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Over the last years, Brazil and China's oil-related finance activities have expanded substantially. Between 2007 and 2019, Brazilian companies received approximately one-fourth of Chinese policy banks overseas oil-related loans, and Chinese financial institutions became Brazil's biggest oil company Petrobras' main creditor. A deep analysis of these loans highlights their usage as economic statecraft tools, with impacts on the bilateral crude trade and investments. Loan-for-oil mechanisms, content purchase requirements, and a countercyclical lending pattern have helped to influence Brazilian players to behave in a manner conducive to the Chinese state's energy security objectives and strategic goals, namely increase of imports, diversification of sources, and internationalisation of firms. With these loans, China has satisfactorily guaranteed a stable oil supply over time and has helped Chinese equipment makers and service providers to expand their footage in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migratory experiences are part of the representative phenomena of contemporary social arrangements since not only goods and capital but also persons move from one part of the earth to another, joining the synergic flows of capitalism organized on a global scale. Empirically, we refer to the migratory experiences of footwear industry workers from Novo Hamburgo, Brazil, who have immigrated to China in recent years. We analyze the strategies adopted by these groups to support their projects to migrate to and settle in China. Above all, we focus on the role played by communications media in the construction of links between the community of origin and the new ethnic environment recreated in foreign lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of the hugely successful expansion of South-South Cooperation since the new millennium. For all the achievements, variations and change over the 1950s-late 1990s, 'SSC 1.0' was characterised by relative neglect within the 'international' development community, and by many orthodox and critical scholars. In the chronological schema of the paper, 'SSC 2.0' refers to the period of remarkable expansion from the early 2000s to the present. The emergence of 'SSC 3.0', I suggest, is currently revealed by a discernible set of shifts driven in large part by the expansionary successes of SSC 2.0, as well as other turns in the global political economy. Three contemporary trends are identified: cooperation narratives that are increasingly 'muscular', nationalistic and pragmatic; difficulties sustaining claims to 'non-interference' in partner countries; and the further erosion of ideational and operational distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some features of the development paths taken by Brazil and China (two member countries of the BRICS grouping) in the current context of the crisis of neoliberal globalization and transformation of the political and economic world order. The authors use Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ thesis to argue that newly emerging rural development (RD) dynamics in China and Brazil are part of a protective ‘countermovement’, driven by actors and institutions responding to the contradictions of the concentration and internationalization of agrifood systems. However, thedirectionand scope of these countermovements are still open; their transformative potential should be viewed in Gramsci’s terms as a struggle for hegemony the outcome of which depends on the concrete ‘balance of social forces’. First, the paper characterizes the impacts of China’s rise on Brazil’s development, which subsequently found its economy under threat of reprimarization and deindustrialization. The paper then sketches some stylized facts of production and consumption within the Brazil–China soy–meat complex, a key element of the current global food regime, with a focus on corporate control of the soy–meat value chain, and its negative consequences. Finally, the paper identifies the key roles that actors and institutions linked to peasants and family farmers are playing in the RD dynamics of each country. Although China and Brazil represent two very different realities, the comparison shows that critical rural and agrifood issues are indeed moving onto the centre stage of the contemporary ‘double movement’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the highlights of the 2016 international panel on dance/movement therapy in six continents, held during the 50th anniversary celebration of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA). Topics tackled are Argentina's connection to dance and acceptance of psychotherapy, life stage of a dace/movement therapist in Belgium, and the integration of the values of mind, body and emotion into dance/movement therapy in Brazil.

Certified organic agriculture stipulates a range of principles and standards, which govern farmer practices. The recent global expansion of organic agriculture has raised new challenges for organic agriculture, particularly whether management practices in organic farms are subject to the forces of conventionalisation. We studied changes in agroecological practices in certified organic farms in China, Brazil and Egypt. The study takes departure in the conventionalisation hypothesis and the analysis is framed using organic and agroecological principles. The study focuses on agroecological design principles, inherent to organic agriculture, of diversity in crop production, pest, disease and weed management, and soil fertility management. The research design was as a multiple case study of five cases in China, Brazil and Egypt. We show that the adoption of organic agriculture has induced fundamental changes in organic farmer management practices, although agroecological practices of organic farmers do not fulfil organic principles. The forces of conventionalisation exert a strong influence on changes in organic farmer practices. Organic 'niche' market crops with a high-value influence organic farmers' management decisions, particularly regarding the prioritisation of diversity in the cropping systems for agroecological purposes. The farming systems have therefore not undergone major changes of their cropping patterns. Furthermore, there was a general heavy reliance upon input substitution for pest and soil fertility management. This study thus presents new data and a novel analysis of the implications at the farm scale of the global expansion of organic agriculture, and the influence of conventionalisation on farmers practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]