Since 2015, the Brazilian state has been making budget cuts in several areas that deal with fundamental human rights. One of them refers to education itself. The Brazilian state has been influenced and subjected to the discourse that the only way to recover the economy refers to austerity. Such argument, according to the same document, concerns the clear objective of redefining the role of the State to satisfy certain interests.

In Brazil, several studies have been dedicated to discussing the new configurations and the re-spatialization of the automotive industry in recent years. The assumption is that there was a process of deconcentration of production about traditional producing regions from the 1990s on. The reasons why companies in the sector sought these new territories fostered two sets of explanations.

The AK Gender's purpose is to promote research, reflection, and debate about persisting gender-related inequalities, encompassing role stereotypes, and their social impact. The AK Gender aims to favor an interdisciplinary approach; thus, the guest lecturer was Prof. Thiessen, whose research focus is gender-sensitive social work. She is currently the Vice Dean at the Faculty of Social Work from the Hochschule Landshut in Germany. 

Income redistribution is essential to reduce economic inequality and, consequently, to reduce food insecurity. In addition, they ensure the maintenance of children and adolescents in school, the effectiveness of childhood illnesses and for the safety of the health of pregnant women. Over the past twenty years, income transfer programs have been developed in Latin America, with emphasis on those created in Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, serving a total of 68 million people in the three countries. However, the recent change in Brazil to the new Auxílio Brasil program represents a setback in the then consolidated advance of the Bolsa Família Program.

Christian Zionism was unnoticed in Brazil until the 2018 presidential elections. The candidate for the presidency of the Republic, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, supported massively by some Pentecostal churches, by Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, by Assembleia de Deus, and by Congregação Cristã do Brasil, as well as politicians and bishops that constitute the so-called "Bancada Evangélica" of the Brazilian parliament, appeared on the scene amid popular demonstrations taking as central symbols Brazil's flag along with the American and Israelis flags.

Whether as a category of social stratification or a subject of collective action, the term “class” has appeared frequently in recent debates about Brazilian political life. The renewed interest in the topic can be traced back to, at least, the first attempts to interpret the experience of upward social mobility by numerically expressive groups of people during the years of the government of the Workers' Party (Portuguese acronym: PT) at the head of the Presidency of the Republic. There was then a diffuse perception that something was changing in the Brazilian class structure, and that, whatever these changes might be, they would affect somehow the forms of the political expression of the social conflict.

This article addresses a topic of great worldwide relevance, as it proposes reflections on the use of communication, to help raise awareness of a real and growing problem: environmental preservation. Based on works by renowned authors, the discussion points to a new perspective for environmental education. It mentions communication strategies used as a link between informative speeches on the subject and awareness and effectiveness of attitudes that preserve nature.

Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "Limitation to the constitutional reform represents the very idea of constitutional supremacy and the resulting duality of democratic politics, as this tool enables to identify the constitutional norm and its differentiation from infra-constitutional political acts."

Amid the 2019 carnival, the federal government had reduced the participation of civil society in the deliberative spheres of power, and thus, entered (through the back door) in a classic phenomenon of Political Anthropology: the Carnivalization of Politics or, as we call it here, the cannibalization of CF88.

In Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, decisionism is already part of the reality, as one can identify among the various threats against the Supreme Court and its ministers, as well as in protests calling for the Supreme Court’s closure. If these demonstrations were isolated and had no support from state agents, there would be no ground for concern. However, several people in power positions compact with this idea For instance, here are 6 signs of an ongoing decisionist project in Brazil.

Probably no experience, not even human construction/fabrication demands so many results compared to democracy. Not even intensive care medicine. In intensive care units, 10% chances of survival mean that out of every hundred people, ten will survive. In a political democracy, the reduction of political goals to 10% of success or implementation implies the loss of a democratic regime 100% of the time. No democracy in the world, in the past or present survives or has survived without clear, satisfactory, and evident results. 

