The early years of the twenty-first century were historic for socioeconomic relations in Brazil. While long known for stark socioeconomic inequality, the nation became internationally celebrated for its economic growth and successful poverty-reduction initiatives, which together propelled some 35 million "previously poor" Brazilians into what became called a "new middle class." The apparent rise of this "new" class has generated contentious debate and a range of social science studies in Brazil; yet this literature is little known in the Anglophone academic world. While some have interpreted this demographic transformation as an expansion of the existing middle class, others have questioned the utility of income-or consumption-based criteria for the category "middle class." Drawing from ongoing research in working-class neighborhoods in three Brazilian cities (Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo), this article reviews and engages these important debates, examines the extent to which Brazil's class structure has changed, and presents a conceptual framework for understanding experiences of socioeconomic mobility and class subjectivities among Brazil's "previously poor."Keywords Middle Class; Class Structure; Socioeconomic Mobility; BrazilThe middle class is necessarily an ill-defined entity. This does not reflect a lack of theoretical penetration but rather the character of reality.- Wacquant (1991, 57) In 2008, as Brazilians were becoming aware of their country's rising international profile and decreasing poverty, economist Marcelo Neri (2008, 43) announced the arrival of a "new middle class," with millions of once-poor people joining its ranks each year. Neri argued that with these shifts, Brazil had become a middle-class nation. Brazil is, of course, renowned for brutal inequality-so much so that "Brazilification" is often used as shorthand for widening inequality elsewhere. So the idea of a middle-class nation arrived as both a revelation and a controversy. Politicians and marketers took up the catchphrase "new middle class" even as critics assailed its validity. This debate continues today, even in the changed context of a severe economic downturn that began in 2013, the impeachment of Workers' Party (PT) president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the subsequent rollback of many of the PT social policies that supported poverty reduction during the party's years in office . The current crisis stands in contrast to the optimistic years preceding it, when Brazil's economic rise and the "new middle class"-dominated headlines. Our historical distance from those brighter times gives us, perhaps, enough remove to consider the implications of Brazilian debates on the "new middle class" and to evaluate their significance for anthropological theory and ethnography.We begin with an account of the profound socioeconomic transformations that took place in Brazil during the first decade of the twenty-first century. We then review how Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu have influenced the
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Resumen Esse artigo explora narrativas produzidas a partir da explosão do foguete de lançamento de satélites (VLS) em 2003. A explosão causou a morte de 21 técnicos, mas, segundo alguns críticos, nunca foi devidamente explicada. Examino narrativas divergentes sobre a explosão que circulam entre grupos envolvidos, e analiso três representações de progresso e de desenvolvimento nacional implícitos: o nacionalista, o neoliberal, e o redistributivo. A importância do lançamento de satélites para o programa espacial brasileiro, as terríveis consequências da explosão, a obscuridade em torno das causas do evento, e a incerteza que marcou a investigação, fizeram do evento uma potente metonímia para as idéias de diferentes grupos sobre o Estado‐nação brasileiro, e suas futuros desejáveis e possíveis. Este trabalho também defende a importância da pesquisa etnográfica sobre a distribuição e os conflitos sobre a tecnociência, um ponto de inquérito importante para compreender a política da desigualdade global e de futuros imaginados.
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