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While the work of waste pickers advances urban sustainability, there has been little focus on how climate change impacts affect them. This paper reports on a pilot study with 61 waste pickers in Minas Gerais, Brazil to understand their perspectives on climate change impacts and actions. It explores how waste pickers experience climate change impacts at home and at work, their adaptive strategies and the specific actions and actors needed to address these impacts. Waste pickers have practical knowledge and experience of climate events. But due to precarious employment and lack of access to services, infrastructure and social support, their responses are improvised and inefficient. They require better institutional support and their proposals must be incorporated into a negotiated approach to urban resilience. Proposals such as the climate bonus – similar to the existing recycling bonus – may help address the structural drivers of vulnerability for waste pickers in Minas Gerais. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the empirical data of school occupations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during 2016 to discuss the production of novel generational orders around the good of public education. Using a decolonial standpoint from where to examine modernization in Brazil and its welfare provision for children, the paper advances the notions of intergenerational practices of co-generativity and politicized generativity as instances of how Southern realities can contribute to new theoretical insights in childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective implantation of the circular economy (CE) presents a great challenge to the industrial sectors, mostly in those of greater environmental impact, such as construction industry. In Brazil, this industry has been growing over the last 20 years; however, such growth was based on an extractivist economy without any consideration to the end of its products lifespan. Only in 2017, 45 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste were generated in the country. This paper presents the current context of public policies in the Brazilian construction industry and proposes initiatives to introduce principles of CE. An exploratory study was developed, and all the 45 references presented in Appendix A of the review paper of Benachio et al. were considered to draw new ideas. These ideas are related and compared to key points in Brazilian regulations. Twelve opportunities for the improvement are listed and organized by construction stages (planning and design, materials manufacturing, construction processes, use and demolition). The ones related to design and planning using Green building information modelling, and materials manufacturing with recycled waste are highlighted due to the existing actions, standards, and Federal legislation. It was found that some sectors and the government already have actions related to CE (based on the 3R principle), but still there are several initiatives needed for its effective implementation in the Brazilian construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of 2019, the presence of social workers became mandatory in Brazilian state-funded elementary schools. This brief note explores the challenges schools may have in translating the new legislation from paper to practice. The goal is to frame and advance the discourse of school social work in Brazil. Among other topics, this note discusses the role of social workers in educational environments in Brazil and identifies the barriers that may exist to the exercise of the profession in these institutional spaces. Ultimately, suggestions are made on how to develop effective social work interventions in Brazilian schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of disarticulated ossicles of recent sea cucumbers from Campos Basin, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from various Holocene strata, obtained by micropaleontological methods, resulted in the identification of at least eight holothurian taxa, belonging to the five of the seven orders of Holothuroidea: Apodida (Synaptidae, Chiridotidae), Dendrochirotida (Psolidae and Cucumariidae), Holothuriida (Holothuria), and Molpadiida (Molpadiidae, Eupyrgidae). Our paper endorses the importance of studies of recent fauna based on isolated ossicles for taxonomy, biostratigraphy, and ecology. This study represents the first effort at the study of recent fauna of sea cucumbers based on the analysis of preserved ossicles in marine sediments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties shape electoral outcomes by determining who stands for election and what campaign resources they have at their disposal. The introduction of gender quotas have led party leaders to nominate more women candidates, however, those women disproportionately lose. We contend that one of the reasons that women routinely lose is because party elites withhold the campaign resources necessary to mount an effective campaign. In this paper, we test this resource gatekeeping argument using data on the provision of campaign resources in Brazil. We analyze the distribution of three different types of party resources: candidate identification numbers, financial support, and television airtime. Our findings show that party elites provide female candidates less advantageous candidate identification numbers, less financial support, and less media access than they provide male candidates. Importantly, we do not find that gender gaps in campaign contributions are attributable to differences in candidate quality. This finding suggests that even when women are recruited to run for office, party elites may still undermine their electoral prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade India and Brazil implemented waste policy reforms to tackle the constraints of their waste management. This study compares those reforms using the methodological framework proposed by Wilson where waste policy evolves through a series of subsequent stages, depending on two aspects: local circumstances; and stakeholders' groups. The current research is exploratory in its scope, adopting this method to describe, compare and evaluate both Indian and Brazilian cases, and also verifying how the model performs when applied to developing countries. The paper confirms Wilson's conclusions, and adds a perception that in developing economies a special local circumstance is to be considered the point of departure, that is, the particular starting point of Wilson's evolution. In addition, the research concludes that participation of diverse stakeholder groups throughout the political process is fundamental, and could be key to overcoming the risks of policy setbacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media convergence and growing financial pressure on the journalistic field have triggered significant changes in newsmaking cultures across the world. This article examines the challenges of media convergence in the newsroom of Valor Econômico, the main economic newspaper in Brazil. In particular, it explores how the introduction in 2013 of Valor Pro, a real time