Século XXI: Journal of Social Sciences

The scientific contribution of Sociology to the effectiveness of social distancing in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Luã Rodrigues Silveira — 2024-12-27

By situating specific aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, regarding its devastating effect on people's lives, physical integrity and different systems of society, this article aims to present a quantitative and qualitative research, regarding the contribution of sociology, as a science, to the efficiency of “social distancing”, as a way of containing the spread of the virus and the spread of the disease. Assuming that social “isolation”, as the name demonstrates, is not only a biomedical practice, but also a social one, the research investigated all Brazilian scientific articles, relevant to Extract A1 (CAPES), contained in the Portal of Sociology and Social Sciences Journals. Extract A1 represented 788 articles, making up a sample of 16.6%, considering the entire universe of publications in two years, considering the peak of the pandemic in Brazil.

Anthropology and the Use of History

Júnia Marúsia Trigueiro de Lima — 2024-12-27

This article deals with the uses of history made in and by anthropology and the analytical potentials of thinking based on logics that do not follow an ascending temporal line. It discusses how some classical theories have used, dispensed with or analyzed history in their epistemological-methodological approaches. Furthermore, it also explores “other historicities” (Schwarcz, 2005), anthropological analyses that rethink the relationships between past, present and future. I propose to consider a case in which subjects not only experience non-linear history, but also instrumentalize it as a form of resistance. I refer to the Zapatista Movement, formed by indigenous people from southeastern Mexico. Based on two phases of ethnographic research — one documentary and the other in person, conducted in the state of Chiapas (2016-2017) — I analyze how their discourses and projects shuffle time in two ways: in the first, past and present are indistinguishable in the discourses that deal with history; in the second, the future lives in the present and in the construction of a project to survive the end of the world, mobilizing emotions and creating alternatives.

Power and domination in the “upstairs” of the Brazilian rural world in the magazine Século XXI

Valdênio Freitas Meneses — 2024-12-27

The collection “Power and domination in the ‘upstairs’ of the Brazilian rural world in the magazine Século XXI” is the result of a Working Group at the X Meeting of the Rural Studies Network, in São Carlos (SP) in 2023. In this 1st volume the articles bring diversity of research that instigates renewed agendas about elites and forms of dominant classes of the rural world: Ancient farms, genealogies of old rural oligarchies towards the internet lives and the modern agribusiness exhibitions. Througouthy different ways, the papers demonstrate that producing social science about elites implies producing disenchantment about conflicts and violent forms of domination in Brazilian society.

The Brazilian State and land accumulation in the sugar and alcohol Northeast

Caterine Soffiati Cabral — 2024-12-27

In this article we will focus on the relevant role played by the Brazilian State in guaranteeing the implementation of the Santa Maria plant in the early 1930s and, especially, its land expansion during the second half of the military dictatorship (1964-1985) through resources from the National Program of Alcohol (Proálcool). The case analyzed is quite representative of such state and landowner relations in Northeast Brazil. It was installed in 1931 by Francisco de Assis Pereira de Mello and sold in 1952 to Solon Lyra Lins, who ran it until its bankruptcy in 1992. The analysis carried out using documents from the administrative sector of the Santa plant Maria and based on secondary data on the production of sugar and alcohol, demonstrates the process of expansion and accumulation of capital aimed, essentially, at land assets during the direction of its second owner. Subsequently, the lands, once acquired with state subsidies and credits, were expropriated by the Union from 1997 onwards for the purposes of agrarian reform, thus serving as a unique case for understanding the contexts of structural change that made the plantation large estates sugarcane plantation, ten rural settlements.

Building hegemony in Western Bahia

Liza Uema — 2024-12-27

With the contribution of Discourse Theory and the Analysis of Interpretative Frameworks, this article brings results from the analysis of the discursive strategies of the “baiúchos” block (“baianos” + “gaúchos”) in Western Bahia, to build their hegemony, in the period between 2008 and 2022. The Bahian Cerrado, historically occupied by traditional communities, when experiencing, in the late 1970s, the green revolution resulting from the arrival of southern “gauchos” producers, experienced a profound agrarian, social, cultural and environmental reconfiguration which was accompanied by land grabbing, violence and expulsions. The process of deterritorialization and socio-environmental degradation is exacerbated in the 21st century with the legalization of deforestation and water withdrawal, encouraged by the State, with the aim of expanding Matopiba's agricultural frontier. The analysis of the trajectory of the discursive strategies of the “baiúchos” block demonstrates the effectiveness in building their hegemony in the territories and in their influence, nationally and internationally, by being able to articulate their demands to the identity of “those who best preserve the environment” , mainly through educational interventions with traditional communities in Fecho de Pasto and their ability to convert deforestation and water appropriation into State policy

Land and cattle in the ranchers economy of Rio Grande do Sul (1985-2022)