From a prominent position in international relations to distrust and outcast, Brazil has been suffering from the current president's deadly lack of governance and leadership capacity. His incompetence and misleading statements slashed Brazil's environmental agenda, and it is isolating the country in a World that needs cooperation to solve global challenges, such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reviewed by Matheus Lucas Hebling. "Researchers who study education and its social relations seem to have reached a consensus that the COVID-19 pandemics have severely hampered the learning experiences of millions of students in Brazil. Nevertheless, the negative impact of pandemics is far from uniform. The change from face-to-face lessons to remote learning brought into light the intense inequalities of educational opportunities in our country, deepening them like never before in Brazil's recent history. As parents' pedagogical support becomes even more decisive for the proper execution of school tasks at home, it is of paramount importance that we reflect on how families from different social classes are dealing with remote learning."

2021 started with a shock for the Brazilian industry. After more than 100 years of operation in Brazil, Ford Company Brazil decided to close its operations. With more than 5,000 direct employees, the closure of factories in the country tends to worsen a scenario that is already dramatic for the country due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the slow process of economic recovery.

In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President, after presenting in his campaign the fight against inequality through the Fome Zero Program as his main agenda. However, due to political, economic, and social differences within the Workers' Party, a coalition who advocated a structurally simpler program than Fome Zero was formed. This group defended a direct income transfer program, in which the receiving family would not necessarily have to spend on food, but on the needs of any source. Because of this, an intra-party conflict happened in 2003 between the “Food Security” coalition, which was an advocate of the Fome Zero Program, and the “Basic Income” coalition, to determine which type of public policy should remain a priority in the fight against hunger in Brazil.

For the last decades, the Latin-American democracies have combined relative consolidation and institutional stability with extremely unequal societies regarding class, ethnicity, and gender. This text aims to discuss the use of gender in the television campaigns of four women for important Brazilian capitals, in 2020: Cinthia Ribeiro (PSDB), a candidate in Palmas; Joice Hasselmann (PSL), a postulante in São Paulo; Manuela D'ávila (PCDOB), from Porto Alegre; e Marília Arraes (PT), from Recife. When observed together, the construction of political leadership has gone through two main strategies: the first one sought for a way for the candidature to have attention to acceptance within the collective imagination related to gender; the second one, from Joice, tried to show a woman who was different from others, who highlighted the fact of being able to give meaning to the presence of more love, care and sensibility in politics, mobilizing what we call "emotional capital".

Reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is clear about his stance on indigenous issues and peoples. Already during his presidential campaign, he said that his administration would not demarcate "even a centimeter" of indigenous lands, a promise that he is keeping. Recently, he would say that indigenous peoples were "evolving" and that they were "almost humans like us." Not surprisingly, there is a widespread perception that the violence against indigenous peoples increased because perpetrators find encouragement in the president's prejudicial assessments regarding such populations and his frequent appeals to invade indigenous lands."

When I was invited to write about the field of research I am working in, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I have my doubts on how to describe it. I had never heard about Cultural Studies before. It was only when I was accepted at the Ph.D. program on Heritages of Portuguese Influence at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, that those words started to make sense.

The emergence of the information society in the second half of the 20th century and the widespread dissemination of communication and information technologies (ICTs) in the first half of the 21st century, imposed new rhythms on the institutions, reached the intimate constitution of the subjects, and transformed irreversibly the models of social interaction. Although traditional structures continue to guarantee the support of hierarchies and social rules, they no longer meet the desires of social subjects who are sometimes disoriented amid the turmoil of uncertainty that marks contemporary societies.

The globalization process has created a market opportunity to expand service businesses and attend diverse niche markets. The development of technology, by its turn, democratized access to knowledge and digital communication worldwide. Through online platforms, the final customer has access to the newest services and products worldwide, and, therefore, market trends and technologies are changing faster. These factors combined have been challenging the business model to create innovative strategies to meet customers' needs and stand out among competitors.

Reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon and Anna Paula Bennech. "Gramsci's concept of hegemony has been present in Francisco de Oliveira's work since the mid-1970s as a way of incorporating the political dimension into his sociological and economic studies on social classes, bourgeois domination, and the regional issue in Brazil. In an attempt to decipher it, Oliveira oscillated between recognizing a hegemonic vocation to the neoliberal project and abandoning the very notion of hegemony, signaling a shift to the concepts of “totalitarianism” and “apartheid”."

Looking from the outside, the Brazilian (political) democracy seems to be a fragile instrument which needs to be fixed to prevent a decision deadlock or, in even more frightening scenarios, a coup. Analysts have pointed out that the change from a multiparty presidential system to a parliamentary one would solve party fragmentation, corruption, and would make Brazilian people believe in democracy again. What makes parliamentarism the promised land and how different Brazilian democracy is from a parliamentary regime today?

When we look back on 2020, the first fact that comes to mind is the COVID-19 pandemic and its harsh effects on public health and the world economy. However, suppose we reflect a bit longer. In that case, another event of global relevance stands out: the killing of the African-American citizen George Floyd during a police arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota (the United States of America).

The 1988 Constitution is a milestone in the Brazilian journey towards a Democratic State that ensures the exercise of social and individual rights, freedom, equality, and the end of prejudice, breaking with a past marked by violence, intolerance, and authoritarianism. It highlights what should be the destiny of Brazil: a socioeconomically developed, fair, and an environmentally balanced country whose pillars of society are pluralism, social participation, and harmony with the peaceful resolution of controversies.

Brazil has the most fragmented party system in the world. In 2018, 30 parties obtained at least one seat in the Lower House, with the effective number of parties being 16.4. This value is pointed out by several analysts as one of the obstacles to governance, given that the presidential party usually does not win a majority in the Legislature and must resort to multiparty coalitions to govern and to remain in office. The diagnosis of the fragmentation of the party system was accompanied by several attempts at treatment.

Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "Just when the world economy was sailing smoothly after the double economic shocks of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Euro crisis of 2012, the COVID-19 Pandemic has once again managed to disrupt world economies. This unexpected jolt to the economies has compelled all central banks to introduce immediate monetary policies to save their grappling economies from crashing."

To be or not to be? This dubiousness, uncertainty, and even alienation is an aspect of the social life of Mankind: is it fascism or not? Is it a dictatorship or not? Does it relate to a serious or severe violation of fundamental rights, the denial of social life and dignity - or does it not? Under Politics, in the sense of Polis, however, the law must be incisive to minimize such an outlook. For instance, the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, hereafter referred to as CF88, as a teleological map, must function as a guide, a moral compass, so that public policies are not strangulated.

If the elections were held today, the elected president would be Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, according to a new survey conducted by Datafolha this month.

Edited and reviewed by Anna Paula Bennech and Giovanna Imbernon. "Discussing Brazilian police is not always comfortable, especially keeping in mind its disquieting particularities. However, a necessary dive into this subject could be elucidative. Criminological and sociological analyses in Brazil reveal that the public security field has appeared as a necessary discussion more and more since the 1990s, as the debate of crime containment and public security institutions got more attention from society."

This essay seeks to discuss the politicization of bureaucracy. Through a critical literature review, I argue that studies tend to deem politicization a negative characteristic of the bureaucracy. Drawing upon the work of Max Weber, several authors associate politicization to other phenomena, such as patronage and pork-barrel politics. In contrast, I claim politics is inevitable as everyone has views regardless of how little they may be interested in politics. In addition, I point out other relevant problems to understand the challenges Brazilian public service faces. Bearing upon datasets made available by the government and previous studies, I focus on three elements: endogenous inequality, levels of turnover, and recruitment processes. In the end, I claim administrative reforms should focus on these three elements to strengthen the Public Administration and bring more transparency and responsiveness.

The ones who are alive witnessed history being made on 6th January 2021. On this day, one of the eldest and stable democracies in the world was shaken up to the core. The U.S. Capitol was viciously overrun by pro-Trump rioters who stopped the joint session of Congress that had taken place to count the votes of the 2020 election and officially declare who is going to be the next president of the United States of America. Chaos and a tragedy unfolded due to a violent mob’s invasion of the U.S. Congress, a symbol of the American democracy.