news service oriented to the financial market, changed newsmaking practices at Valor Econômico. The introduction of Valor Pro meant that journalists from the whole newsroom had to report news simultaneously for three platforms: the real time service, the online website and the printed paper. This shift not only intensified journalists’ workloads and altered the manufacture of news, but also increased financial pressure on the paper’s agenda. I argue that this shift – from producing news for the public towards producing news for the market – cannot be explained solely with reference to traditional political economic factors such as ideological decisions at editorial level and the structural properties of the Brazilian media sphere. Instead, drawing on resources from cultural sociology and from science and technology studies, I provide a richer explanation that acknowledges the impact of technological innovation, the shifting nature of news values, and the agency of journalists themselves. This article elaborates on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Valor Econômico’s newsroom in São Paulo between 2013 and 2015 and contributes to the literature on cultural sociology, media studies and science and technology studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Portuguese empire brought inescapable violence to the indigenous communities of Brazil and to those it enslaved. Throughout the centuries of colonial subjugation, driven by the Iberian monarchical traditions of hierarchy, militarism and moral crusade, 'just war' narratives were employed to legitimate the use of violent legal and extra-legal measures against enslaved peoples and others deemed unruly or rebellious and a threat to colonial order. Two centuries after independence, Brazil remains at war with its 'internal enemies'. Its justice practices continue to be characterised by colonial rationalisations. This paper illustrates the contemporary coloniality inherent in the carceral system from the moment of detention pre-trial through sentencing and imprisonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financialisation and housing are predominantly associated to mortgages for homeownership and securitisation techniques. This paper looks at how financial markets influence the development industry, its business strategies, and the nature and location of its products. Adopting a supply- side account, the paper inquires into the rising role of financial markets as a source of funding for a consolidating development industry and its influence on the geography of housing in Brazilian cities. It develops the concept of resonance by combining two yet unrelated strands of literature on the study of financial markets (cultural economy and conventionalist economics). Narratives co-authored by the stock market community and development firms management over each individual firm, and the discursively linked strategic moves of developers, are shown to resonate, at the meso-level of the industry, into shared social representations (or conventions) on how to best assess and interpret the value of development firms. Analysing the wave of Initial Public Offerings occurring in the mid 2000s, the paper highlights that narratives of quick capital gains associated with the removal of the land banking bottleneck faced by developers supported a convention giving priority to the growth in total output, and contributed to the observed changes in the forms, scales and locations of housing projects in Brazilian cities. As discrepancies between the promises of returns for shareholders and actual financial results emerged, the growth convention unravelled, making way for other narratives and strategic moves to resonate anew and possibly change again the geographies of housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, urban violence is a problem in the world, and traditional development models are sometimes inappropriate to rapidly changing urban contexts where the sense of ownership and appropriation of common space is key to effective programming. Faced with the relevance of the traditional North–South model, the growing importance of South–South Cooperation (SSC) as a form of development cooperation generates positive ways forward in overcoming the limitations of the existing model. This paper outlines the experience of Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO that works through a community participatory framework that is unique in style and Brazilian in origin. Viva Rio has addressed urban conflict in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by drawing on principles and techniques developed in Rio de Janeiro and strategically applying them to the Haitian context. The paper describes this experience and develops it into a framework of knowledge transfer. It describes Viva Rio’s modalities and how it has been productive because of its ability to adapt to on-the-ground realities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who resisted the civilian-military rule (1964–1985) in her youth, has been engaging civil society and congress in security and defence issues for the production of the first national defence white paper. Her performance in this area is a good indication of the state of democracy in post-transition Brazil. Using the literature on third wave democracy transition and consolidation, this piece examines how previous presidents dealt with the main security and defence issues in order to identify change and continuity early in the Rousseff administration and also what sort of challenges the new president must rise to. As part of Latin America, Brazil lies in a largely demilitarized, but at the same time extremely violent region of the world. As an emerging soft power, Brazil has recently made defence a bigger issue in the national political agenda but still struggles to deal with its dark history of human rights abuses in the civilian-military dictatorship. Rousseff has shown an awareness of civilian-military issues, but it is still unclear whether she has enough political capital and whether that will translate into the required political support to democratically define the role of the armed forces in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses first on cultural syncretism, used to characterize Brazilian culture. The other aspect of this socially and racially blended culture is the unfinished assimilation of liberalism in politics and the economy, which defines Brazilian society. The increased assimilation and dissemination of psychology may be linked with these in cultural and social aspects. During the military period (1964-1974) the major expansion in university-level studies in psychology contributed ideologically to the dissemination of psychology throughout Brazilian society. This introduced a type of psychology that was related primarily to clinical practice and developed in opposition to social work practice. This paper examines the ideological bases for this conflict between clinical and social work. Criteria for understanding the cultural dissemination of psychoanalysis are then discussed, and it is argued that cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis involves the