Charles H. Wood - Böcker

Based on 15 years of research in Brazil, this book is an interdisciplinary documentation and analysis of the process of frontier change in one region of the Brazilian Amazon, the southern region of the state of Para. The authors' analysis was based on the idea that what they documented in the field - deforestation, settlement patterns, and the intensity of rural violence, for example - were the outcomes of the competition for resources among social groups capable of mobilizing varying degrees of power. The analysis of these contests illustrates how national and international factors often shaped events at the local level, thereby propelling the story of frontier expansion in different and unexpected directions. Part One focuses on Amazonia as a whole. The authors review the history of the region, and analyze the federal and state policies that set into motion the contemporary process of frontier expansion. In parts Two and Three, they present the results of their empirical work on the evolution of frontier communities in southern Para. Each local history develops the general themes put forth in the first section.The final chapter brings the text back to larger issues of understanding such frontier change, especially in light of the country's anthropological, sociological, and demographic shifts and collisions.

Understanding development in Latin America today requires both an awareness of the major political and economic changes that have produced a new agenda for social policy in the region and an appreciation of the need to devise better conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing the social impact of these changes. Using as a reference point the issues and theories that dominated social science research on Latin America in the period 1960–80, this volume contributes to “rethinking development” by examining the historical events that accounted for the erosion or demise of once-dominant paradigms and by assessing the new directions of research that have emerged in their place.Following the editors’ overview of the new conceptual and social agendas in their Introduction, the book proceeds with a review of previous broad conceptual approaches by Alejandro Portes, who emphasizes by contrast the advantages of newer “middle-range” theories. Subsequent chapters focus on changes in different arenas and the concepts and methods used to interpret them: “Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Social Policy”; “Citizenship, Politics, and the State”; “Work, Families, and Reproduction”; and “Urban Settlements, Marginality, and Social Exclusion.” Contributors, besides the editors, are Marina Ariza and Orlandina de Oliveira, Diane Davis, Vilmar Faria, Joe Foweraker, Elizabeth Jelin, Alejandro Portes, Joe Potter and Rudolfo Tuirán, Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz, Osvaldo Sunkel, and Peter Ward.

This book examines how transformations in Brazil's social, economic and political organization affect the demographic behaviour of people who live in different parts of the country and who occupy different positions in the social system. The authors review the history of unequal development and document the concentration of income and land ownership. Using data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses, they show how the Brazilian style of economic growth unequally affected different population subgroups. Mortality estimates for white and non-white people measure the consequences of racial inequality on the life chances of children. Other chapters investigate rural out-migration, the impact of Amazon colonization schemes on rural poverty, and the implications of differential rates of population growth among rich and poor households for future patterns of inequality and underemployment. The overall perspective places the concept of inequality at the centre of the study of demographic and structural change.