Teoria e Cultura

The Political and Epistemic Challenge of “Despaulistizar-se”: An Interview with Gilberto Felisberto Vasconcellos

2025-10-03T18:11:30+00:00

The interview with Gilberto Felisberto Vasconcellos offers a reflection on his intellectual trajectory and the originality of his work within Brazilian sociology. Trained at the University of São Paulo but in clear disagreement with the directions taken by São Paulo sociology and its political-economic project, Vasconcellos develops a radical critique of cultural dependence and underdevelopment from a Marxist and nationalist perspective on culture—set in contrast to what he identifies as the dominant approaches within the country’s sociology of culture. The central thread of the interview is the process of “de-Paulistizing” himself, understood as an intellectual and political rupture that marks his departure from São Paulo and consolidates an autonomous mode of thought directed toward the critique of the culture industry, imperialism—both international and regional—and a commitment to a socialist project for the nation. Influenced by figures such as Glauber Rocha and Bautista Vidal, Vasconcellos succeeds in articulating sociology, politics, art, and culture through a distinctive imagistic expressiveness that rejects academic accommodation and reaffirms the urgency of an intellectual critique rooted in the Latin American reality.

Between Eloquence and Evidence: A Critical Review of the Book Democracy, Social Change and Ideologies in Contemporary Brazil

2025-06-12T12:13:05+00:00

The review examines Democracy, Social Change and Ideologies in Contemporary Brazil, by João Batista dos Mares Guia, highlighting its relevance in the post-Bolsonaro context. Published by Éduque in 2024, the book combines political chronicle, sociological essay, and civic manifesto, covering the ‘dark decade’ (2013–2022) and recent structural transformations. Chapter by chapter, the author discusses the 1988 Constitution, the rise of the right, Operation Car Wash, bolsonarismo, the role of parliamentary amendments, and the growing interpenetration of religion and politics. In the second part, he analyzes meritocracy, uberization, agribusiness, union decline, and the ‘culture war.’ The review praises the accessibility of the language, the thematic breadth, and the weight of testimony, but criticizes the methodological weakness, the excess of adjectivization, and the lack of counterarguments.

Toward a shift in the foundational milestones of criminology as a science

2025-06-20T20:47:42+00:00

This review analyzes the work Crime and civilization: the birth of criminology in the early nineteenth century (2024) by Finnish researcher Janne Kivivuori, an intellectual contribution that reinterprets the origins of scientific criminology. Kivivuori's central argument is that the discipline was not born from a "fear of crime," but rather from Enlightenment optimism and the revolutionary advent of a new data system: the French Compte général de l'administration de la justice criminelle of 1827. The review traces Kivivuori's meticulous reconstruction of this process, from scattered pre-statistical knowledge to the creation and immediate international impact of the Compte général. It highlights how the first generation of data criminologists (Lucas, Quetelet, Guerry) used this tool to formulate proto-theories of opportunity and social control; in parallel, figures such as Rossi and Candolle inaugurated sophisticated methodological critiques. The review aims to emphasize the profound originality and contemporary relevance of the work, demonstrating the current impact of the debate on the historical foundations of criminology proposed by Kivivuori.

Review of the book Pornotopia: An Essay on the Architecture and Biopolitics of Playboy

2025-08-15T18:25:21+00:00

Paul Preciado is currently one of the leading names in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Thus, the release of this edition of Pornotopia is of great value to those studying such themes. What is most intriguing here is how Preciado decided to focus on the question of architecture and how this dimension interacts with sexuality, biopolitics, and related issues. When speaking of Playboy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is not architecture — after all, what tends to draw more attention are the naked women. In this sense, the project has something of a Foucauldian approach, reminiscent of when Foucault turned to the physical structures of institutions, such as the panoptic prison model or the monastic cells. Preciado’s argument is that Playboy constitutes a greater part of the twentieth century’s imaginary, aesthetics, and sexuality than we might initially assume. The magazine operates as a kind of “third way,” a heterotopia, situated between the conservatism of white, suburban, 1950s America and the sexual and cultural revolutions that unfolded in the postwar era.