development of discourse complexes to reflect particular aspects of Brazilian society. The criteria (a non-totalitarian society and the displacement of a magical and religious interpretation of mental disturbance by psychiatric interpretation) are evaluated in relation to the peculiarities of Brazilian syncretism. The paper argues that cultural syncretism and the incomplete assimilation of liberal ideology must be included as criteria in understanding the particular cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how scientists deal with tensions emerging from their role as providers of objective knowledge and as citizens concerned with how their research influences policy and politics in Brazil. This is accomplished through an ethnographic account of scientists using remote sensing technology, of their knowledge-making activities and of the broader socio-political controversies that permeate the detection of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Strategies for mitigating uncertainty are central aspects of the knowledge practices analyzed, bringing controversies ‘external’ to the laboratory ‘into’ the lab, making these boundaries conceptually problematic. In particular, the anticipation of alternative interpretations of rainforest cover is a crucial way that scientists bring the world into the lab, helping to shed light on how scientists, usually seen and analyzed as isolated, are in fact often in constant dialogue with the broader political controversies related to their work. These insights help question the idea that the monitoring of deforestation through remote sensing is a form of secluded research, drawing a more complex picture of the dual role of scientists as knowledge producers and concerned citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to study the dynamics of legislative and party politics in developing countries often confront a serious obstacle – lack of public data on legislative actions. This paper proposes a new feasible approach for obtaining legislative information indirectly – analyzing the perceptions and lobbying behaviors of business interest groups who are experienced, knowledgeable and highly invested in staying informed on policymaking processes. I build on extant literatures on political parties and lobbying to show how we can systematically exploit group insights to study legislative parties in data-scarce environments and complement existing approaches in data-rich cases. I then demonstrate and evaluate this approach by using original data from a 2006 survey of 158 groups in a data-rich case, Brazil, to mediate existing scholarly debates regarding the sources of legislative unity of Brazilian parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has suggested that fragmented political systems, incohesive parties, and weak programmatic links between voters and legislators can undermine the effectiveness of ideological legislative representation. Using Brazil's national and state assemblies, we examine the potential for voter-elite congruence in a legislative environment considered weak in programmatic representation and highly fragmented by a decentralized political structure. Focusing on 2005–2014, we use mass and elite survey data from the National Congress and 12 state assemblies to estimate deputies' and respondents' ideal points on a common left-right scale. Despite many potential barriers to ideological representation, we find an aggregate pattern of congruence between voters' and politicians' ideological positions during this period, with stronger voter-deputy correspondence for state deputies on average. These patterns are confirmed by a dyadic analysis of deputy and voter characteristics. However, we also find weaknesses in party-level ideological congruence for the major parties—for voters on the left and party supporters on the right. The findings suggest that, while the party system did not prevent overall ideological representation, it may have hindered important aspects of party representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Brazilian audiovisual landscape has been monopolized by the Grupo Globo conglomerate and its commercial broadcast network, TV Globo, which established a common video experience centered on the telenovela. Although cable and the internet sowed seeds of discontent in the 2000s, it was only with the advent of video streaming services in the 2010s that Brazil's video landscape was transformed. This led to the multiplication of video cultures and greater access to transnational audiovisual flows. This article frames streaming as a competitive force that has compelled Grupo Globo to diversify its storytelling and representation, highlighting its potential to disrupt Brazil's video cultures and exposing the limits of cultural proximity. It examines how streaming services affect Brazilian video cultures and how preexisting conditions in Brazil provide opportunities and limitations to underline streaming's disruptive potential for Brazil's video cultures and Globo's declining hegemony and ability to adapt to the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in extreme weather events, coupled with the acknowledgement by policymakers that vulnerable populations are disproportionately at risk, has led to an increase in demand for vulnerability assessments, and particularly composite vulnerability indices. This paper presents a flood hazard vulnerability index that incorporates socioeconomic, built environment and natural environment data, and that was used to measure the vulnerability of 1,276 municipalities in Brazil. Findings show that 83 of these municipalities (with 22 per cent of the Brazilian population) are at risk. Vulnerability stemming from lower levels of socioeconomic status is concentrated in the Northern regions; that related to poor governance is widespread across all regions. This analysis highlights the dangers of assessing vulnerability using aggregate measures of socioeconomic status in middle-income countries with high levels of inequality, where the presence of vulnerable populations in informal settlements within highly developed municipalities may be obscured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on participatory urban planning as a model of urban reform and democratic invention in Brazil. Its case material regards the formulation and implementation of two sets of urban laws of very broad consequence. First, we discuss briefly the chapter on urban policy in the 1988 Citizen Constitution and the federal law that it mandates. The latter is the Estatuto da Cidade, the City Statute, from 2001, which required that 1600 cities (approximately 30%) of Brazilian municipalities either create Master Plans or reformulate existing ones according to its principles and on the basis of popular participation. Second, we focus on São Paulo’s Master Plan (2002) and Zoning Law (2004) that fulfill this requirement and on the Plan’s required revision in 2007. By examining this massive constitutionally mandated formulation of urban policy, our aim is to analyse the development of a new paradigm of urban policy that reinvents master planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While