Century Brazil Research Articles

RACISMO X NEGRO NA GESTÃO PÚBLICA

The presence of black people in public administration is a crucial and complex issue that is intertwined with the history of racism in Brazil. The fight for more black representation in spaces of power is a direct confrontation with the racist structures that permeate our society. The slave system, which lasted for centuries in Brazil, left deep marks on society, establishing racial hierarchies that persist to this day. For more than three centuries, slavery denied black people citizenship and any kind of political participation. This historical legacy perpetuates inequalities and prejudices, affecting the Brazilian social structure to this day. This article, through bibliographical research, seeks to understand the relationship between racism and low black representation in the Brazilian political system, analyzing how racism contributes directly to the under-representation of black people in other spheres of power and social prestige. However, this study only reinforces how fundamental it is to tackle structural racism so that, through affirmative policies, the inclusion of black people in Brazilian society can take place in a more equal way in the context of public management, enabling institutions to be more diverse and plural.

Le crime d’encyclopédisme: ideias ilustradas e insurreição no Brasil do Século XVIII

In 18th century Brazil, possessing certain books could be an indication of a transgression. Sharing certain ideas was enough to characterize a sui generis crime: le crime d’encyclopédisme. Luís Vieira da Silva, one of the members of the Insurreição Mineira, was incriminated because of his books. The objective of the work is to present what happened to his library as an important record of both Portuguese policy towards the colonies in America and the aversion to free thought defended, notably, by Enlightenment authors, considered worthy of censorship due to the revolutionary and critical influence of they exercised.

A história da assistência médica no Rio de Janeiro: a implantação e desenvolvimento da Policlínica de Botafogo (1889-1939)

This research sought to investigate the trajectory of the Polyclinic of Botafogo (PB), a care institution founded in 1900 by the physician Luiz Pedro Barbosa, showing its organizational model inspired by European and North American dispensaries, role in providing health care to the urban poor and functioning as a space for the development of medical education. The objective of the work was to reconstruct the trajectory of BP, between 1900 and 1939, highlighting the importance of its medical and social role, investigating the implementation, organization, maintenance and evolution of health care, analyzing the statistical data related to donations, the number consultations and the medical staff, and bringing to the debate the social and urban transformations that made the institution's development possible. The study of the origin of this institution not only brought to light issues related to health care in the midst of social, political, economic and cultural transformations between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in Brazil and contribution to knowledge for the historiography of science and health in the country.

A Miscarriage of Justice: Women's Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth Century Brazil

A Miscarriage of Justice: Women's Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth Century Brazil

In Silico and In Vitro Investigation of Phytoconstituents from Flacourtia Jangomas as a Potential Candidate for the Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

AbstractFlacourtia jangomas is a plant used for centuries in Brazil, China, India, and the Malaya Peninsula to treat conditions such as diabetes, asthma, anaemia, and diarrhoea. Despite its therapeutic and economic benefits, the plant has not been popular among farmers due to its limited yield and lack of knowledge about its potential. Targeting PPARγ agonists is a promising approach for discovering and developing effective drugs to treat type 2 diabetes. Due to the activation of the PPARγ through PPARγ agonists, target genes implicated in inflammation, adipogenesis, lipid metabolism, and glucose metabolism are transcriptionally regulated. This study analysed the curated datasets of F. jangomas to identify the binding conformations of the phytoconstituents with different T2DM targets through molecular docking, molecular dynamics, and ADMET prediction approach. To determine the most favourable binding conformations of phytoconstituents that bind with the PPARγ receptors, density functional theory and principal component analysis were performed. The study reveals that the phytoconstituents of F. jangomas can act as PPARγ agonists and could be used to design and optimise the potential antidiabetic agents inspired by natural products. These findings provide a promising approach towards developing effective antidiabetic drugs.

Inscribed in Liberalism: racism in International Relations and abolition of slavery in Brazil

The beginning of 20th Century was a moment of great transformations, amongst which the first impulse in institutionalize a field of knowledge of International Relations. A structural change that happened 30 years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil. Despite the fact of being unrelated historical phenomena in objective terms, I argue that the possibility of analyzing them in tandem widens the critique to the racist premises of liberalism, a powerful ideological motivator in both events. The vitality of critical studies in IR has helped denounce the premises upon which the discipline is grounded and the definition of what is within the scope of its interest. The disciplinary critique is reconstructed in the first section and, in the second, I present the marginalization inscribed in legal norms of late 19th and early 20th Century Brazil. The technique of developing conditions for the segregation of a sector of the population disguising it from full-citizens by granting conditional-citizenship to former enslaved people is a sophisticated use of liberalism. Such use not only presents in full the critique of structural racism developed by the critique to this political project, already advanced by IR scholars, it also presents another discussion that has yet ground to cover in the field: the unchallenged premise of homogeneity within political communities.

