Brazil: Democracy, Citizenship and Culture (73230242LY)
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Summary of all lectures and seminars -be prepared for the exam! Brazil democracy, citizenship and culture
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Brazil: Democracy, Citizenship and Culture (73230242LY)
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Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This summary entails notes taken from lecture slides and seminar slides, as well as additional notes taken by myself during the sessions. This is all you need to know from the lectures and seminars!
Brazil: Democracy, Citizenship and Culture (73230242LY)
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Week 1 - The historical making and the global positioning of the Brazilian nation
Lecture 1 - The making of the Brazilian nation: history, modernity, and globalization
Key Historical Episodes
Brasil Colonia
• Original populations for at least 10.000 years
• Coastal occupation, plantations (Portuguese, Dutch, French)
• Land grants
• Inland expeditions and support economy (cattle, food, mining)
• Slavery (one of the biggest)
o Slave labour-based exportation colony
• ‘Genocidal displacement’ of indigenous societies
• Political control of the crown
Key figures in Brazilian history
• Pedro II (1842-1889)
o Last emperor
• Getúlio Vargas (1930-1954)
o Committed suicide
o Credited for bringing poor into politics
o Modernisation
• Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979)
o General
o Most prominent during miliary regime
o Initiated return to democracy
• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010, 2023-)
o Hope to lead to Brazilian reconstruction
o Greater than Vargas?
Four key periods
1822 - Independence
• 1808: Dom Joao VI in Rio
• 1815: Brazil became an ‘equal’ kingdom
• 1820-21: the dilemma of Joao VI
• 1820: Portuguese Cortes wants recolonization
• 1821: Joao returns to Portugal; his son Pedro becomes regent
• 7 September 1822: “fico!” - I Stay! On the banks of the Ipiranga river
• Pedro I (1822-1831)
o Pressured by the elite to declare the independence
o Did not lead long, people thought he was listening to his father
• Regional rebellions and national unity (1830-1845)
• Pedro II (1841-1889)
o Independence and nationhood
▪ Considered to be stable period
▪ Gradual and peaceful dynamic transfer of power - sovereignty recognized
(Britain and Portugal)
▪ Territorial integrity (despite regional rebellions until 1845)
, 2
▪ Monarchy: centralised state and elite ‘circulation’. Barons and coronels
(Pang, Noblemen of the Southern Cross) as an ‘elite imagined community’
▪ Colonial economy, society, slavery
▪ First efforts to promote immigration from Europe (Lesser 2013)
1888 - Abolicao: the abolition of slavery | 1889 – Founding of the modern federation
• Laws against the slave trade (1831, 1850): pra inglês ver
• Socio-economic changes and immigration (from Europe) of free labour
• Abolitionist movement (Joaquim Nabuco)
• 1871: “free womb law”
• 1888: Lei Aurea
• 1889: Founding of the republic: the modern federation
o New coffee elite of Sao Paulo
o The military and positivism
o 15 November 1889 - Military coup
o Abolition of Slavery and the founding of the republic was an interconnected but
separate process. The monarchy was outdated, US was used as a reference, it
was an obsolete form of governance.
o Brazil turned into an elite republic, had formal presidents (old republic). The
rise of Sao Paulo was important as political region for the economy and
industry.
• Blacks after Abolition: racism, discrimination, ‘segunda escravidao’
o Abolition, Republic, Modernity
▪ Abolition (and mass immigration): modernity in the consolidation of
capitalism
▪ Republic: modernity in a liberal and decentral legal state
▪ Social and cultural elitist and racist modernity
1930 - Vargas and national-populism
• The crisis of the old republic was economic and political
• Getulio Vargas was elite member in Rio Grance do Sul and governor of this agricultural
state in the South.
• Elections 1930 lost by Vargas, but he and his backers alleged fraud and corruption
o He used the military to put himself in power
• The Vargas period has been very defining with regard contemporary ideas about how
Brazil should be.
1964 - Military dictatorship
• Coup as ‘revolution’
• Democratic institutions and elections neutralised but not totally abolished
• State-led developmentalism and middle-class consumerism
• 24 years of military rule
o Violent repression (1968-1979)
o Regime-led transition to democracy (1979-1985)
o Tutelage of a ‘political army’ (1985-1990-?)
• Memory politics from Dilma to Bolsonaro
o Dilma herself joined a guerrilla group to fight against the military regime. She
was captured and tortured.
o Bolsonaro referred to this period as nostalgic and supported the military party
Significance of these historical episodes for understanding Brazil today
, 3
o Independence: sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity nationhood
o Abolition: peripheral capitalist relations of production; racial inequality and the
myth of ‘racial democracy
o Republic: federal polity, electorialism, regionalism, modernity
o Vargas: Urban-industrial development, social classes, inequality versus social
justice, bureaucratic state, political militarism, populism (political interpellation
of the urban masses), nationalism, mass national identity (social and racial
‘harmony’)
o Miliary dictatorship: conservative state capitalism, middle class consumerism,
mass media society, state violence, regional power aspirations, legacy for
‘Bolsonarismo’
• Schulze & Fischer 2019
o Brazil as a mirror to the world: blended racialisation and cultural encounters,
peripheral capitalism, alternative geopolitics
o Global processes shape Brazilian nationhood, social relations, and ideas:
‘micro-history of globalisation’ (coffee, race, Cold War, Amazon)
o P. 418: “in-betweenness”
Modern Brazilian nationhood
National identity? Cultural construction
• Not: sameness & homogeneity
• Not: fixed shared essence of a population of a nation-state
• But: a modern political community - the ‘nation’ endowed with cultural meaning that
shaped and reshapes recognition and belonging
• Nation as a ‘register’ of shared cultural fields and practises, as much about unity as
about division, exclusion, conflict (critique of Anderson)
• National identity and modernity: what makes Brazil Brazil? (book)
o Tries to combine sociology and anthropology
o To understand modernity of Brazil you need to understand Brazil’s structure
o Describes a Brazil that ended in 1970
Brazilian nationality & modernity
• 19th century: Elite modernity between mimesis of Europe and racial pessimism
• 1920s: Modernist avant-garde and manifesto antropofágico > 1960s counterculture
Tropicalia movement
• The relational nation: “house, street, otherworld” Roberto DaMatta
• Statist modernity and popular unity: urban-industrial progress and the mestico nation
(1930-1990)
• After 1990: the modernity of diversity, inclusion, citizenship, globalisation
• Bolsonaro and racist conservatism: modernity in reverse?
Imagining modern Brazil
• Cultural fields of Brazilian nationhood
o History and territory
o “Natural abundance” and resource wealth (week 5)
o Vibrant and violent cities (week 4)
o Language - educational system - city and countryside
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