Folha de Rosto

2025-09-25T22:43:00+00:00

Folha de Rosto

Criminal Governance and New Criminal Enterprises: An Analysis of the “City Domination” in Brazil

2025-08-29T22:21:26+00:00

Different criminal organizations set different dynamics of social control, with (in)formal rules and establishing what the literature calls criminal governance. In some cases, these criminal groups make informal arrangements with different criminal actors to maintain their power and make economic profits. In this sense, we investigate the relationship between established criminal organizations, especially the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), and criminal gangs that are involved in property crimes, more specifically bank in Brazil. Managing the crime behind bars, PCC established a new logic of criminal governance in the State of São Paulo, exploring the markets of illegal drugs. In the past years, we have witnessed PCC expanding their criminal activities through other parts of Latin America and applying their logic to gain and maintain control of international drug trafficking routes and, in some cases, even the production of illegal drugs. However, even though drug trafficking remains the most profitable enterprise, other criminal actors, such as bank thieves, seem to be connected with PCC and are building new criminal enterprises. Conducting fieldwork in the city of Curitiba, the capital of the State of Paraná, we observed how these gangs operate, their techniques, and their connections with established criminal actors.

ntellectual Disputes and Scientific Funding: The Ford Foundation and the Meanings of the 1964 Coup

2025-08-14T14:52:01+00:00

This article examines the tensions that marked the Brazilian sociological field during the 1960s, focusing on the clash between different scientific projects envisioned for the country in that context. It centers on the interpretative disputes between two groups of intellectuals over the meaning of the 1964 coup. On one side were those who viewed sociology as a privileged instrument for interpreting Brazilian reality, with Florestan Fernandes as their leading figure; on the other, intellectuals who turned to political science as the most suitable theoretical framework for understanding the event and its unfolding, with Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos standing out as a central reference. The central hypothesis is that these divergences went beyond theoretical disagreements, reflecting broader struggles within the social sciences field and expressing distinct positions regarding the competing projects of science and society at stake during the period. From a broader perspective, the article investigates how the rise and decline of these paradigms were shaped by institutional dynamics, particularly the role played by scientific funding agencies – with emphasis on the private funding provided by the Ford Foundation. These processes played a decisive role in the reconfiguration of the Social Sciences field in Brazil.

Militarization and “militialization” of cities: reflections from Rio de Janeiro

2025-06-27T20:32:41+00:00

This article aims to examine how militarization and militialization are social processes that walk together and feed each other, using the particularity of Rio de Janeiro as a lens of analysis. From this objective, two intentions unfold: first, to build and qualify what has been generically called milialization, understanding it not as an attribute or mere description of a group, but as a logic of action, an ongoing process that is permeated with dimensions and which has given the rhythm to the political economy of armed groups; and second, highlight how the institutional and political sphere unites these two social process. To this end, we used specialized bibliographies on the topic, technical research reports and the complementation of internet media news. It concludes by highlighting that militialization constitutes a new key element of violent sociability, and that treating militarization and militialization as linked processes contributes to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.

Neoliberalism, multilateral organisms and education

2025-08-26T19:21:36+00:00

Neoliberalism, as a new rationality of the world that shapes our way of living, feeling, thinking, and desiring, has permeated all areas of life in society, including education. As a hegemonic model, it required the intervention of major international organizations to implement market values in all spheres of life. Education was no exception. In fact, it gained even more prominence by introducing values such as information and communication technologies, globalization, competencies, the information society, employability, autonomy, teamwork, flexibility, social exclusion, competition, social capital, and so on. As a new hegemonic order, it emphasizes the demand for educational efficiency evaluated through results obtained in internationally standardized tests. To achieve good results, countries adapt their schools to climb the international educational ranking. This article questions whether there is an actual improvement in education by adhering to what is termed a new global educational order.