Quilombola women confronting digital discrimination in Brazil

This work discusses the relationship between digital disconnection and the violation of rights in Quilombola territories. Quilombolas are an ethnic-racial group with Black origins associated with oppression and resistance over the centuries in Brazil. The research was conducted with 41 women aged between 18 and 73 who are leaders in 35 remaining Quilombola communities in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The impacts of limited access to information and communications technology (ICT) were assessed using an intersectional perspective, considering social markers of difference such as gender, social class, ethnic-racial belonging, and territory. The results show that 11 territories lack internet service, significantly restricting access to information, health, education, and social participation. The research points to the need for considering digital inequity as another matrix of intersectional oppression, as being disconnected or having restrictions on access and use of ICT increases the vulnerability of these territories, especially for the Quilombola women.

The Perspective of Gender Equality in Francisca Senhorinha

Objective: To reflect on the approach and impact of Francisca Senhorinha's thought and work from a socio-historical perspective, relaunched in the current themes of ideology and gender issues, along with the empowerment at the time in terms of communication of the ideal and formation of women in her time, assessing how she influenced the feminist movement in 19th century Brazil and the impact of her contributions in the fight for the emancipation of women in a very challenging socio-political context. Theoretical Framework: The research is fundamentally centred on relevant studies and references on the author and the issues associated with the subject under study, with particular emphasis on research that the author inspired in the state, in the country and in the world. Thus contributing to a theoretical framework close to that associated with Bárbara Souto's work entitled "Senhora do seu destino: Francisca Senhorinha da Motta Diniz e Josephina Alvares de Azevedo - projetos de emancipação feministas na imprensa brasileira (1873-1894)" (2013). Method: Narrative literature review, seeking to describe and discuss the current state of the research topic, particularly with regard to authors who consolidate and substantiate the author's perspective on which the research is centred. Results and Discussion: A theoretical-discursive approach based on a relational triad between concepts, authors and literary-communicational work in the press with implications (direct and indirect) in the evolutionary framework of the theme adopted in this research. Implications of the research: to constitute, this time and for the future, a set of findings and considerations that can help reflection on history and its makers, in certain subjects and themes of great value in contemporary discourse in the light of current concerns and the demands of modern society. Originality/Value: This study addresses, in a unique way, the originality of Francisca Senhorinha da Motta Diniz's work, which lies mainly in her pioneering and multifaceted work as an educator, feminist and abolitionist at a time when women, especially black women, faced serious social and institutional restrictions. Her inspiring legacy empowers the areas that are central to a world that wants to be democratic and free, essentially aimed at protecting and promoting "Education for All", within a framework of values based on equality and fraternity between peoples, thus helping to build a fairer and more inclusive society.

Symphony No. 2 (“Brasiliana”) by Walter Burle Marx

Abstract: This article on the Brazilian composer Walter Burle Marx ( b . São Paulo, 1902; d . Akron, Ohio, 1990) is part of an ambitious project which aims at publishing a performing edition of all four of Burle Marx’s symphonies. His Symphony No. 2 (“Brasiliana”), written in 1950, reflects Burle Marx’s national and cosmopolitan influences. The early twentieth century in Brazil was an effervescent period, during which nationalism was the watchword. This climate caused some hesitation when it came to accepting Burle Marx into the Brazilian musical scene as a composer and conductor. Burle Marx’s musical background forged an undeniable bond between music tradition and artistic nationalism, which was imperative to the composers of the time. Nonetheless, for the Brazilian modernist movement in the 1920s, Burle Marx’s German training in the 1920s turned out to be an anathema. This article investigates two aspects of Brazil’s cultural and political environment between 1922 and 1945, a critical period that had a great impact on the development of Burle Marx’s career, and this article also concludes by presenting the most characteristic and distinctive compositional processes that make this work noteworthy in Burle Marx’s symphonic output. This era embraces two significant moments in the cultural and political history of Brazil: A Semana de Arte Moderna (“The Week of Modern Art”), which was a watershed development toward a new aesthetic orientation for Brazilian artists, and the end of Era Vargas, Getúlio Vargas’s dictatorship (1930–45).

