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Nº 57 / 58
June/November,
2000
Price: 10 €
Em
Português
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- José Vicente
Tavares dos Santos
- The New Global Social
Questions
This
paper begins by acknowledging the profound transformations of
contemporary society in the last twenty years. Relations of sociability
have gone through simultaneous processes of community integration and
social fragmentation, of massification and individualization, of social
selection and social exclusion. Thus, new dilemmas and social problems
have emerged in the planetary horizon, shaping new global social
questions.
- Pedro
Hespanha e Jorge Caleiras
- Unrest, Conflict, and Violence
in
the Portuguese Rural World. The Crisis of the 1990s
This
paper analyses the reactions of different groups of farmers and of the
rural population in general to the changes related to both Portugal's
integration in the European Community and the impact of economic
globalization in the period between 1986 and 1996. Feeble and
unprepared public and private structures in the rural areas obstructed
the adjustments required by the new economic and institutional
framework and inhibited the strong modernizing thrust felt during the
period. As a consequence, new vulnerabilities and dependencies arose,
related to the abandonment of farming, the decline of traditional
small-scale production, the collapse of modernizing programs, and the
distrust of state proposals. Pessimism, discontent, and revolt became
widespread.
- Sônia
Larangeira e Virgínia Ferreira
- The Excluded and the
Beneficiaries
of Restructuring Processes: A Comparative Study of Employment
Regulation in the Banking Sector in Portugal and Brazil
In
sociological analyses of employment regulation it is seldom noted that
restructuring can also imply changes at the level of gender-related
personal attributes. In this comparative analysis of the changes that
occurred in employment regulation, especially in the 1990s, in the
banking sector in Portugal and Brazil, we have paid particular
attention to the differentiation of several groups-young workers versus
workers over 40, men versus women, college graduates versus those with
lower levels of schooling.
By contrasting the evolution in the volume of employment and the
alterations in the composition of the labor force, the authors conclude
that women have benefited on the whole from the restructuring of
banking, although at different paces and with different degrees of
intensity in the two countries. Keeping in mind the results obtained,
the authors call attention to the importance of public policies of
employment regulation in the configuration of the impacts of
restructuring processes.
- Renato P.
Saul
- The New Economy and the
Institutional Deficit in Human Rights
This paper examines
questions related to the conception of modernity used in analyses of
the new economy, which is basically characterized as an accelerated
process of social and political transformations founded on
technological development. The paper also discusses the consequences of
this conception of modernity for the dismantling of the welfare state,
and its practical and theoretical developments in the formulation and
maintenance of a full program of human rights.
- Benedito
Tadeu César
- Reflections Concerning the
Political-Institutional Violence in Brazil
This paper
addresses the political characteristics and the structural pattern of
political violence in past and present Brazilian society. Combining
theoretical argument and economic, social, and political empirical
evidence, the author analyzes the conditions that in the past have
obstructed, and today still hinder, the consolidation of democracy in
Brazil. The last section highlights the emergence of a new arrangement
of political party forces which, although incipient, has already begun
to cause transformations in the country's political-institutional
framework. In the medium turn, this could lead to the overcoming of the
historical constant of domination-exclusion-cooptation which has
characterized politics and social relations in Brazil throughout its
existence as a nation.
- José Vicente
Tavares dos Santos, Alex
Niche
Teixeira e Fernando Tadeu Gonçalves Becker
- Conflict and Violence in Rural
Spaces in Contemporary Brazil
The aim of this paper is to
analyze the rural social conflicts in Brazil, in the period between
1988 and 1998, according to the definition of a typology of conflicts,
the elaboration of a regional cartography, and the establishment of
causal relations between factors. Contemporary Brazilian reality
presents an extensive conflictiveness and an increase of violence in
rural social spaces which go hand in hand with serious violations of
human rights. Social inequality and power asymmetry between classes,
class fractions, and social groups in the rural areas have been
historically maintained; so has the impunity of those that are
responsible for violent acts. The results of this research show that
the Brazilian state has a great responsibility in creating conditions
for the decrease of violence in rural areas, especially through the
development of the policies of agrarian reform. Thus, the effective
intervention of civil society, by putting pressure on the state to open
up the access to land in Brazilian society, may not only lead to the
decrease of violence in rural areas, but also expand the collective
rights of citizenship.
