"New commodities boom" or another financial bubble? Brazil in the twenties of the 21st Century: fictitious capital, production of space, territorialization of capital and labor relations

• Grant number: 22/11743-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2030
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Fábio Teixeira Pitta
• Grantee: Fábio Teixeira Pitta
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Allan Rodrigo de Campos Silva ; Ana Carolina Gonçalves Leite ; Antonio Thomaz Júnior ; Carlos de Almeida Toledo ; Cassio Arruda Boechat ; Daniel Manzione Giavarotti ; LIcio da Costa Raimundo ; Marcela Vecchione Gonçalves ; Marta Inez Medeiros Marques ; Raimundo Jucier Sousa de Assis ; Sergio Pereira Leite ; Sven Beckert

Abstract

This project aims to understand the transformations in the form of being of fictitious capital and its mediations with the reproduction of the Brazilian capitalist social relation - between 2015 and 2029 -, by researching the consequences of the "new commodities price boom" in the financial markets on a context of crisis of capital accumulation in Brazil today. To this end, we will observe the movement of commodity prices in international markets and their definition of present prices for the coming years, their intertwining with the creation of fictitious capital at the national level, as we search for relations between those elements and the intensive and/or extensive expansion of productive capital in the country. Thus, we shall focus on the production of space with territorialization of capital in the countryside and for urban-industrial capital, departing from selected Brazilian particular realities. In order to conclude whether the so-called "new commodities boom" will derive in a new commodities bubble or not, we will have to look into what will happen to the world of labor, its process of marginal inclusion, precarization/superexploitation and structural unemployment. At the same time, we are interested in understanding the forms of reproduction of workers in the present context, studying recent informal work, "pejotization" and platformization; and also some particularities of labor relations in the countryside, as the peasantry today and "pluriactivity". We also propose a comparison between moments of capitalist growth and crisis in historical overview, before the financialization of global and brasilian capitalism, from the 70s onwards. To accomplish that we will focus on positive and negative elements of such periods, also considering how workers, managers, capitalists, State agents and researchers comprehend those process in general. Finally, by comparing these results with theoretical explanations of "financialization"" and the crisis of capital from 2008 onwards, we intend to critically formulate on the social relation of capitalist domination as the concrete totality of the contradiction of commodity mediation in its contemporary characteristics. In order to carry out this proposal, we count on a team of transdisciplinary researchers (coming from academic institutions from different parts of the country and from the USA), which will constitute a Research Center on Fictitious Capital (NPCF) and will be the basis for the formation of a study group to review the bibliography, to carry out field work, to organize seminars and written publications, throughout the years of research (2025-2029). The realization of this Project will happen as a new research field at the elected Host Institution. That Center (NPCF) will make its results available in an online site and will participate in the teaching of mini-courses, lectures, international seminars and graduate courses, submitting them to the scrutiny of the scientific community and disseminating them with papers, thus covering teaching, research and academic extension while we deploy the present research project. (AU)