gender mainstreaming strategies are promoted by major international organizations and national governments, a growing literature has reported critiques. This paper focuses on gender mainstreaming strategies as one aspect of a project implemented in Brazil and discusses the effects of the strategy in three urban areas. The analysis suggests that implementation practices can be key to increasing positive gender outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The importance of appraisal in the stress process is unquestioned. Experience in the social environment that impacts outcomes such as depression are thought to have these effects because they are appraised as a threat to the individual and overwhelm the individual's capacity to cope. In terms of the nature of social experience that is associated with depression, several recent studies have examined the impact of cultural consonance. Cultural consonance is the degree to which individuals, in their own beliefs and behaviors, approximate the prototypes for belief and behavior encoded in shared cultural models. Low cultural consonance is associated with more depressive symptoms both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In this paper we ask the question: does perceived stress mediate the effects of cultural consonance on depression? Data are drawn from a longitudinal study of depressive symptoms in the urban community of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. A sample of 210 individuals was followed for 2 years. Cultural consonance was assessed in four cultural domains, using a mixed-methods research design that integrated techniques of cultural domain analysis with social survey research. Perceived stress was measured with Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale. When cultural consonance was examined separately for each domain, perceived stress partially mediated the impact of cultural consonance in family life and cultural consonance in lifestyle on depressive symptoms. When generalized cultural consonance (combining consonance in all four domains) was examined, there was no evidence of mediation. These results raise questions about how culturally salient experience rises to the level of conscious reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper develops a framework for understanding social movements that address issues related to science, technology and expert knowledge. ‘Democratizing science movements’ contest, reframe, and engage in the production of official scientific research in order to achieve their goals. They contest the seeming objectivity and neutrality of science and seek to legitimate lay perspectives. In order to empirically explore why such movements arise and how they work, I discuss two cases: the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the USA. While there are obvious internal and contextual differences between these two movements, they both exemplify similar characteristics of democratizing science movements. In this sense, these cases are representative of a broader, transnational phenomenon. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of electoral stability or volatility in Latin America calls attention to profound differences between most Latin American party systems, which are quite volatile, and West European party systems, which remain comparatively stable notwithstanding a trend toward greater volatility in recent decades. The examination of Latin American party systems poses interesting questions about why they differ so markedly from West European systems along this important dimension and what the consequences are for democracy. This paper focuses on volatility in one country, Brazil, in order to examine these issues. I make four arguments: that the Brazilian party system was moderately volatile during Brazil's first democracy (1946-64); that the party system has been highly volatile since 1982; that Brazil's volatility is much higher than that in the advanced industrial democracies; and finally, that the high volatility of the post-1985 period was caused by a combination of structural and institutional factors inimical to strong ties between citizens, political elites and parties, and further boosted by the dismal economic results of 1987-94. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements are purposeful, organized groups of people addressing the creation and reproduction of inequality, rights and access issues, seeking to transform sectoral policies. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, social movements have been acting in articulation with government and private companies and through other actions formulated within their networks, as service deliverers to the poor and vulnerable populations most heavily affected, often filling a gap created by unfulfilled policies. Our research with waste picker organizations in Brazil illustrates how their struggle for recognition has taken action in this context. Academic and government documents, social media and online material (blogs, posts, websites, etc.) and virtual meetings inform this research. We found that multiple actors have contributed to mitigate the urgent needs of waste pickers during the pandemic, but that at the same time, pre-existing challenges in waste management and the lack of wide-ranging social and economic inclusion have been further intensified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil has suffered severe consequences from the Covid-19 pandemic, currently ranking second globally in terms of total fatalities, with more than 682,000 lives lost. This article critically outlines how a 'health security' framework overlooks processes of intersectionality and the varying impacts of the virus on different segments of society, or what we term health insecurity. We organize our analysis around three aspects of the pandemic that have become salient in Brazilian society, namely access to healthcare, disposable workers, and exposure to the virus, and delineate the intersectional impact of gendered inequality, neoliberal ideologies, and racial hierarchies within these three themes. Our methodology employs media and scholarly interpretations of Covid-19, and other secondary empirical and statistical data, to outline the virus's impacts on differently positioned bodies throughout Brazilian society. Our main findings reveal that during the pandemic, women's labor and health concerns have been undervalued, exploitative working conditions have been exacerbated, and Afro-Brazilians have been put in situations of higher exposure to the virus in both public and private spaces. This article underscores the need to better examine how public health, systems of oppression and exclusion, and (in)security overlap with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to high levels of car theft, insurance companies in São Paulo have developed new systems and technologies for tracking and recovering stolen vehicles. These interventions are driven by an insurance rationality that seeks to manage risk and ensure these companies' profitability. However, this article draws on the notion of technopolitics to argue that the tracking devices and other technologies mobilized