- César
Barreira
- Massacres: Diffuse Monopolies
of
Violence
The aim of this paper is to understand a serious
conflict which involved police forces of the State of Pará and rural
workers in 1996, and which became known as the "Massacre of Eldorado
dos Carajás". The analysis of violent political practices in the
Brazilian rural environment includes the practices of the police forces
in the center of violence, confusing public and private spaces, as well
as the assertion of a "parallel power", which is reproduced inside both
institutionalized and non-institutionalized spaces.
- José Luiz
Bica de Mélo
- Conflict, Regional
Integration, and
Globalization
Based on the notion of global capitalism, this
paper analyzes the formation of the MERCOSUL regional block (Common
Market of the South), and focuses on the economic and political
relations in the border of Brazil and Uruguay. It concludes that the
concentration of landed property, the advance of the occupation of land
by a transnational lumber sector, the lack of legislation capable of
equalizing labor relations in the countries belonging to the economic
block, and the criminalized practice of cattle theft are demonstrations
of conflictiveness and partial regional integration.
- Marcelo
Carvalho Rosa
- Settlers and Residents: The
Conflict
Between Beneficiaries and Local Populations in the Brazilian Agrarian
Reform Through a case study, this paper intends to
problematize some aspects of the current model of the agrarian reform
in Brazil. To this end, it seeks to consider this public policy as a
process of constant production of physical and symbolic conflicts,
which are expressed in the everyday lives of both the settlers and the
communities that accept the settlements. The conceptual frame of
Norbert Elias, especially his notion of social figuration,
leads to the study of the relations between the groups or communities
involved from the standpoint of the inherent power inequality that
permeates the thematized universe.
- Sílvia
Portugal
- Globalization and Domestic
Violence
This
paper presents some reflections that arose from a brief survey of the
existing bibliography on questions of violence in the family and in the
domestic space. The intent is to consider some aspects that are
important for an analysis of the dimension and the characteristics of
this kind of violence, and to define lines of analysis of the role of
public policies in addressing the issue. The author argues that the
action of international organizations, such as the United Nations and
the European Union, is increasingly relevant for the visibility of
domestic violence and the definition of strategies for dealing with it.
- Graça
Carapinheiro e Soraya Côrtes
- Conflict and Change in the
Context
of New Global Scenarios: The Case of the Portuguese and Brazilian
Health Systems
This paper seeks to identify dimensions of
change and conflict in the Portuguese and Brazilian health systems by
resorting to a comparative perspective which, step by step, covers the
recent history of both countries, with the aim of showing their
similarities and differences, as well as the rhythms of convergence and
divergence in the policies produced within their respective health
sectors, in the framework of the broad guidelines emanating from
transnational organizations such as the WHO. As the paper demonstrates,
the institutionalization of the centrality of primary health care, the
formulation of models of decentralization, and the promotion of the
participation of civil society in health administration give rise (in
countries like Portugal and Brazil, lying in different regions of the
world) to varying configurations of domination and subordination, of
adherence and resistance, of fulfillment and non-fulfillment of social
rights, of social inclusion and exclusion, which may lead to more or
less intense forms of violence.
- Susana
Costa, João Arriscado Nunes e
Helena
Machado
- "Molecular Politics", Crime
and
"Genetic Citizenship" in Portugal
With reference to the
discussion and the public debate that the use of genetics and
biotechnology is raising the world over, due to the problems of
protection of citizens, their privacy, their health, and their
environment, this paper seeks to analyze the role of the state and of
society in the framing of these issues in Portugal, and namely to
question the apparent absence of public regulation and public debate
involving the government, the parliament, and the citizens.
The concluding section presents some specificities of the Portuguese
regulatory and political culture: the discontinuity between formal
legislation and its application; the authoritarian relation between the
state and the judicial system, and between the state and the citizens;
the reverential attitude vis-à-vis science; the disregard of scientific
opinion by State institutions; the feebleness of social and citizen
organizations and movements.
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