birth control’ through adoption, bypassing family consent and the law in the process. The paper concludes by arguing that discrimination against poor families who are viewed as disorganized, immoral and irresponsible – characteristics frequently associated with criminality by a sector of the elites – has contributed to the view that lower-class families do not have the right to bear children, or to keep them.

Brasil, sociedade nacional-dependente

A história do Brasil desde a independência pode ser dividida em três grandes ciclos políticos, e, desde 1930, é possível distinguir cinco pactos políticos ou coalizões de classe. Desde 1930 esses pactos são nacionalistas. Apenas nos anos 1990 as elites brasileiras se renderam à hegemonia neoliberal. No entanto, desde meados dos anos 2000 estão recuperando sua ideia de nação. A principal tese deste artigo é que as elites e a sociedade brasileiras são "nacionais-dependentes", isto é, são ambíguas e contraditórias, cuja definição exige um oxímoro. Hoje, procuram uma síntese entre os dois últimos ciclos políticos - entre justiça social e desenvolvimento econômico no quadro de um regime democrático.

In This Issue

In-brief| May 01 2012 In This Issue Hispanic American Historical Review (2012) 92 (2): 209–211. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-92-2-209 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation In This Issue. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 May 2012; 92 (2): 209–211. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-92-2-209 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsHispanic American Historical Review Search Advanced Search This issue of HAHR offers two articles discussing approaches to the teaching of Latin American history, and two articles that present recent research on the public personae of nineteenth-century Brazilian elites, both male and female.What’s in a map, ask Jordana Dym and Karl Offen, and how can maps be used in courses on Latin America to raise important questions about the history of the region? Scholarship of the last two decades has made clear that, far from being unmediated representations of topography, maps are texts that need to be deconstructed and evaluated in much the same way as court testimony, photographs, censuses, or any other primary source. Especially when produced by official or semiofficial agencies, maps function as “instruments of power,” the conventions and assumptions of which require close scrutiny and analysis. The authors offer two illuminating examples of how to use maps in courses: a synchronic comparison of... Issue Section: In This Issue You do not currently have access to this content.

Words Spoken and Written: Divergent Meanings of Honor among Elites in Nineteenth-Century Rio Grande Do Sul

Abstract The article concerns differences in the nature and signs of honor among nineteenth-century Brazilian elites. Based primarily on the court records of a dispute between a frontier rancher and a wealthy urban merchant in Rio Grande do Sul, as well as the correspondence of the merchant with a wide variety of commercial and political contacts, it argues that honor symbolized the value and reliability of exchange partners among all elite groups, but differences in the nature of exchanges led to different means of gauging honor. Landowners involved mainly in local face-to-face exchanges evaluated male honor primarily by the observance of spoken agreements and promises, whereas merchants involved in long-distance trade emphasized careful accounting and the fulfillment of written obligations. In a vast country with severely limited educational opportunities for the great majority of the population, fluency in written communication and accounting skills became important means to accumulate wealth and power, allowing individuals with these skills to occupy central positions in long-distance trade and patronage networks. Differences in the nature of honor also fueled disdain and hatred in the civil wars of nineteenth-century Rio Grande do Sul, which tended to pit frontier ranchers against urban commercial and political elites.

The (in)tangible Euro challenge to the dollar: insights from the financial elites in Brazil and China

The main purpose of this article is to shift the dollar vs Euro debate away from US–EU centrism to perspectives from emerging markets. Drawing on 40 semistructured financial elite interviews in Brazil and China, the key research question studied here is whether the US dollar is malfunctioning as the leading international currency in these parts of the world, and, if so, whether the Euro can be an alternative to the greenback. The results show that the status of the dollar as the main anchor in the monetary system is seriously questioned among financial elites in China and Brazil. As yet, though, the Euro does not represent an alternative to the dollar because of its fiscal and political fragmentations. However, despite these institutional shortcomings, the European currency is seen as an ideational role model for super-sovereign monetary integration out of dollar unipolarity based on consensual negotiations not only on a regional, but also on a global scale.

