Becker and Egler examine and review the process of Brazil's entry into the capitalist world-economy. They trace this development from the country's origins as a Portuguese colony to its status as a regional power in Latin America and the eighth-largest world economy.
Myths and misconceptions about Brazil, the world's fifth largest and most populous country, are long-standing. Far from a sleeping giant, Brazil is the southern hemisphere's most important country. Entering its second decade of civilian constitutional government after a protracted period of military rule, it has also recently achieved sustained economic growth. Nevertheless, the nation's population of 157 million is divided by huge inequities in income and education, which are largely correlated with race, and crime rates have spiraled as a result of conflicts over land and resources. Ronald Schneider, a close observer of Brazilian society and politics for many decades, provides a comprehensive multidimensional portrait of this, Latin America's most complex country. He begins with an insightful description of its diverse regions and then analyzes the historical processes of Brazil's development from the European encounter in 1500 to independence in 1822, the middle-class revolution in 1930, the military takeover in 1964, and the return to democracy after 1984. Schneider goes on to offer a detailed treatment of contemporary government and politics, including the 1994 elections. His closing chapters analyze the economy and society, and explore Brazil's rich cultural heritage and assess Brazil's place in the international arena.
The book analyzes the elite-led efforts to transform the Brazilian legal order in the period between 1930–1975 and how U.S. Power played a major role in such a process. Besides the global circulation of ideas, the book discusses the Brazilian institutional development in the period. A profound "Crisis of Civilization" marked the first decades of the century: the references of space and time vanished with the vertiginous expansion of cities and industries, while a myriad of immigrants and former slaves were alleged to be threatening the country’s traditions. Brazilian elites blamed liberalism for such a "Crisis". Based on a decade of research, this book centralizes Brazilian history in liberalism and offers a genealogy of the jurisprudential and institutional struggles to correct the culture of laissez-faire. Using archival sources, it shows the direct U.S. influence on Brazilian thought and development. Recasting the history of legal ideas in the 20th century and providing novel interpretations on major political processes, it offers a rigorous and fresh look at the development of liberalism in the country. Covering five decades of history and offering a transnational approach involving the U.S. hegemonic role in Brazil, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of law, U.S. foreign policy, area studies and international relations.
The Right Place explains why firms succeed in one country and fail in another, irrespective of their inner drivers, and suggests potential initiatives that governments can take to help the private sector create jobs and, consequently, make their countries more prosperous. The competitiveness race is not unlike a cycling race. If you want to ride fast, you need three things: a good bike, to be in good shape, and a smooth and fast road. In a collaborative model, you might say the business is the bicycle, the business leader is the cyclist, and the road is the government and the external environment. The responsibility of a government is to design and build the best possible road. It turns out that when the road is good, good cyclists suddenly appear and want to race on it. In this book, competition and macroeconomics expert, Arturo Bris, provides the analysis of country competitive performance based on 30 years advising countries on this topic. The typical mistakes that countries make are revealed and the pillars necessary in building a competitive economy: economic performance as a necessary condition for prosperity; government efficiency, so the public sector can create the conditions for a productive economy; business efficiency, so companies can create jobs; and infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, so businesses and individuals can operate efficiently. With contemporary case studies throughout, the book provides an illuminating read for politicians, business leaders and students of macroeconomics.
Brazil is considered one of the world’s most important environmental powers. With a continental territory containing almost 70 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, along with a rich biodiversity and huge amount of natural resources, its geopolitical role in environmental decisions is crucial to ongoing global negotiations surrounding climate change. Development policies based on extraction and exportation of raw materials by the mining and agribusiness sectors threaten the global environmental balance and the long-term sustainability of Brazil’s economy. Brazil in the Anthropocene examines Brazil's role within the global ecological crisis and considers how national and international policy is influenced by the interdependence of social, political, ethical, scientific and economic factors in the modern age. With chapters from a diverse range of international scholars this interdisciplinary volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, environmental sociology and the environmental humanities.
The book is an innovative compilation of papers that explore the relationship between cultural features and entrepreneurship. The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The contributions to this edited volume deal with the foundations of entrepreneurship and with the effects of different cultural settings on the incidence and success of entrepreneurs. Topics are individual decision making in a cultural context, regional aspects of entrepreneurship, cross-country differences, and the influence of culture on entrepreneurial activity.
A modern textbook on industrial geography that systematically explores the location dynamics of factories, firms and production systems within the context of the problem of industrial transformation. The most comprehensive treatment of contemporary industrial geography, including new approaches to factory location and the geography of the firm, and discussions of industrial districts, flexible specialisation, restructuring, truncated economies and de-industrialization Adopts a clear but elegant structure in which the factory, the firm and the production system, provide related and progressively complex building blocks Well written and clearly illustrated with case studies and examples from all over the world which explicitly integrate the geographical and organizational dimensions of industrial change The Dynamics of Industrial Location is a cornerstone text for the teaching of economic geography which effectively incorporates the results of the transformation of manufacturing in the past decade, the impact of de-industrialization, post-Fordism and the globalization of production in a way that previous textbooks were unable to do. Policy issues are addressed throughout the book. Roger Hayter has written a modern text that is the first student level treatment of ?new industrial spaces?. He brings together the conceptual idea and the empirical example. The book brims with interesting real world illustrations, along with insightful applications of theory. This is quite simply the first choice adoptable textbook for second (and upper) level industrial geography courses. It will also be of considerable relevance for regional, community and environmental planners and for students in urban studies, business and regional economics.
Nearly every country that produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bellwether for innovation in employment conditions. In this book, industrial relations experts from eleven countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive.The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized, how workers and managers interact, the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies, and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself.
This book employs a political ecology lens to unravel how industrial crops catalyse ecological, agrarian, socioeconomic, and institutional transformation. Using the conceptual tools and perspectives of political ecology, namely multi-scalar analysis and attention to marginalisation, social difference, and discourses and narratives, this volume provides a critical and comprehensive assessment of the transformative power of industrial cropping systems. It presents a truly international overview by drawing on a range of case studies from the global South, including soybeans in South America, cashew nuts in Guinea Bissau, cotton in India, maize in China, jatropha in Ghana, sugarcane in Peru and Eswatini, and oil palm in Ghana and Peru. The unique case studies are put into perspective with chapters introducing the key concepts of political ecology and critical dimensions of industrial cropping systems related to large-scale land acquisitions, land grabbing, and marginal land. The individual chapters employ different approaches all rooted in political ecology, thus offering a rich overview of how the field engages with such cropping systems. Overall, this volume contains valuable propositions for improving current policies and practices in industrial crop settings in both developed and developing countries. Through its comprehensive and interdisciplinary outlook, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political ecology, agrarian studies, development studies, and ecological economics.