Cooperation is a collective action between two or more people, for a common purpose. Records in cooperation exist throughout the history of humankind, and various forms of cooperation between humans have been noticed since antiquity. The action is as old as human relations. Every day individuals have helped each other to overcome obstacles or to defend themselves from the weather, diseases, hunger, misery, etc. This concept is also related to modern times and is used in organizations that are called cooperatives.

The anthropological legacy of the German-Brazilian researcher Curt Unckel Nimuendaju (1883-1945) has been the subject of many reflections in the last decade. His works were developed in dozens of indigenous tribes and imply a broader network, involving Brazilian and international institutions. In this short text, I would like to present some notes about Curt Nimuendaju and Robert Lowie (1883-1958) partnership. It came from the post-doctoral research entitled “From the urban institutions to the electronic sites: an ethnography of photographic collections and anthropological archives in Berkeley”. A general question guided it: how can we reflect upon the processes of digitization of anthropological images and archives, their conditions of use and online availability, ethical issues, policies, and potentialities of its contemporary uses? Another correlated question is about how archive collections were formed and managed throughout the time?

Solidarity selective waste collection is an area of ​​action that inherently encompasses inter, multi, and transdisciplinarity characterized by a diversity of relationships and objects, bringing at its core the call to propose new perspectives on politics, environment, and society.

Talking with spirits and entities, observing mediums and believers in the subtlety of their behavior, establishing new methodologies, and improvising on research techniques in the heat of uncatalogued rituals. The ethnographic experience ends up imposing itself, and this imposition is all the measure that is needed: it is up to the ethnographer to recognize, contain and locate the moment of interpretation, submitting cabinet wishes the need to let the world around you speak.

The first round of the upcoming municipal elections in Brazil will take place on 15th November of this year, with over a one-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic[1]. Both the public and scholars will need to wait a little bit to unfold the many expectations that come with these elections. Of course, each election entails some degree of expectation, especially in a country such as Brazil, where there is a high party fragmentation and an unstable party system, and thus a high degree of uncertainty about who the winners will be. However, two contextual facts make these elections more interesting to both the public’s and scholars’ eyes.

Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon and Anna Paula Bennech. "The new stance adopted by the United States (USA) concerning the climate agenda has been very representative. In addition to announcing that the country would return to the Paris Agreement, Joe Biden, the current president of the United States, invited on March 26, 2021, about 40 world leaders to participate in a climate summit."

Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "The popular May 1st protests took crowds to central beaches and avenues throughout the country, soaked by the frenzy (“viva la muerte”) of denying life – obediently following the state machinery of misinformation: enough proof of the irrationality of “our” rule of law. Or we can say that political irrationality is further proof that the state of exception is highly contagious and became part of popular political culture."

More than starring in a simple comedy film, Mazzaropi portrayed a bumpkin different from the one described by most Brazilian men of letters. Fulfilling a social function before the public, he distinguished himself by being combative when the elite prejudice attacked him; by his wit in the face of common and complex issues of his daily life. The bumpkin he played was unique because, even though he was poorly dressed and with a clumsy walk, he was not the bumpkin, whom society usually conceived of as stupid and ignorant. Mazzaropi has got audience because people wanted to see a bumpkin who, contrary to what everyone imagined, did well in the end. He was an anti-hero who turned into a hero.

An artistic wing in which the purpose is not to mimic reality, or even to transpose it in different contexts. One that up to a certain point does not aim at dreams, or communicate through the subconscious. From which, according to Gombrich, its maker "(...) does not seek the perfect shape, but the perfect deformity". The cartoon represents the epitome of individual expression and accessible communication, precisely because of its synthetic and comprehensive character. It is the representation, on canvas or paper, employing colors, of a person, action, or more generally, a theme, in which only the excess of ridicule alters the exact truth and similarity.