in this way also exercise their own agency. They help to mediate and reorganize the power dynamics and relations between diverse actors who operate within São Paulo's stolen car market and vehicle recovery processes, presenting both challenges and opportunities for each as they pursue their respective aims. The notion of 'insurance technopolitics' emphasizes this conjunction between risk governance and the contingent, technologically mediated relationships and conflicts to which it may give rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Immigrants and refugees have specific mental health needs. Studies of immigrant/refugee psychiatric patients in Latin America are scarce. Aims: Present the profile of patients from an outpatient psychiatric service in Sao Paulo (Brazil) to better inform mental health service planning for immigrants and refugees in the Global South. Methods: Exploratory study to characterize the sociodemographic and mental health profile of refugees and immigrants attending outpatient psychiatric service from 2003 to 2018. Chi-square tests and logistic regressions were used to examine the association of demographic variables, exposure to violence, and immigrant status with psychiatric diagnosis. Cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups within the sample. Results: A total of 162 immigrants and refugees referred to the service obtained treatment. Of these patients, 57.4% were men, 59.8% were refugees/asylum seekers, 51.9% were Black, 48.8% were single, 64.2% had 10 years of education, and 57.4% were unemployed; the mean age of the sample was 35.9. Half of the sample (52.5%) was exposed to violence. The most common diagnosis was depression (54.2%), followed by PTSD (16.6%). Approximately 34% of the participants sought psychiatric care within 6 months of arrival. Logistic regressions showed that men had lower odds of presenting with depression (OR = 0.34). Patients with PTSD were more likely to be refugees (OR = 3.9) and not have a university degree (OR = 3.1). In the cluster analysis, a cluster of patients with PTSD included almost all Black refugee men exposed to violence. Most patients diagnosed with psychotic disorders were also Black refugee men. Conclusion: Immigrants and refugees represent a vulnerable group. The majority of the sample was Black, refugee men, who were also more likely to present with PTSD. Future studies are needed to better understand issues in treatment adherence in relation to socioeconomic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic has been present in our lives for the past century as an essential material for many commodity items. However, the same properties that make plastic convenient are also responsible for the current dramatic environmental pollution. As an alternative, most of the world has been working with technological innovations, and one of its strategies is the use of bioplastics. Despite being considered environmentally beneficial by some people, there are still developments and discussions that need to be made. This article aims to present a legislative review and discusses the difficulty in implementing policies related to the incentive of the bioplastics market, as well as presenting some state and municipal laws, already prohibiting single-use plastics in Brazil. These laws aim to encourage the substitution of these plastics for biodegradable ones. However, it still has gaps and a lack of clarification on how the banning of disposable plastics and their substitution will be beneficial since composting is still an incipient process in the country. It is also the purpose of this article to discuss the challenges in the context of the Circular Economy, as well as the potential solution based on the creation of public policies aimed at improving waste management, in addition to clearer legislation on alternatives to single-use plastics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six electoral cycles since the implementation of Brazil's gender quota, just 15% of the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies are women. We ask how parties' use of informal institutions mediates the effectiveness of the gender quota. Drawing on data from more than 4,000 state-level party organizations, we show that parties employ informal practices that intentionally and non-intentionally interact with gender equity rules to affect women's political representation: the intentional nomination of phantom candidates (" laranjas ") allows parties to comply with the letter of the quota law, without effectively supporting women's candidacies—to the detriment of women's election; meanwhile, the extended use of provisional commissions to minimize oversight on candidate selection poses an obstacle to the quota and women's candidacies and election more generally. Quota resistance characterizes an instance of both the likely inadvertent effects of informal institutions employed for non-gendered motivations and party leaders acting to preserve their own power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While growth in India stayed relatively stable over the last decade, Brazil fell into deep recession and a fundamental political and economic crisis. Why did these two countries, despite their similarities, diverge so massively within only 10 years? Through a paired comparison, this article probes two alternative approaches to capitalist diversity to explain the divergence among two rising economic powers and 'state capitalisms'. It finds that through the lens of a firm-centred supply-side approach, one largely sees institutional stability in both economies, while a focus on the demand side and respective growth models makes visible fundamental destabilization in Brazil. The fragility of domestic demand, the vulnerability of global economic integration and the erosion of key social coalitions, we contend, are key to unpack the divergence between Brazil and India. This study thereby not only sheds a new light on emerging market capitalism but also discusses further possibilities for the analysis of state capitalism within comparative political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on theories of cultural trauma, this research examines institutional trauma engendered by the pandemic in relation to journalism and public health in the US and Brazil. The trauma stemming from Covid-19 marks a transformational crisis not only in terms of global public health but also collective confidence in institutions writ large. To probe these issues, this article takes advantage of a vibrant digital discussion among Americans and Brazilians hosted by three flagship newspapers in the two countries: The New York Times, Folha de S. Paulo, and O Estado de S. Paulo. The analysis reveals that both groups experience Covid-accelerated trauma that undermines Brazilians' and Americans' faith in foundational institutions' ability to adequately respond to the pandemic. Comparing these interpretations of the Covid-19 crisis in the US and Brazil allows us to see how the acute health crisis triggered by the virus morphs into a form of institutional trauma, with deep implications for collective confidence in public health, journalism, and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: The relationship between migration and mental health is complex and involves factors at different levels, as the individual history of the migrant, the collective history of their home country, the host society's and their mutual past history. Even though the migratory scenario of France and Brazil has changed over the years, both countries currently host an important number of immigrants. Aim: The main objective of the present study was to describe and analyze the impacts of the migratory experience on mental health of migrants with different migration experiences and living in two countries: France and Brazil. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 participants, six in France and seven in Brazil. A thematic qualitative analysis of the data was performed using the ATLAS.TI software. Three themes were created based on the different times of the migration experience: before migration, during migration and after migration. All codes of these three bigger themes were organized in sub-themes for the samples in France and Brazil. Results: Participants in France described an important exposure to traumatic events before and during migration. In Brazil, the migration experiences were multiple, in some cases presenting a traumatic history, but in most cases migration was seen as an opportunity to have access to better life conditions. In both countries, participants reported a great level of psychological distress associated to post-migratory difficulties (e.g. unemployment, learning a new language, or facing a new cultural environment). Conclusions: Our results suggest that multidisciplinary interventions, with focus on skills development, such as language and work-related skills, and on access to basic needs may be essential for both voluntary and involuntary migrants. In addition to these interventions, some individuals may need specialized mental health intervention, focusing in past traumatic exposure and in the current acculturation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do parties form pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) in executive elections? The party of the executive candidate may welcome coalition partners because of the votes that they can deliver. However, PECs often include parties that bring few votes to the coalition. I theorize that parties with a candidate in the executive election welcome small parties because of the campaign resources that they bring to the PEC. I test this argument using data from mayoral elections in Brazil, where parties do not control access to advertisement on radio/TV. The results indicate that campaign resources increase the likelihood of being admitted to a PEC when the party without an executive candidate has few votes to offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of narrative theory as an analytical framework to investigate the extent to which popular hashtags and the news can develop into intersecting stories. It juxtaposes the case of hashtag-based reports seen during the Arab Spring to understand the coverage of notorious political episodes in Brazil. Namely, the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro. Here, narrative linearity emerges as a tool to observe the borrowing of Twitter hashtags in several journalistic pieces. It is contended that the linearity of authorship, narration and representation of time appears as a satisfactory pathway to trace the development of hashtags into popular news stories. Results suggested that hashtags can significantly follow narratives and agendas in journalism but differing from their original social media context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable literature exploring Brazil's participatory management, less academic attention focuses on Brazil's public policy councils (conselhos gestores de políticas públicas), which are permanent political-institutional structures on a range of policy issues mediating between society and the state. This article analyses urban policy councils in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State, and Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State, considering whether this participatory planning tool advances democratic inclusion. We approach participatory planning through the lens of policy communities. Through these cases, we demonstrate that these two councils do not, in fact, enable all those affected and interested to influence and define policies. Yet even if the views of the most disenfranchised do not ultimately prevail, these urban policy councils contribute to publicizing urban policy issues and democratizing the range of stakeholders that gain access to the policy community. We conclude by highlighting suggestions for improving public policy councils as mechanisms for participatory planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Zika virus burst onto the international scene in the second half of 2015, the development of diagnostic tools was seen as an urgent global health priority. Diagnostic capacity was restricted to a small number of reference laboratories, and none of the few available molecular or serological tests had been validated for extensive use in an outbreak setting. In the early weeks of the crisis, key funders stepped in to accelerate research and development efforts, and the WHO took responsibility for steering diagnostic standardization, a role it had successfully played during the West Africa Ebola virus outbreak. Yet when the WHO declared the end of the Zika Public Health Emergency of International Concern in November 2016, diagnostic capacity remained patchy, and few tools were available at the scale required in the countries that bore the brunt of the epidemic, particularly Brazil. This article analyses the limited impact of global R&D efforts on the availability of Zika diagnostic options where they were most needed and for those most vulnerable: women who might have been exposed to the virus during their pregnancy and children born with suspected congenital Zika syndrome. The truncated legacies of testing during the Zika crisis reveal some of the fault lines in the global health enterprise, particularly the limits of 'emergency R&D' to operate in geopolitical contexts that do not conform to the ideal type of a humanitarian crisis, or to tackle technical issues that are inextricably linked to domestic struggles over the scope and distribution of biological citizenship. Diagnostic shortcomings, we argue, lie at the heart of the stunning transformation, in less than two years, in the status of Zika: from international public health emergency to neglected disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares how COVID-19 affected state–society relations differently in two relatively similar countries: Brazil and Argentina. Bringing together social movement theories and ideational institutionalism, we argue that variation in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is explained by the different roles played by social movements inside and outside government and by contrasting ideational disputes. The extreme uncertainty introduced by the pandemic generated intense contestation about