The New Brazil

In association with King’s College London
Edited by Michael Hall and Anthony Pereira

In recent decades, Brazil has become a more economically and politically stable country. As its wealth has increased, and it has become the sixth largest economy in the world, it has awakened the interest of outsiders. But Brazil is still not well understood. Its enviable image is one of a laid-back mixture of natural beauty—beaches, mighty rivers, rain forests, vast plains—and exuberant multiracial humanity, expressing itself in football, music, Carnival, and sex. This image attracts and seduces, but it also misleads. Brazil is more complicated than that. This series is dedicated to exploring the Brazil behind the superficial images that dominate coverage of the country from the outside. It focuses on some of the country’s major twenty-first century challenges. Fifty years ago, Brazil was an agrarian country, dominated by plantation agriculture, in which 70 per cent of the population lived in the countryside. Since then it has industrialised and urbanised. Large-scale internal migration and demographic growth, the latter pushing the population to over 200 million, have reshaped the country. The country has endured a military dictatorship, seen mass
movements demanding a variety of civil, political, and economic rights, and undergone complicated and contested constitutional, legal, and political reforms. Many of its contemporary challenges stem from its explosive growth, and the struggle to adapt economic, social, and political institutions to the new realities of the country. Brazil in the twenty-first century is a country of contradictions, conflict, change, and growing global influence.

This series seeks to shed light on some of the most important contemporary issues in Brazil, and especially those that have played a big part in the recent transformation of the country. It will highlight Brazil’s history, politics, and society, and examine conflicts that have made the country what it is today. One objective of the series is to bring some of the best recent Brazilian scholarship to an English-speaking public. Brazilian universities have grown and professionalised in recent years, without a corresponding increase in works in English by Brazilian scholars.