Large consulting firms in the corporate use of Brazilian territory: from global information circles to participation in privatization policy (2016-2023)

• Grant number: 22/10866-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2022
• End date: January 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Adriana Maria Bernardes da Silva
• Grantee: Thais Hayashi Vaz de Arruda
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research project seeks to contribute to the investigation of the uses of Brazilian territory from the production and circulation of information, focusing on the study of large consultancies, firms that have been increasingly hired by transnational private actors and state bureaucracies, which have started to incorporate principles of the management of private companies. In Brazil, large consultancies have intensified their power in the territory by participating in the National Privatization Program (PND) which, since 2016, has been integrated into the Partnership and Investment Program (PPI). The research project seeks to study the participation of large consultancies in the federal privatization policy from the year 2016, a period that, so far, comprises two governments (Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro) that deepened neoliberalism in Brazil. We also tried to analyze the concentrated topology of these firms in the city of São Paulo and the role of the metropolis as a territorial management center. In addition, we seek to understand the political struggle around privatizations, which includes both the role of information used by consultancies to attribute rationality to the reforms they propose, as well as resistance and other proposals on the part of society aimed at more solidary uses of the territory.