the meaning of the crisis and how to resolve it. In Brazil, progressive social movements not only were excluded from the government coalition, but also had to combat a powerful discourse that denied the existence of a crisis altogether. Such denialism did not flourish in the same way in Argentina, where progressive social movements were part of national government processes. The result was that in Argentina, movement–government dynamics revolved around constructing long-term policy proposals, whereas in Brazil movements focused on short-term emergency responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, the most widely used self-report instrument to assess alexithymia (a clinical condition characterized by serious deficits in the cognitive processing of emotions) is the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Because this measure has been poorly investigated in Brazil and emerging research suggests that TAS-20 scores might vary from one culture to another, we sought to: (1) investigate the psychometric properties of a Brazilian TAS-20; and (2) examine the degree to which Brazilian non-clinical TAS-20 scores differ from the scores of non-clinical samples from other cultures. A sample of 850 non-clinical Brazilian adults were administered a number of questionnaires and performance-based measures via online data collection. Data analyses inspected internal consistency and factor structure of the TAS-20, and tested the association of TAS-20 scores to emotional functioning and psychopathology. In line with previous international research, the Brazilian TAS-20 showed acceptable to adequate psychometric properties. Furthermore, TAS-20 scores associated negatively with empathy and emotional perception, and positively with emotion dysregulation and personality traits like dependency, abrupt changes in mood, and avoidance of criticism. Also noteworthy, our non-clinical Brazilian TAS-20 scores were very similar to those observed in other previously published non-clinical TAS-20 scores from seven non-Brazilian cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entrepreneurial city discourse has been adopted around the globe by policymakers, with the urban redevelopment project as one of its most representative symbols. The predominantly favourable discourse revolving around this new political economy of urban space is supported by claims that newly regenerated areas bring multiple benefits to the city and its citizens. These narratives have been used in Brazil to justify increasing reliance on an urban planning tool known as Urban Operations. This planning tool, developed in the 1990s, seeks to facilitate cooperation between public and private actors in the production of new urban spaces. While projected by some as a 'magic formula' that enables major urban redevelopment projects without public expenditure, the outcomes of Urban Operations often differ significantly from expectations. The cases of Água Espraiada (São Paulo) and Porto Maravilha (Rio de Janeiro) are used to demonstrate that regenerated areas, as preferred spaces for the penetration of financialised practices into the built environment, have brought forward new dynamics that are serving to reinforce pre-existing social inequalities and to exacerbate uneven development in Brazil's main cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare wastes are generated in facilities whose activities are related to human or animal healthcare. Wastes with high infectious potential risk to human health and the environment must be managed carefully, from generation to its final disposal. However, there is an absence of consolidated data addressing the healthcare waste qualitative classification generated by hospitals of a large city. Therefore, the present study aims to characterise qualitatively the high infectious waste generated by hospitals from Belo Horizonte city, Brazil, whose Health Services Waste Management Plan were approved and certificated by the municipal cleansing autarchy. Differences in the types of infectious wastes generated in maternity hospitals were identified (p 0.034), when compared with general (p 0.189), low (p 0.549) and high complexity (p 0.619), which can be explained owing to the extended hospital activities. This information suggests a similar profile of the qualitative generation of infectious wastes by hospital categories, as expected. The largest generation and diversity of high-infected wastes are associated with a greater variety of activities provided. The segregation can be considered as the main step in healthcare waste management, therefore, it is concluded that the correct classification leads to a better understanding of all those involved in the healthcare waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement in 2005 triggered a global reorganization and relocation of the textile and garment industry. There is a rich literature on how global buyers with headquarters located in developed countries have played a dominant role in this reorganization process. The literature is less clear on how local firms have reacted or which new industrial structures are emerging in middle-income countries in response to these developments. This article examines how the textile and garment industry in Brazil is adapting to this new competitive environment. We show how large and small producers have transformed their relationships and created dynamic exchanges of roles in response to international competition, and how these new dynamic relationships are influencing the fast creation and fast destruction of value in fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic transition in Brazil witnessed the return of civil liberties and the emergence of a legal framework based upon respect for human rights and the adoption of extensive social entitlements. In recent years, the reduction of poverty and upward social mobility have also transformed the country’s social structure. In spite of these welcome changes, however, crime and prison rates went through a steep upsurge during the same period, undermining many of these more positive social changes. A number of reasons underlie the emergence of this predicament, ranging from large structural shifts to the piecemeal adoption of harsher criminal laws. Enmeshed in these developments nonetheless there is also important institutional modifications in the configuration of the criminal justice system. The present argument seeks to understand how the recent thrust in the modernization of state institutions helped to create this situation of crisis. The expansion, densification, and standardization of the criminal justice apparatus has prompted its greater effectiveness and, thus, contributed to the current predicament of high crime rates and mass incarceration in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems of violence in Latin America are often reiterated, yet understanding how and why violence declines is far less common. While urban violence takes different forms and has a range of motivations, we suggest that strengthening political and social institutions are important in violence reduction processes. We examine this using a comparative analysis of two cities