OLIVER J. DINIUSBrazil's Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941-1964. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 2011. Pp. xxi, 325. $65.00

Histories of the labor movement in Brazil tend to focus either on the role workers played in development policy and state capitalism in the post–World War II period (i.e., the desenvolvimentista view) or on the evolution of the government's social welfare programs and laws (i.e., trabalhismo). In this book, Oliver J. Dinius offers a synthesis of both views through a historical narrative of labor and business history in the largest steel mill of Brazil, the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN), and the most important industrial city, Volta Redonda. The author tries to shy away from the politically charged views of the labor movement as either anticapitalist or as a compliant follower of the interests of the state and Brazilian elites. Thus, one of the most important insights of the book is that the role of the labor movement is more complex and more fundamental to economic policy than what these simple views would assume. In post–World War II Brazil, workers were central to government policy, both as beneficiaries and as agents of change.

Modernidade republicana e diocesanização do catolicismo no Brasil: as relações entre Estado e Igreja na Primeira República (1889-1930)

Partindo da análise de documentação consultada em arquivos do Brasil e do Vaticano, o artigo discute as relações entre Estado e Igreja Católica Apostólica Romana (ICAR) no período da Primeira República brasileira. Considera-se que a Proclamação da República em 15 de novembro de 1889 foi associada, por algumas parcelas das elites brasileiras da época, ao ideário do progresso e da civilização, sendo uma de suas primeiras tarefas a extinção do padroado em 7 de janeiro de 1890. O laicismo determinado nessa ocasião pelo Decreto 119-A revelou-se, entretanto, ambíguo e pragmático. Livre das amarras constitucionais do padroado, o Estado criou um novo campo de relações com as diferentes confissões religiosas, segundo os seus próprios interesses institucionais. Nesse contexto, a ICAR, por sua vez, empreendeu um processo de reforma e reorganização eclesiástica cujo fulcro consistiu na criação de dioceses e jurisdições similares - um amplo e complexo processo territorial, político e discursivo ao qual se pode denominar diocesanização.

The Influence of the Euro in Reshaping Global Monetary Governance: Perceptions from financial elites in Brazil and China

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which key emerging market financial elites assess Europe's monetary power in the reconfiguration of the U.S. dollar‐dominated monetary system. Interviews with public and private financial actors in China and Brazil record that while Europe's debt markets are limited by their size, and hence the material impact of the euro is restricted, the ideational effects are considerable. The findings show that even if the euro does not appear to be replacing the dollar as the main international currency, the European Monetary Union (EMU) is an example for regional and even world monetary integration. Chinese and Brazilian elites applaud European efforts to create a more multilateral and regulated financial system. In this sense, EMU has significant influence, and hence potential for global reach. However, this study also notes that this projection requires greater political coordination of exchange rate policy in order to fully realise its material impact in global monetary governance.

Jerry Dávila . Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950–1980 . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2010. Pp. xi, 312. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.

Jerry Dávila's book offers a gripping historical account of Brazilian diplomatic and economic overtures toward Africa between the 1950s and 1980s. This was a period of political transformation in Brazil, ranging from a brief succession of center-left democratically elected governments to a lengthy military regime comprised of moderate to extreme right-wing autocratic presidencies. It was also a time of rapid modernization and massive economic growth that propelled Brazil's emergence as a major geopolitical power in the south Atlantic. Dávila's study is based on the memoirs and oral histories of diplomats who were protagonists in the expansion of Brazil's ties to the African continent. He also conducted extensive research in newspaper archives, the Portuguese foreign ministry archive in Lisbon, and the Itamaraty (Brazilian foreign ministry) archive in Brasilia. Dávila argues that in order to understand Brazil's relationship with Africa it is imperative to consider both the complexity of race relations in Brazil and its long history of slavery. Brazil's contradictory racial history along with the emotional attachment to Brazil's African roots by the country's intellectual, artistic, and diplomatic elites shaped the attitudes and expectations of the overwhelmingly white diplomatic corps. Brazil's relationship with Africa was also complicated by its colonial history. While British and French African colonies declared independence in the 1960s, the Portuguese African colonies (specifically Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique) were in the throes of a multi-front war against the Portuguese dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. Many among the Brazilian elites, supported by large Portuguese ethnic communities in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, maintained a sentimental attachment to Portugal and lobbied for Portugal's national/colonial interests. These factors attenuated Brazil's ability to position itself as a “non-hegemonic postcolonial” power in Africa.

