Understanding Polarization in Brazil

This Open access book explores the connections between everyday life, institutional politics, and social hierarchies that underlie the disputes between progressive forces and the radical right. It studies the case of Brazil, which is especially suggestive, given the particular combination of political choices and variables of class, gender, race, region and religion as well as the different transitions in a short period of time. The book's central thesis is that political choices reflect the potential of different political discourses—whether from the left or the (extreme) right—to articulate sufferings, anxieties, and expectations generated by shifts in peoples’ intersectional situation. Starting from this perspective, it studies how both institutional politics and real and virtual everyday spaces have been transformed into arenas where those who have lost or fear losing privileges and positions confront those who have gained or hope to gain new rights and standing within existing hierarchies. The book combines timely themes and approaches: critical research on social inequalities, relations between capitalism and democracy, political activism. Politically, it presents a comprehensive diagnosis of the advance of the far right and can contribute to nurturing progressive strategies to react to these threats. Although based on cutting-edge theoretical debates, the book is written in easily accessible language that can be understood by a broad readership.

Prof. Dr. Sérgio Costa is Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Latin American Studies and the the Institute of Sociology of the Freie Universität Berlin. Trained in economics and sociology in Brazil and Germany, he also chairs the M.S. Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila) and serves as a Principal Investigator in different joint research projects, including the DFG Research Unity Collaborations and the DFG International Research Training Group (IRTG) Temporalities of Future. His research focuses on social inequalities, democratic theory, racism and anti-racism, conviviality studies, and postcolonial theory. He has published 7 monographs (some of them appeared in different languages including English, Portuguese, German, and Spanish), several edited volumes and more than 130 academic articles and chapters.