Nudges at the ballot box: the role of behavioral interventions in electoral participation

2025-08-26T15:18:46+00:00

This article reviews the literature on the use of nudges - subtle behavioral interventions - in electoral processes, focusing on their effectiveness in encouraging voter participation. The subject belongs to the field of behavioral approaches in public policy. The methodological approach was qualitative, based on exploratory research and document analysis, considering recent studies retrieved through systematic searches in academic databases. The analysis employed descriptive inference, which allows the interpretation of observational phenomena based on empirical data. The reviewed studies show convergence regarding the potential of nudges to influence electoral behavior, although they diverge in terms of effectiveness which depends on factors such as prior engagement, political context, and institutional acceptance. The literature is promising but requires more methodological standardization and longitudinal studies to assess the long-term impact of such interventions.

Sociodemographic factors of determining of food insecurity in Brazil: a theoretical essay

2025-08-27T15:07:00+00:00

The aim was to discuss the concepts related to food insecurity and the socio-demographic factors involved in determining it. In this context, this essay addresses the definitions of food security and insecurity, based on the policies and legislation that underpin them, bringing up the debate on the violation of the Human Right to Adequate Food (HRAF) and other rights that lead the population to experience dehumanization. It brings up Josué de Castro's theory on hunger, both historical and geographical, making connections with the socio-economic imbalance generated by Brazil's political and economic structure up to the present day. The last section deals with the characterization of socio-demographic factors and their influence on food and nutritional insecurity, with an emphasis on race/color, gender, income, schooling and the geographical region of Brazil. This text also places the state as a reproducer of socio-economic inequalities and perpetuator of the cycle of poverty and hunger in the country. Given the scientific evidence on the role of socio-demographic determinants in the production of food insecurity, it is possible to establish a critical discussion about how these factors interfere with health and the realization of other human rights.

Insurgent Affects: Framings of a Relational Anarchist Activism

2025-08-06T00:48:45+00:00

This article examines the use of communication by Brazilian relational anarchist activism for non-monogamous political mobilization. We chose as our object the digital project Afetos Insurgentes, active since 2019. Based on the theory of frame alignment processes (Snow et al., 1986), we analyzed the alignment strategies used in the authorial texts published by the project from 2019 to 2023 on platform Medium with the aim of understanding how the project constructs its communicative approaches for political mobilization. Our analysis identified the use of all strategies, with emphasis on frame transformation, exemplified by the effort to transform the socially established framing of monogamy.

I'm so sick of running as fast as I can: Taylor Swift and the dynamic of pop music

2025-09-04T17:25:50+00:00

This article deeply explores the intersection of feminism, sexism, and the music industry by analyzing the career and public image of Taylor Swift. As one of the most influential figures in contemporary pop music, Swift offers a particularly valuable case study for examining how gender roles and expectations influence the professional trajectories and public perceptions of female artists. The study carefully analyzes her song lyrics, public statements, interviews, and professional conflicts, emphasizing the challenges Swift faced while navigating a historically male-dominated industry and the gradual development of her feminist ideology. By placing Swift’s personal and professional journey within the broader context of evolving pop music trends, the article demonstrates how her advocacy for women’s rights and gender parity directly challenges entrenched structures of male chauvinism and reshapes the cultural and commercial landscape of pop music. Ultimately, the article critically assesses Swift’s influence, contributing to the ongoing conversation about feminism in mainstream culture and the continued advances for women within the music industry.

Emotions and Care for People with Alzheimer’s Disease

2025-08-26T19:12:36+00:00

This article examines the link between the care of people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the emotions of family caregivers, based on a survey carried out from 2018 to 2022, in which health professionals dedicated to dementia and 17 family caregivers were interviewed. For this article, we selected interviews with daughters who take care of their mothers or fathers in the process of dementia due to AD. We reflect on the meanings of care, responsibilities, and obligations in the public and private spheres. Family care is addressed as the main instance responsible for caring for the elderly and their emotional impacts. In this sense, the interviews selected for this article present particularities of care since most of them work besides being caregivers and experience emotional tensions resulting from these different roles. Finally, we analyzed the rhetoric around the feelings present in the care relationship: the gratitude and those considered as negative feelings.

