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Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil

Books@Wilson logoImage - Book Cover - Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil

Publisher

Rutgers University Press, 2021

ISBN

978-1978825659
Books@Wilson logoImage - Book Cover - Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil

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Brazil changed drastically in the 21st century’s second decade. In 2010, the country’s outgoing president Lula left office with almost 90 percent approval. As the presidency passed to his Workers' Party successor, Dilma Rousseff, many across the world hailed Brazil as a model of progressive governance in the Global South. Yet, by 2019, those progressive gains were being dismantled as the far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of a bitterly divided country. Digging beneath this pendulum swing of policy and politics, and drawing on rich ethnographic portraits, Precarious Democracy shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. Bringing together powerful and intimate stories and portraits from Brazil's megacities to rural Amazonia, this volume demonstrates the necessity of ethnography for understanding social and political change, and provides crucial insights on one of the most epochal periods of change in Brazilian history.

Editors

Benjamin Junge

Benjamin Junge

Former Fellow;
Professor of Anthropology, State University of New York at New Paltz

Lucia Cantero

Assistant Professor of International Studies, University of San Francisco

Alvaro Jarrín

Assistant Professor of Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross

Sean T. Mitchell

Associate Professor of Anthropology; Director of Peace and Conflict Studies at Rutgers University

Brazil Institute

The Brazil Institute—the only country-specific policy institution focused on Brazil in Washington—aims to deepen understanding of Brazil’s complex landscape and strengthen relations between Brazilian and U.S. institutions across all sectors.  Our mission is to provide thoughtful leadership and innovative ideas to help democracies evolve and enhance their capacity to deliver results. We achieve this by producing independent research and programs that bridge the gap between scholarship and policy, while serving as a hub for policymakers, scholars, and private sector leaders.   Read more