Blackness in Black and White: Serra Pelada and Sebastião Salgado

Since their publication in Sunday Times Magazine in 1987, the photographs of the biblically sized Serra Pelada gold mine in northern Brazil by Sebastião Salgado have garnered an emphatically positive reception. In “Blackness in Black and White: Sebastião Salgado and Serra Pelada,” I argue there is a system of racial coding in his photographs of the Serra Pelada gold mine, which has received little attention in the photographic discourse. I examine the photographs in dialogue with visual histories of enslavement and the exploitation of black bodies in 19th century Brazil and the United States, and the complexities of racial identity and hierarchy in late 20th century Brazil. Through this analysis, I also highlight blind spots in the English-language discourse on Salgado’s gold photographs, which seek to both universalize their themes and aestheticize their content, as well as challenge his own characterization of the photographs. My primary objective is not to argue that Salgado’s photographic decisions, which were made manifest in this systemization, were premeditated, but rather to assert its presence within the photographs and in doing so, offer a more politically and culturally nuanced and specific analysis of the photographs.

A Tale of Enduring Myths: Buffon’s Theory of Animal Degeneration and the Regeneration of Domesticated Animals in Mid-19th Century Brazil

The long 19th century was a period of many developments and technical innovations in agriculture and animal biology, during which actors sought to incorporate new practices in light of new information. By the middle of the century, however, while heredity steadily became the dominant concept in animal husbandry, some policies related to livestock improvement in Brazil seemed to have been tailored following a climate-deterministic concept established in the mid-18th century by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon. His theory of animal degeneration posited, among other things, the necessity of recurrent crossbreeding to preserve animal species living in nonnative environments from climate-induced degeneration. Although largely discredited by the early 19th century, the teachings of the French naturalist seem to have found supporters in a Brazilian program to modernize national agriculture through the application of the natural sciences. Herein I examine the revival of Buffon’s theories in that government-sponsored program to improve animal husbandry and breeding techniques, including actual applications of this theory in the real world. Ultimately, I argue that Buffon’s theory of degeneration was used to tailor public policies and funding for the improvement of domesticated animals in Brazil between 1856 and 1860.

The Financialization of Health and Education and Inequality in Twenty-first Century Brazil

Brazil is often cited for its high levels of inequality. Despite some success in reducing this inequality during the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) period, the rise of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s president threatened to reverse this trend as he actively sought to promote policies that would lead to greater financialization of the Brazilian economy. In recent years, several studies have shown that the financialization of the economy as a whole can lead to a rise in inequality, but the financialization of the health and education sectors has not been of particular interest to researchers and government officials. An empirical analysis of the pattern of income inequality in twenty-first-century Brazil paying particular attention to the potential impact of the financialization of health and education sectors on this process shows a correlation between greater financialization (especially in the health sector) and an increase in income inequality. O Brasil é frequentemente destacado pelos seus níveis elevados de desigualdade. Apesar de algum progresso na redução da desigualdade durante o período de governação do PT, a tomada de posse como presidente de Jair Bolsonaro ameaça reverter esta trajetória, nomeadamente via o apoio a uma maior financeirização da economia. Nos últimos anos, vários estudos mostraram que a financeirização da economia como um todo pode conduzir ao aumento da desigualdade. Porém, a financeirização dos setores da saúde e da educação não tem sido alvo de interesse particular. Uma análise empírica do comportamento da desigualdade no Brasil no séc. XXI salientando o potencial impacto da financeirização da saúde e da educação, sugere que uma maior financeirização, em particular do setor da saúde, está associada a um aumento da desigualdade na repartição do rendimento no Brasil.

Symphony No. 2 "Brasiliana" by Walter Burle Marx

This article on the Brazilian composer Walter Burle Marx (b São Paulo, 1902; d Akron, Ohio, 1990) is part of an ambitious project, which aims at publishing a performing edition of all four of Burle Marx’s symphonies. His Symphony No. 2 (“Brasiliana”), written in 1950, reflects Burle Marx’s national and cosmopolitan influences. The early twentieth century in Brazil was an effervescent period when nationalism was the watchword. This climate caused some hesitation when it came to accepting Burle Marx into the Brazilian musical scene not only as a composer but also as a conductor. Burle Marx’s musical background forged an undeniable bond between music tradition and artistic nationalism, which was imperative to the composers of the time. Nonetheless, for the Brazilian modernist movement in the 1920s, Burle Marx’s German training in the 1920s turned out to be an anathema. This article investigates two aspects of Brazil’s cultural and political environment between 1922 and 1945, a critical period which had a great impact on the development of Burle Marx’s career, as well as conclude presenting the most characteristic and distinctive compositional processes that make this work noteworthy in Walter Burle Marx’s symphonic output.