O novo consenso da sociedade brasileira: democracia e igualdade

Este artigo investiga o grau de convergência das opiniões sustentadas pelas elites e pela população brasileira sobre as políticas de redução da desigualdade social e redução da pobreza. A literatura internacional sobre esse tema se divide entre aqueles que vêem uma divisão entre elite e massa em torno dessa questão, e aqueles supõem que as dificuldades enfrentadas pelas novas democracias para garantir o crescimento econômico e desenvolvimento social teriam favorecido a formação de um novo consenso social unindo elites e massas, onde as políticas de redução da pobreza e de desigualdade ocupam um lugar preeminente. Nossa análise comparou os resultados alcançados na pesquisa Estudo Eleitoral Brasileiro (CSES-ESEB) de 2010, com os dados coletados junto a uma amostra da elite brasileira em 2009. Os resultados da análise sustentam a hipótese de que é possível falar em um consenso amplo unindo a elite e a população em torno de uma agenda de políticas voltadas para a diminuição da desigualdade no país e para a erradicação da pobreza.

The Grounding of Regional Integration for Brazil: Universalism, Sovereignty and Elite Perception

The aim of this article is to analyse the meaning of Mercosur for Brazilian foreign policy. To this end, we discuss the perceptions of the Brazilian elites concerning the regional integration process. The defence of the principle of inter-governmentalism is related to the conception of Mercosur's place within Brazil's international relations. The fact that principles such as universalism and sovereignty are very highly valued ends up affecting the deepening of the integration. The hypothesis of this article is that the Mercosur structure is in line with the perceptions of part of the Brazilian elites, which has put less emphasis on integration since the late 1990s. Our argument is that the current structure is insufficient to guarantee the dynamics of integration.

Do despotismo da gentalha à democracia da gravata lavada: história do conceito de democracia no Brasil (1770-1870)

The voting rate in Brazil only reached 40% (considered consistent with a modern democracy) in the 1980s. However, the bibliography always refers to the 1986, 1945, and 1933 elections as moments of re-democratization, when explicitly or implicitly the original could only have existed during the fraudulent and oligarchic First Republic (1889-1930). This article focuses on the process by which the 19th century Brazilian elites slowly forged this purely liberal-institutional concept of democracy, with extensive repercussions during the following century. The concept found its symbol in the starched collar democracy to which Teofilo Ottoni referred in his campaign in 1860, limited to the educated and moneyed stratum of the population, and reclaimed by the UDN party in the 1945 presidential campaign.

Reveillon in Rio De Janeiro

Brazil's extensive Atlantic coastline has profoundly influenced the nation's history, serving as the initial locus for colonial settlement, and, subsequently, the site for almost all its major cities. Rio de Janeiro has long been the nation's dominant international tourist destination. While Carnival remains the city's most popular event, Reveillon, the New Years Eve celebration on Copacabana beach in honor of the sea goddess, Iemanjá, has become a major tourist draw. A familiar personage in Brazilian popular culture, Iemanjá is a major deity in African-Brazilian religions. African and African-Brazilian beliefs, historically associated with lower class and mixed race peoples, were long scorned by Brazilian elites as the superstitious practices of ignorant people. The majority of practitioners of African-Brazilian religions in contemporary Brazil are lower class and visibly of mixed race. The Reveillon evokes and commodifies Brazil's preferred national image as a multicultural, multiracial democracy free of the Western stain of racism. As such, the celebration serves as a confirming ritual for Brazilians while, at the same time, packaging and presenting that image to tourists.

