The Elusive New Middle Class in Brazil

Kerstenetzky, Celia Lessa; Uchôa, Christiane; Silva, Nelson do Valle

doi:10.1590/1981-38212015000300018

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…Este resultado indica que, quando tomados em conjunto, latino-americanos teriam uma atitude frente à desigualdade de renda mais similar à de europeus que de estadunidenses, e o paradoxo da redistribuição não valeria nessa região. -1062,953 -1131,88 -1148,844 -1274,03 Fonte: Latinobarômetro, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2015; SWIID, Banco Mundial. Elaboração própria.…”

Section: Resultados: Apresentação E Discussãounclassified

“…Da forma como está formulada a pergunta, pode-se esperar a expressão de um alto grau de descontentamento com a distribuição, sem que isto necessariamente represente um forte apoio a políticas redistributivas. Por exemplo, visto que a redistribuição pode ser realizada por diversos canais, alguns mais visíveis e controvertidos, como programas de transferência de renda, e outros menos palpáveis, como o seguro-desemprego, algumas pessoas poderiam considerar injusta a distribuição de renda e apoiar algumas formas de redistribuição, mas não outras (Sefton, 2005 1997, 2001, 2002, 2015 Educação como variável dummy, com categorias "Superior" e "Não ensino superior". O primeiro grupo abarca pessoas com ensino superior completo, tanto no nível de graduação, como de pós-graduação.…”

Section: Variáveis Variável Dependenteunclassified

“…Desigualdade de Renda e Demanda por Redistribuição Caminham Juntas na América Latina no Período 1997-2015 Por que em alguns países há mais redistribuição de renda do que em outros? A questão é relevante, não apenas para o desenho de sistemas de tributação e de políticas redistributivas, mas também para uma melhor compreensão do surgimento de conflitos sociais ou da posição (in)tolerante dos habitantes de um país frente a situações de desigualdade social.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

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Desigualdade de Renda e Demanda por Redistribuição Caminham Juntas na América Latina no Período 1997-2015

Méndez

Waltenberg

2018

Dados

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RESUMO Por que em alguns países há mais redistribuição de renda do que em outros? A questão é relevante, não apenas para o desenho de sistemas de tributação e de políticas redistributivas, mas também para uma melhor compreensão do surgimento de conflitos sociais ou da posição (in)tolerante dos habitantes de um país frente a situações de desigualdade social. A literatura, centrada em estudos para países desenvolvidos, aponta que as chamadas "preferências por redistribuição" dependem de inúmeros fatores, tanto de ordem macro como microeconômica. Neste trabalho se combinam dados de três fontes distintas para se estimar um modelo multinível com dados empilhados e um pseudopainel, a fim de se analisar o efeito da desigualdade de renda na demanda por redistribuição na América Latina. Os resultados revelam que a probabilidade de apoio a políticas redistributivas aumenta em países/momentos com desigualdade mais elevada, e também indicam que os pobres estariam demandando sociedades mais igualitárias.

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Section: Resultados: Apresentação E Discussãounclassified

Section: Variáveis Variável Dependenteunclassified

Section: Introductionunclassified

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Desigualdade de Renda e Demanda por Redistribuição Caminham Juntas na América Latina no Período 1997-2015

Méndez

Waltenberg

2018

Dados

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“…In large part due to the new middle class, Brazil transformed into the world's second largest consumer of personal electronic devices (DAquino, 2019). The new middle class embraced a bourgeois consumptive lifestyle, spending R$1 trillion (US$494 billion) on consumer goods each year (Estada˜o, 2014), but rarely invested in more durable forms of household capital like education, healthcare, and realestate (Kerstenetzky et al, 2015). By the start of my research in 2008, digital technologies such as smartphones and social media were a noticeable element of favela life.…”

Section: Brazil's New Middle Class and A Nascent Consumer Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utopia Digital: Non-governmental organizations and the making of consumers in Brazil’s “New Middle Class” shantytowns

Scott

2019

Journal of Consumer Culture

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This article examines how class, consumerism, and employment influence beliefs of an idealized digital world in marginalized communities. I recount 24 months of ethnographic and institutional observation in a non-governmental organization that promoted the concept of “ utopia digital” (digital utopia in Portuguese) in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (shantytowns). This corporate-funded non-governmental organization employed members of Brazil’s traditional middle class and promoted the liberating potentials of digital inclusion to members of a “New Middle Class” made up of 35 million “previously poor” Brazilians. Interviews with middle-class employees reveal how ideas of digital utopia act as a code for corporate efforts to encourage consumerism among the New Middle Class and bolster employment opportunities for members of Brazil’s traditional middle class. Reflecting on informal conversations, I also highlight a middle-class “crime talk” that frames the favela as an inherently violent place and, in contrast to their inclusionary work related to digital utopia, encourages non-governmental organization workers to physically avoid favela space. I use Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of an “active” or “hunter” utopia as an ethnographic lens to discuss the practical and everyday experiences of technological inclusion in classed settings. By describing digital utopias as actively shaped by everyday understandings of urban exclusion and privilege, this article provides an ethnographic framework for decoding the socially reproductive nature of class-inflected consumer interventions in marginalized communities.

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“…Marxist perspectives have been influential in Brazilian debates, particularly among critics who question the category's validity. For example, André Singer (, 9), a well‐known political scientist who was press secretary in PT president Lula's first term, argued that because about half of the Brazilian population is a subproletariat living on the margins of the formal economy, “the proletariat, properly speaking, occupies an intermediate position in Brazil, which can lead to the mistaken perception that they are a middle class.” Most Brazilian Marxist analyses of the “new middle class” similarly position the recently economically ascendant within the proletariat (Ruy Braga 2015; Kerstenetzky et al ; Pochmann ). However, whether and how Brazil's early‐twenty‐first‐century previously poor might constitute a new and distinct stratum, with shared consciousness of interests, has been little explored.…”

Section: What Is a Middle Class?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Naming Brazil's previously poor: “New middle class” as an economic, political, and experiential category

Klein

Mitchell

Junge

2018

Economic Anthropology

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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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The Elusive New Middle Class in Brazil

Cited by 6 publications

References 10 publications

Desigualdade de Renda e Demanda por Redistribuição Caminham Juntas na América Latina no Período 1997-2015

Desigualdade de Renda e Demanda por Redistribuição Caminham Juntas na América Latina no Período 1997-2015

Utopia Digital: Non-governmental organizations and the making of consumers in Brazil’s “New Middle Class” shantytowns

Naming Brazil's previously poor: “New middle class” as an economic, political, and experiential category

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