THE BRAZILIAN DISTRIBUTIVE CONFLICT IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY AND THE ROLE OF THE FOREIGN SECTOR

The first two decades of the 21st century in Brazil were characterized by an increase in the wage share, which was largely associated with the higher workers’ bargaining power that resulted from institutional changes and lower unemployment. We show that the foreign sector also played a key role in this process and explore how its effects on the domestic income distribution changed over the years. We highlight the importance of the industry and, in particular, the manufacturing sector to the higher wage share. At the beginning of the period the depreciated domestic currency did not compromise the profit share due to the low bargaining power of workers, while during the years of appreciated domestic currency the distributive conflict was attenuated. Yet, the currency depreciation after 2011 occurred in an economic structure more dependent on imports and with high workers’ bargaining power, thus pressuring downwards profit margins.

The middle classes and socio-spatial transformations in the metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: 2000-2010

The first decade of the twenty-first century in Brazil was marked by significant economic, social and political changes: a substantial reduction in income inequalities; a considerable decline in unemployment and rise in formal employment; social policies lifted a sizable portion of the population out of poverty; and increased investments in education, health, housing, urban infrastructure, and culture, among others, all of which resulted in reducing inequalities on multiple levels. Against this background, and bearing in mind the historical dual character of the Brazilian city, the question that this article sets out to answer is: has the multidimensional reduction of inequalities resulted in a decline in urban segregation and inequalities? In view of the aforementioned changes, our hypothesis is that the answer to this question is positive. To demonstrate this, the article uses data from the 2000 and 2010 demographic censuses, and compares the metropolitan regions of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, based on significant methodological innovations in the way the categories of analysis are constructed, vis-à-vis the existing studies on the subject.

Leopoldo Miguéz's Nocturnes Opp.10 and 20/1: Political Context and Stylistic Analysis in the "City of Pianos"

As in Europe, the piano reached the height of its popularity in the mid- to late nineteenth century in Brazil. Its presence in cultural life increased significantly, with performances in concert halls, theatres, and even cafés. Nocturnes— particularly Chopin's— were fre quently played at home and in public venues. Leopoldo Miguéz (1852–1902), considered at the time to be influenced by Wagner, Liszt, and the so-called Zukunftsmusik, was the first Brazilian composer to write a symphony, a violin sonata, and a symphonic poem. This ar ticle provides an overview of Miguéz's piano Nocturnes Opp.10 and 20/1 in the context of their relationship to contemporaneous Brazilian politics and his compositional practice. An in-depth analysis of the two nocturnes aims to map out his style, taking as parame ters his implementation of nineteenth-century constructive procedures previously established in analyses of his Violin Sonata Op.14 and his Allegro Appassionato Op.11 for piano. These include: the use of proto-themes, mediant regions, smooth voice-leading, complex tonal plans, motivic economy, and roving harmonies. These procedures are shown to be significant elements in Miguéz's palette of compositional traits and stylistic character istics; notably, they may have been common in Europe at the time but were unknown in Brazil. [...]

Redux Sellow: revealing Sellow’s collections from the Herbier Impérial du Brésil at the Paris Herbarium

