Politics and social classes in neoliberal capitalism

• Grant number: 08/57112-7
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2010
• End date: April 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science
• Principal Investigator: Armando Boito Júnior
• Grantee: Armando Boito Júnior
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Leda Maria Paulani ; Maria Orlanda Pinassi
• Associated research grant(s): 15/06404-1 - COLLECTION: dimensions of developmentalist misery: Brazil and Latin America, PUB.LVR.BR; 13/50490-4 - Neodevelopment project at Argentina and Brazil: comparative study of it's history, contraditions and limits, AP.R
• Associated scholarship(s): 11/22995-9 - The funding policy of BNDES to the brasilian bourgeoisie, BP.DR; 11/23106-3 - Does the "new Brazilian middle class" go to heaven?, BP.PD; 11/04366-4 - Unemployment and the unemployed workers organization in Brazil: CUT-SPs and MST-SPs politics during Lula government, BP.MS

Abstract

This research project analyses the political process and social conflicts during the period of the neoliberal capitalist model in Brazil and the social and politics positions that different sectors of Brazilian society assumed in the country's new economic and power structure. The hypothesis of this study is that the Brazilian political process should be analyzed, principally, as a result of class conflict in the context of a dependent industrializing country, which had undergone transition from a military to a democratic regime. This project will take into consideration: the power block- made up by different sections of the Brazilian bourgeois and foreign capital present in the country's economy; as well as the working classes - the middles classes, factory workers, rural workers, and the faction of urban marginalized working masses that as a group has undergone significant growth since the implantation of neoliberals. The analysis of the power block will contemplate the complex relationships between different fractions of the capitalist class and the political economy of the State, and the political regime in power. The analysis of the working classes will be mainly made through analyzing social movements and their relationships with the State, and the social policy of successive governments in the period of the neoliberal capitalist model - working class trade unionism, trade unionism of the middle class, the student movement, anti-globalization movement, the struggle by poor rural workers for land and by small-scale farmers for price guarantees, technical assistance, and access to finance, and the urgency of social movements of unemployed workers and members of a marginalized mass for employment and housing. The objective of this research is to characterize the new and complex social scene, made-up of class political relationships, configured in Brazil during the neoliberal period. (AU)