The Counterinsurgency State and Authoritarianism in Bolsonarist Brazil: An Analysis in the Light of Ruy Mauro Marini

2025-09-08T00:41:40+00:00

is paper analyzes Brazilian political dynamics since the 2016 parliamentary-legal-media coup and its continuation in the Bolsonaro government (2019-2022), in light of Ruy Mauro Marini's category “Counterinsurgency State”. The objective is to understand how this form of authoritarian reorganization of the bourgeois order, already present in the 1964 coup, is updated in the recent context. The research, bibliographical and with a qualitative approach, uses historical-dialectical materialism to interpret this phenomenon as a temporary suspension of liberal democracy, aimed at eliminating transformative forces and subsequently restoring the institutional order. It is argued that the Bolsonaro government did not represent a total rupture, but an authoritarian modulation sustained by the appearance of legality, articulating the militarization of politics, the externalization of the revolutionary threat, and liberal restoration. Bolsonarism, driven by social resentments and an ultraliberal project, mobilized “conservative counterpublics” that corrode democratic institutions from within. The radicalization of the Counterinsurgency State is expressed in the combination of military authoritarianism and neoliberal dismantling, with the use of denialism, anti-establishment rhetoric and symbolic terrorism against the opposition. We conclude that Marini's category is fundamental to understanding the new authoritarianisms on the periphery of capitalism and to thinking about political alternatives to this configuration of power.

Tucuns and the production of meanings in the social world: a study on aging and belonging in the São José neighborhood in the city of Parnaíba - PI

2025-09-05T17:56:32+00:00

The Social Sciences expanded from its classical to contemporary researchers and theorists. Research on the understanding of life in cities provides an understanding of the different ways of living and coexisting in urban societies, where the individual becomes an object of investigation. It is with this in mind that the city of Parnaíba-PI becomes a prolific setting for investigations into social, political, moral, cultural, historical, economic and subjective processes where we can understand the representation of everyday life. And, in this sense, the neighborhood environment is observed as a place of manifestations and representations of social relations, from the actors who share feelings, emotions, bonds of solidarity, as well as actions and conflicts between interdependent groups and individuals (SIMMEL, 2006). This work composes one of the chapters of my master's thesis defended at the Federal University of Piauí - UFPI and its main objective is to understand the São José neighborhood, from the perspective of its daily life and analysis of the residents who make this environment a space of social relations that are structured through the narratives of their lives.

They Are the “Bagaceiras”: A Look at the Intersections and Hierarchies Activated by Non-Hegemonic Masculinities in a Bar in the Peripheral Area of Goiânia, Brazil

2025-09-03T17:15:55+00:00

This article represents an effort to synthesize points discussed in master's research. In it, to fulfill this purpose, I seek to privilege a certain discussion related to the ethnography of/in the Feirão do Chope, a bar located in a peripheral region of the city of Goiânia. In particular, I seek to bring to the screen data produced that allow an analytical exercise that intersects some social markers of difference, especially gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity. In other words, I nuance the research discussions regarding the emic category “bagaceira” and problematize its use as an accusatory category by gays to refer to other young gays, supposedly with less purchasing power and with a body construction and gender performance that refer to feminization. As a result, we managed to problematize an idea of equality in the “gay world”, as does Isadora Lins França (2012); as well as establishing connections in order to confirm the intersection between social markers such as gender, race and class with a view to producing hierarchical and fetishized social places in which privileged groups seek to fit other people and groups, thus revealing a contextualized parallel between more general social values and its possibilities in sociability in the Feirão do chope.

An Expanded Performances on the Web: An Analysis of Women's Slam Poetry and Digital Activism Produced During the Pandemic

2025-09-10T00:28:50+00:00

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the feminine collective Slam das Minas RJ had to pause their in-person activities, including the poetry battles on the streets. Immediately, the group developed online projects that allowed the functioning of the movement during quarantine. In this article, I analyze two emblematic video performances done by Andréa Bak and Luísa Romão, published on the @slamdasminasrj Instagram account. In these productions, the poets discuss relevant matters, for example Brazilian politics and necropolitic in the pandemic. They also show a new configuration of “doing poetry slam”, with performances recreated for the cellphone screen dimensions. And finally, I evidence how Slam das Minas RJ turned social media their new street by changing the Instagram profile into an extremely effective platform for amplifying female voices.