While trying to understand the dramatic rupture and the erosion process of the young and fragile Brazilian democracy, as if it could even be considered one in such a brutally unequal country, especially with the "surprising" election of Jair Bolsonaro at that time elected by the PSL (Social Liberal Party) and who today due to tensions has no Party, experts, especially from Political Science, need to combine and draw on other areas to understand this process.

Democracy requires that citizens are not treated in the same way that experts treat them in their respective technical deliberations, requiring real social inclusion. Therefore, the need for greater investment specifically focused on science education is highlighted, to provide an academic basis for all knowledge professionals to understand and develop, in the best possible way, their scientific practices.

Foreign travelers who arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century described the natives of the land as poor, miserable, and ugly people. In contrast, the elite was outnumbered and did not see themselves as a part of the national culture. The Brazilian heterogeneity imposed an impasse: who could be called as the Brazilian people? 

On October 28, 2020, decree 10,534 that institutes the Brazilian National Policy for Innovation and provides for its management and governance was published in the official gazette, the official press agency for publicizing the acts of the Brazilian Federal government. This policy intends to promote and foster innovative initiatives in the federal public sector, as well as to ensure cooperation at the state and municipal government levels; and to improve innovation in the private sector through sectoral coordination promoted by specific ministries, related to the government.

When I decided to go back to university and return to the initial line of my original academic education in the communication sciences, I came across two aspects that paved my research path.  First, returning to the field of communication science was like coming home after decades away from family and friends. Time, distance, and new experiences brought changes. However, it was not just me who changed after my travels through the surrounding areas of communication studies, such as business administration. The family had also changed and expanded. 

Elections lie at the very heart of democracy, and they are exclusive periods in which citizens are most politically engaged, providing the foundation for all representative democracy. Given such relevance, electoral rules are the subject of considerable attention from academics and the public debate around the world. In Brazil, this relevance has produced intense discussions and studies about the need of electoral reforms.

The emergence of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) from the suburbs of São Paulo, its institutionalization, and its later rise to the presidential office in 2002 not only turned traditional Brazilian politics on its head, but it also spurred a flood of research on the phenomenon, commonly referred to as PTlogia in Brazil. An annotated bibliography on the PT from 2013 covers more than 400 pages (Metidieri Menegozzo 2013) and the flow of publications on the party has since continued.

Edited and reviewed by Anna Paula Bennech and Giovanna Imbernon. "In early March, the Regional Council of Medicine of São Paulo (Cremesp) published a statement about virtual visits to hospitalized patients diagnosed with Covid-19 (Cremesp, 2021). One of the possible consequences of such instruction may be forbidding virtual visits to unconscious patients, especially intubated ones. The justification for the council's advice is to preserve the right to the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship, given the incapacity of voluntary consent from the patient. It is necessary to discuss this recommendation, which, if in practice, counters what has been understood as humanized care or "good death" (Menezes, 2004) practices and aggravates the isolation imposed by the Covid-19 context in Brazil."

I remember clearly as a child watching Tintin at night before going to bed. It was my favorite time of the day. Tintin was the kind of character I could rely on not only for a good story but also to help me shape (part of) the worldview and aspirations I have today. As much as I could have been brought up to hate communism, I think I leaned into the other values promoted by the character. Fast forward to 2009, my first exam at university, we were given a Tintin cartoon to criticize for an Anthropology course.

The Federal Constitution of 1988, as a political charter, brings in the unity of its articles guarantees, freedom and fundamental rights and can also be defined as a guiding roadmap, in all aspects of our life, for social participation and inclusion; socio-political collaboration and integration.

As I grew up in a city with a few thousand inhabitants, in the most populous state of Brazil, I saw the municipal elections as a major event. Perhaps one of the biggest events, in my trifling perception about that small town. My recollection of the local elections is that they mobilized the residents in a similar way to the football championships in the 90s. These were times of “santinhos”, “jingles”, electoral propaganda on the façades of houses, waving flags on street corners in central regions of the city. Also, they were times of re-democratization.