Jeff Garmany & Anthony Pereira (eds.) Understanding Contemporary Brazil

Abstract

In Understanding Contemporary Brazil, Jeff Garmany and Anthony W. Pereira have compiled a welcome and distinctly post-modern synthesis of contemporary scholarship on Brazil. So, how does one understand contemporary Brazil? Garmany and Pereira, both based at King’s Brazil Institute, King’s College London (Pereira as Director and Garmany as Senior Lecturer) are quick to point out that their goal was not to describe current events but to explain the social contexts that give rise to the Brazil we see today and to anchor their university reading lists in a single text. Readers will find a toolkit to analyse social, cultural, political and economic issues, and an extensive bibliography of Brazilian and non-Brazilian scholars, many of whom have been put into conversation with each other for the first time. These references alone provide an excellent starting point for future researchers and students but still point to the enormity of understanding any country and the main discourses surrounding any national issue.

Keywords

• Brazil
• Politics
• Economics
• Culture
• National Identity and Nation Building
• Political Structure and Government