School and Police: The Production of Knowledge for the Control and Socialization of Children and Adolescents

2025-09-09T14:36:23+00:00

The article presents an updated excerpt of the author's doctoral thesis defended in 2022 with the theme that relates police and school. In this context, it is strategic to understand the transition, especially from the 1990s onwards, from the treatment of problems previously considered only in the pedagogical sphere to, then, the axis of public security. The discursive analysis of military police officers of the Minas Gerais corporation expands the possibilities of interpretation of the relationships that are established in the face of the dynamics of judicialization of conflicts in the school environment. It is also possible to perceive the complexity of the concepts, starting with the very definition of school violence.

Colorism, quotas, heteroidentification: notes on disputes and competition surrounding light-skinned brown and black people

2025-08-27T14:50:47+00:00

This article seeks to explore the tensions and disputes surrounding the issue of brown and light-skinned black people in the context of racial quota policies. Based on a critical analysis of heteroidentification, colorism, and how these dynamics affect racialization processes in Brazil, the article aims to reflect on the limits and challenges of the quota policy and the impacts of these policies on identity construction. It was found that the increasing rigor directed at the use of quotas by brown people based on suspicion of their identity calls into question the political category of “black,” a focal point of the racial debate in Brazil over the last 30 years.

Youth Employment Crisis in the Northeast Region in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2025-09-17T16:50:41+00:00

The text analyzes the young labor market in the Northeast region of Brazil, in particular, during the pandemic crisis of covid-19. The literature shows that the decision conditioners of young labor market are reconfiguring, which has important impacts on the process of decision making of youth. So, using database from the National Survey (PNAD-continua), shows, as results, that levels of youth unemployment is quite high, in addition to another signs of precariousness, as low yields and idleness, facts enhanced by the social structure of the Northeast of Brazil

Tragedy and narrative: theoretical considerations

2025-09-18T11:42:38+00:00

The article contributes to the discussion of narratives by exploring two traditions of criticism. On the one hand, it presents the arguments that define the contribution that takes up the Hegelian approach to the theme of tragedy, making use specifically of Lukács' contribution. This allows for a discussion applied to a genre of mass culture, the Western. On the other hand, the debate unfolds towards Frye's contribution, and in the way in which this author resumes, in his own way, an inspiration that recovers Aristotle.

Have We Ever Been So Modern? Notes on the Exhaustion of Modernization in Contemporary Brazil

2025-10-08T19:16:08+00:00

This work reflects on the current crisis in Brazil through the concepts of “modernization” and the “Brazilianization”. It draws on a segment of Brazilian social theory from the last decade that addresses the limitations of the country's modernization in light of the crisis of capitalist accumulation, as explored by Francisco de Oliveira, Paulo Arantes, and Marildo Menegat. The examination of these concepts reveals persistent expectations for Brazilian society to achieve levels of capitalist development comparable to those in central countries, while also highlighting the internal limitations of Brazilian capitalism. In other words, the social dynamics of the country over recent decades have been reshaped by neoliberalism, leading to the exhaustion of certain modern social forms that previously accommodated contradictions and antagonisms. Thus, it is suggested that the inherent tendencies of Brazilian society are aligned with the crisis of institutional politics and the resurgence of violent forms of conflict control, thereby reinstating characteristics of modern society that had previously seemed obsolete.

On Contemporary Authoritarianism: From the International Context to the Brazilian Scenario.

2025-10-08T19:45:36+00:00

In this article, I present a summary of some of the main discussions on the topic of contemporary authoritarianism, both internationally and in Brazil. First, I reconstruct the work of authors such as Klaus Dörre, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, and Arlie Hochschild, among others, in order to demonstrate the relationship between a new scenario of social insecurity and the rise of authoritarianism in countries such as Germany and the United States. Next, I delve into some of the main works on this debate among us, such as those by João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Jessé Souza, and Marcos Nobre, seeking to point out some limits and possibilities of our internal discussion.