Francis Casagranda Zanella — 2024-12-27

This article analyzes the reconfigurations of the ranchers economy in the southwest region of Rio Grande do Sul over two distinct periods: 1985-1996 and 1997-2022. Using a political economy of agrarian change approach, the study investigates the repositioning of estancieiros amid global and local transformations, with an emphasis on land and livestock ownership. The research is based on secondary data, interviews and direct observation, highlighting the influence of liberal adjustments and regional development policies on the Brazilian state, as well as the international demand for raw materials and land. The transition from an agricultural matrix based on extensive cattle breeding to the expansion of soybean farming and forestry is observed, influenced by the articulations between regional employer interests and sectoral policies at different levels of government, even in the face of criticism from sectors of civil society. The article contributes to the understanding of class and power dynamics in agricultural markets in countries with dependent capitalism, contextualized in the historical and economic scenarios of transition from developmentalism to neoliberalism. It is concluded that the conservation of land heritage remains a fundamental resource for the engagement of estancieiros as a fraction of the dominant classes within the agricultural markets of Rio Grande do Sul and national disputes over the appropriation of public funds.

Agribusiness at a gallop

Luciana Schleder Almeida — 2024-12-27

This article aims to clarify the allegorical language associated with the forms of political enunciation of employers’ associations of soybean farmers in their bases in Mato Grosso and in the federal capital. The ethnographic perspective allows us to identify stereotypes mobilized in the dispute over “agriculture” between the political concertation of agribusiness and peasant movements and traditional peoples and communities. The allegory of the “gaucho”, especially the image of the hero on horseback, corresponds to this discursive weapon of power that, operating as a stereotype, tends to mark the absence of something desirable in its object, which is precisely “manual labor” or labor practices linked to peasant rusticity. The incorporation of the horse in these public performances, as well as the use of “frontier” to designate the areas of interest of the contemporary plantation, are revealing messages of the persistence of the war of colonial conquest.

Agro-youth, subjectivation and engagement in agribusiness society

Cleyton Gerhardt — 2024-12-27

At the end of the 2000s, the confluence of interests on the part of rural patronage and agroindustry led to investment in media campaigns to value the agro as a symbol of Brazilianness. In besides to the creation and colonization of countless expressions in the Portuguese language, this effort start to structure of a powerful mechanism producing meanings that, in addition to reaffirming the positive meaning of the term, over time became autonomous from the control and original intention of its proponents. Behind this movement of capture - material, cultural, symbolic, linguistic, psychic - the fabrication of an inclusive and totalizing “agro cosmology” is underway, with the sign itself mobilizing belongings among those who inhabit the “agribusiness society” or is included in it compulsorily. It turns out that, although it maintains an extremely hierarchical structure, in addition to the continuous segmentation and generation of socialization spaces, there is room for potential new inhabitants to engage. Based on this observation, and through immersion in the main medium through which the agro emblem circulates (the internet), today a powerful mediator of meetings crossed by “agro-sociabilities”, the text describes how the differentiation of shared environments by agro-youth takes place.

Generational political renewal

José Marciano Monteiro — 2024-12-27

In contemporary democracies, where the political system is characterized by competitiveness, the hereditary transmission of power is a paradoxical phenomenon. Firstly, because it is understood that democracies are characterized by rotation, alternative and oxygenation of power; second, that this oxygenation should not occur through processes of renewal in the family lineage, through generational political renewal, because it leads to the process of political oligarchization. Generational political renewal, while not oxygenating power, fuels the formation of family political dynasties, enhancing oligarchic democratic models. It is this political phenomenon that is seen in this case study. Even though there is no legal hereditary transmission, political families occupy positions in different instances and for several generations, in states and municipalities, which enhances the construction and reproduction of family lineages, through reticular actions, many of them occupying political positions for decades. elective, as in the cases in question. This work aims to understand how the process of generational succession and the hereditary transmission of power is constructed in a medium-sized municipality – Campina Grande – in Paraíba. To this end, bibliographical research relevant to the topic was used, in addition to biographical and genealogical data, found in the FGF CPDOC and on various websites.

A lighthouse for Brazil

Felipe Ferrari da Costa — 2024-12-27

This work aims to contribute to the analysis of the political action of elites and dominant classes in the Brazilian countryside. Specifically, we seek to understand the hegemonic affirmation of dominant fractions of agriculture in São Paulo over time. To this end, we will analyze the emergence and initial organization of the Brazilian Rural Society (SRB), considering its internal composition, the profile of its leaders and the forms of action triggered by the entity in that context. Even though it has a national epithet, this century-old entity was created in 1919 in the state of São Paulo, being composed mainly of sectors of the agricultural elite of this state. The research is methodologically based on documentary analysis, field notebooks and semi-structured interviews. The political processes developed by the Brazilian Rural Society in the context under analysis help to project these dominant fractions of agriculture and agroindustry in São Paulo as an intellectual and moral direction of the class over time. This helped in the political construction of Brazilian agribusiness, highlighting the protagonism of São Paulo as a source of leaders of this model at a national level, such as the sector's intelligentsia in Brazil.