which have recently seen unusual and marked reductions in lethal violence: Bogotá in Colombia and Recife in Brazil. Drawing on primary data collection, the case studies suggest that novel leaders who take advantage of critical junctures can deliver unexpected improvements to public security; and improvements are linked with institutionalising progressive security policies, increasing accountability of political institutions, and social reforms encouraging civic values and commitments to non-violence. While findings are specific to these two cases, they may plausibly apply to a broader range of cities, such that commitments to improve public policy and political institutions can overcome structural risk factors that foster violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces different aspects of the present-day juridification and judicialization of indigenous lives using the example of the Tupinambá Indians of north-eastern Brazil. The Tupinambá’s identity is being increasingly bureaucratized by public administration and is constantly being questioned by public and private agents to deny the Tupinambá’s constitutional land rights. In the course of the still ongoing process of the demarcation of the Indigenous Territory Tupinambá de Olivença, indigenous inhabitants are facing a plethora of civil actions, and Tupinambá leaders are being persecuted and criminalized by the police and the judiciary. This article exposes the legal intricacies of possessory actions against indigenous people in Brazil and discusses the different acts and attitudes of the actors of the Brazilian ‘juridical field’ as regards the indigenous rights. It suggests a view of law, law enforcement and law suits as means of social sense making, that is, a public staging, interpretation, imagining and ‘mapping’ of Brazil’s ‘indigenous question’, which has, ultimately, to be legitimized by society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Trafficking Protocol establishes the ‘abuse of a position of vulnerability’ as one of the means used to traffic persons. This term, however, was not properly defined, leaving it open for multiple interpretations, many of which do not focus on the well-being of the supposedly vulnerable victims. Through a case study of how (potential) Brazilian victims of trafficking are dealt with in Brazil and (to a lesser extent) outside the country, this article focuses on how ‘vulnerability’ is often interpreted as a synonym of strain that leads to deviant behaviour. In this way, the concept is co-opted to enable the punishment or restraint of certain people (particularly women from developing countries) who are considered to be unsuitable to migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between genetic research, nationalism and the construction of collective social identities in Latin America. It makes a comparative analysis of two research projects – the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ and the ‘Homo Brasilis’ – both of which sought to establish national and genetic profiles. Both have reproduced and strengthened the idea of their respective nations of focus, incorporating biological elements into debates on social identities. Also, both have placed the unifying figure of the mestizo/mestiço at the heart of national identity constructions, and in so doing have displaced alternative identity categories, such as those based on race. However, having been developed in different national contexts, these projects have had distinct scientific and social trajectories: in Mexico, the genomic mestizo is mobilized mainly in relation to health, while in Brazil the key arena is that of race. We show the importance of the nation as a frame for mobilizing genetic data in public policy debates, and demonstrate how race comes in and out of focus in different Latin American national contexts of genomic research, while never completely disappearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the centrality of Brazil within the future of climate policy and politics. The state of the carbon sink of the Amazon rainforest has long been an iconic marker of the condition of the Earth. Brazil has been innovative in developing many non-carbon forms of energy generation and use and it has played a major role in international debates on global warming since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. We examine various ways in which climate change has come to be centrally important in Brazilian public opinion. Survey evidence shows that Brazilians are the most concerned about issues of climate change – with less climate change scepticism as compared with more ‘advanced’ societies. Through using techniques of corpus linguistics we examine how Brazilian media has engendered and stabilized such a high and striking level of climate change concern. We show that the media helped to fix a ‘climate change framing’ of recent often strange weather. The article analyses the newly constructed Brazilian Corpus on Climate Change, presenting data on a scale and reach that is unique in this area of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a comparative analysis of policing in three countries that have experienced a major political or social transition, Russia, Brazil, and China. We consider two related questions: (1) how has transition in each country affected the deployment of the police against regime opponents (which we term “repression”)? And (2) how has the transition affected other police misconduct that also victimizes citizens but is not directly ordered by the regime (“abuse”)? As expected, authoritarian regimes are more likely to perpetrate severe repression. However, the most repressive authoritarian regimes such as China may also contain oversight institutions that limit police abuse. We also assess the relative importance of both transitional outcomes and processes in post-transition policing evolution, arguing that the “abusiveness” of contemporary Brazilian police reflects the failure to create oversight mechanisms during the transition, and that the increasing “repressiveness” of Chinese police reflects a conscious effort by the Chinese Communist Party to reinforce the police in an era of economic liberalization. In contrast, Russian police are both significantly abusive and repressive, although less systematically “repressive” than Chinese police, and less “abusive” (or at least violent) than Brazilian police. Also, abuse and repression are less distinct in Russia than in the other cases. These results reflect the initial processes of decay and fragmentation, and subsequent partial recovery and recentralization, which Russian police have experienced since the Soviet collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study seeking for profiles of stigma toward schizophrenia in a representative population sample in Brazil. Topics discussed include the grouping of individuals into 4 clusters as the best solution for the sample, the use of a latent profile analysis (LPA) to asses in detail stigma toward schizophrenia and the need to improve the quality of mental health literacy in Brazil and findings on the capability of the LPA technique to discern various patterns of stigma.