Formation of the intellectual field and the culture industry in contemporary Brazil

• Grant number: 08/55377-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Duration: March 01, 2009 - February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Sergio Miceli Pessoa de Barros
• Grantee: Sergio Miceli Pessoa de Barros
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Lilia Katri Moritz Schwarcz ; Marcelo Siqueira Ridenti ; Maria Arminda Do Nascimento Arruda
• Associated scholarship(s): 12/16907-2 - Around São Paulo: narratives of the city and of violence through three recent movies, BP.MS; 12/05268-9 - Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo ...: at the time of Cinema Novo, a Sao Paulo´s cinema at an "in-between" place, BP.DR; 11/14323-0 - The transition to democracy and television drama in Brazil: the series of the Globo television broadcasting (1982-1992), BP.DR; + associated scholarships 10/03289-3 - Maids and media: cultural consumption and social representations, BP.MS; 09/13012-1 - Mazzaropi: the states of the brazilian cinematographic field in the decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, BP.MS; 09/04093-8 - Cinema and society: about the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, BP.MS; 09/11414-5 - Whirling among princesses: gender outlines and performances in an ethnography with children, BP.MS; 09/11861-1 - Lateness of the avant-guard or avant-guard of the lateness? Oswald de Andrade and the stubborn destinies of Brazil, BP.MS; 09/17595-1 - The representations of nation on Chico Buarque's and Caetano Veloso´s songs: from popular-national to globalization., BP.DR; 09/03378-9 - Rubem Braga and the weekly Comício: city, politics and press in the 1950's, BP.MS - associated scholarships

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate some of the decisive transformations marking the social history of Brazilian culture, exploring an original conf1uence of topics in the process. By pursuing a critical history of Brazilian culture from the 19th century to the present, the project looks to identify the connections between the surges in highbrow cultural production and the parallel expansions of dynamic sectors of the culture industry. In other words, the study proposes to examine the interplay between, on one hand, the shaping of intellectuals during the Imperial period, travel literature, social fiction, communist intellectuals, dramaturgy, and the literary and artistic avant-garde, and, on the other, changes in the press and publishing sectors and in the country's audiovisual media. In this way, the project seeks to understand the conditions determining the autonomization of Brazil 's field of cultural production, based on a selective analysis of key moments in this history, highlighting the interaction between the trends and languages instilled in the media by intellectuals and artists during specific historical periods and, conversely, transformations in the culture industry that imposed particular forms and meanings on the work of cultural producers. Cultural life is examined by focusing on the universe in which these producers - writers, artists, specialized professionals _ were socialized, examining in particular their connections with the spaces occupied by the ruling class. Other crucial dimensions of the analysis include the institutional frameworks of the media in question, the recruitment and careers of agents in the cultural sphere, the f1uid market in cultural goods, and the demands posed by Brazil's diverse range of consumer sectors. The project's objective is reconstitute the social processes shaping Brazilian cultural life, investigating them through empirical analyses that bring to light the multi pie determinations behind these experiences. The intention is to show the convergences between highbrow culture and the culture industry _ between intellectual production and the country's commercial media - by revealing how intellectual or artistic projects and the structural conditions that make them possible are inextricably connected. Shifting viewpoint between these domains of activity will provide original and unusual insights into Brazilian cultural production. (AU)