Local Leaders and Democracy: Brazil in Comparative Perspective

What democracy means for Brazilian local elites: Is competitive politics fully accepted? How much room should be allowed for societal forces participation? How Brazilian local elites political attitudes compare to their similar in old and new democracies. Based on survey data from the research project Democracy and Local Governance, the paper compares the political attitudes of local leaders in Brazil and 23 other countries regarding their support for democracy, elitism, liberalism, decentralized government and preferences for consociative or majoritarian politics.

A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

A independência brasileira: Novas dimensões

In recent years there has been a marked increase in the number of works on Brazil’s independence and First Empire. While the general story has not changed, the methods and materials used to explore the breakdown of the colonial system and the rise of the western hemisphere’s only lasting empire have. However, most work to date has appeared in narrowly focused monographs that are of interest only to Brazilianists. Therein lies the need for and strength of this book: by bringing together researchers that approach Brazilian independence from such varied perspectives as print culture, late colonial economics, Atlantic world currents, and regional studies, a complex, complicated, and inherently more complete picture of the period emerges, a picture that lends itself to cross-cultural comparisons.A indepêndencia brasileira is a collection of essays based on a semester-long seminar held at Oxford University in 2003. The book divides Brazil’s independence period into three sections: the late colonial period, the transfer of the court, and the crisis of 1820 – 23. Each section contains several chapters that revolve around key questions for that period. Chapters by Jorge Miguel Pedreira and João Pinto Furtado in the first section, for example, focus on the key issue of colonial antecedents for Brazilian independence. Were the aborted revolutions of the late eighteenth century (Inconfidência Mineira, Revolt of the Tailors, etc.), forerunners of independence? One of the most interesting points to emerge from this section is an acknowledgement that the transfer of the court challenged the successful colonial system and led to a crisis in Portugal. Ultimately, the authors argue that independence was not the culmination of a process that emerged from the colonial period in Brazil.The second section includes a chapter by Kirsten Schultz that builds on her work in Tropical Versailles (Routledge, 2001), and a chapter by the book’s editor on Brazilian elites at independence. Both chapters address the valuable question of how exactly the transfer of the court in 1808 affected Brazil. Did the presence of the monarch on Brazilian soil advance or retard independence? Schultz places the Brazilian movement for independence into the context of the Atlantic world in the age of revolutions, arguing that independence appeared as a conservative alternative to republicanism. In this light, the Portuguese in Rio supported a movement that would protect the monarchy, even at the loss of the colony.The third section highlights the use of innovative materials to examine independence. From chapters on Brazilians in the Portuguese court, to the impact of the nascent political press in Rio, to the rituals of independence, the authors find that independence pervaded Brazilian culture and society. While the materials used to this point may be innovative, the actors are familiar. For the most part, the actions of elites in Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon tell the story of independence. Hendrik Kraay addresses this issue in his chapter “Muralhas da independência e liberdade do Brasil: A participação popular nas lutas políticas (Bahia, 1820-25).” Kraay examines the motives held by enslaved, freed, and free Afro-Brazilians as they fought for independence in the National Guard in Bahia. He highlights the complexity of the race and class system by arguing that there was little ideological cohesion among the various groups, though the white elite saw a unified threat to social order. While more work remains to be done on integrating popular classes in our understanding of independence movements, this chapter shows one possible window into the motives and understandings of those who left few records.The concluding section by Anthony McFarlane focuses on the position of Brazil-ian independence in the larger Atlantic world and illuminates both the strengths and weaknesses of the book as a whole. The process of collecting together numerous scholars examining independence through a multitude of lenses exposes the complexity of Brazilian independence and highlights new approaches to the period. The most significant contribution of the book is the placement of Brazil’s independence movement into larger contexts — Portugal, the Atlantic world, and Spanish America. The only significant limitation is the language of publication. The questions, arguments, and conclusions will be of interest to a broad range of scholars. Those working on independence movements in Spanish America and the impact of enlightenment political philosophy in the larger Atlantic world will find much here to inform their research. As the organizer and editor himself acknowledges: “comparative analyses between the Hispanic world and Portuguese America are practically nonexistent” (p. 45). This book goes a long way toward rectifying that problem.