This research aimed to locate and list all specimens belonging to the so-called Herbier Impérial du Brésil (HIB: Imperial Herbarium of Brazil), in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (P) in Paris. In 1833, Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré removed this collection from what was then the Imperial and National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, currently the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro (R). Since then, these specimens have been labelled as HIB plus a collection number, with one of four “Provinces” designated as “Mato Grosso”, “Minas Gerais”, “Rio Grande”, “São Paulo” and “C. Gaudichaud 1833”. For this reason, most specimens have erroneously been attributed, both in the literature and database at P (Sonnerat), to collection by Gaudichaud-Beaupré. I located these specimens through virtual searches in the Sonnerat database and two in-person visits to P. As a result, 3,441 specimens were located, but there should be another 262 specimens that are part of the sequential numbering for each “Province”. The specimens located belong to 147 APG IV families, 786 genera, 1,916 species of phanerogams and 14 families, 34 genera, 53 species of cryptogams. Of relevance is that ca. 555 of these specimens are nomenclatural types and another ca. 980 specimens are likely duplicates of types described from Sellow’s collections. Except for specimens from Mato Grosso, where Sellow never collected, evidence that he is the collector of specimens from other provinces comes from 812 specimens that still have his original labels tied to the branches or traces of destroyed labels. Many specimens without Sellow’s original labels belong to species described from his collections in Berlin and, in several cases, were only known at the time from them, including morphological and phenological data. In view of this, some cases are exemplified and detailed in which specific names have nomenclatural priority, but which have been neglected, or remained doubtful, and could be resolved from HIB specimens, by being directly and/or indirectly related to well-documented specimens. It was also possible to resolve or improve the localities and collection periods of many of these specimens, especially those with the original labels, without the laconic “Brasilia” and/or “Montevideo” traditionally associated with the “Sellow s.n.” collections. Still incipiently, information is also presented on the collections (HIB duplicates) in the herbarium of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro (R), for which collection data are partially digitised (≈ 14%). Finally, it should be noted that this research is a first step towards a more comprehensive study, in which ideally a compilation of all Sellow collections, spread across the four corners of the globe, would be accomplished, enabling a better understanding and resolution of taxonomic and/or nomenclatural issues that still remain untouched or unresolved. Sellow’s collection is, perhaps, the most important of those collected in 19th century Brazil, which has not been given serious consideration. The HIB collections shed light on old and new taxonomic issues, circumscription, geographical distribution and typification, to list only some of the related aspects which will improve knowledge of the primary source of information on our botanical heritage, that is, our flora. As an example, a lectotype is designated for the name Chrysocoma megapotamica Spreng., which has nomenclatural priority over the heterotypic synonym Eupatorium ericoides DC., the basionym of Disynaphia ericoides (DC.) R.M.King & H.Rob., the latter wrongly taken as the correct name of this taxon. Therefore, I here propose a nomenclatural combination for this name in Disynaphia.

Migrant transnationalism and time: divergent trajectories of diasporic political engagement in early 20th century São Paulo

ABSTRACT Why and how do some migrant groups demonstrate greater engagement with homeland politics than others at particular historical moments? Research has examined both individual-level factors such as migrants’ resources and institutional factors such as contexts of incorporation. Less theorised, however, are the ways in which factors are mediated by temporal contexts such as timing and sequence. Drawing on the notion of path dependence, this study analyses how the temporal orders of four institutional factors – 1) the socioeconomic context of reception, 2) incorporative policies of the receiving state, 3) diaspora policies of the sending state, and 4) migrant networks – resulted in divergent levels of diasporic engagement between Italian and Japanese migrants in early twentieth century Brazil. My findings show that the socioeconomic context of reception provides the initial condition on which migrants develop their networks. Second, the timing of when diasporic policies – relative to incorporative policies – reach out to migrant networks affects the breadths of social class involvement in diasporic engagement. This study contends that timing plays a critical role in producing divergent levels of diasporic engagement at the group-level.

Tennis representations in the 20th-century Brazilian press: women’s bodies in focus

ABSTRACT Involved in representations that produce meanings according to the characteristics of each time and space, the human body is a record of history and culture. The media is one of the instruments that convey these meanings, and, as tennis was a sport considered beautiful and without physical contact, it represented a practice that did not disfigure the femininity of cisgender women. Therefore, this study sought to discuss how the sport of tennis was represented in a women’s magazine in the mid-20th century in Brazil, analyzing the stereotypes behind such a representation. For this, we used the pages of the Brazilian magazine Jornal das Moças and defined the period in which it was distributed as being from 1914 to 1965. We identified different representations of the tennis practice that reinforced whiteness and specific stereotypes, such as cisness and heteronormativity, when encouraging women to be attractive to men, with tennis supporting the importance of women in the constitution of families and being an opportunity for women from ruling classes to leave the domestic environment. In addition, it involved aspects of health maintenance and forms of beautification capable of developing physical characteristics that received high praise in virtue of the type of femininity.

Textile design: print of life in the history of art

This article is based on research on the evolution of textile printing and its relationship with cultural and artistic memory in the 20th century in Brazil and specifically at Companhia Têxtil Ferreira Guimarães. Through the memories and objects of individual and/or collective memory, represented through images in the narratives of cultural, social and political history and those related to research in terms of textile heritage, we can rethink Ferreira Guimarães' relationship with the artistic scene and cultural history of the city of Juiz de Fora. The result of this research is the growing perception that textile design is one of the many forms of representation of personal and social history and constantly seeks its references and inspirations in works and artists enshrined in the history of art.