The Estudos Avançados Journal
IEA's journal seeks to fulfill one of the objectives of the institute: to combine academic research and interest in the improvement of the public policies. The areas of scientific knowledge included in the issues (116 so far) are directly articulated with essential themes of the Brazilian and world societies, as poverty, malnutrition, and the public health system. Some highlights of the latest release can be found below.
Estudos Avançados #116
At a time when the government of the United States of America is debating whether to classify the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) as narcoterrorist organizations, something that could give rise to violations of Brazilian sovereignty, issue 116 of IEA's journal Estudos Avançados opens its dossier "Violence, Pain, and Suffering" with an analysis of the inadequacy of this classification.
The collection of texts also discusses how the prison system fosters links connecting the PCC to independent gangs that commit violent property crimes. While remaining within the realm of public security, another article analyzes how disputes between groups within the police forces hinder substantial reforms in this area.
But this first section is not limited to analyzing the actions and characteristics of criminal organizations and police institutions. Sociologist Sérgio Adorno, editor of the publication, emphasizes that in addition to the usual forms of violence associated with delinquency and crimes against persons and property, "the globalized world has experienced an exacerbation of conflicts in social and interpersonal relations, in the public sphere and in private life, in relations between citizens and in politics." This is the reason for the thematic breadth of the content.
Organized Crime
Francisco Thiago Rocha Vasconcelos and Ricardo Moura Braga Cavalcante, both affiliated to the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), are the authors of the article "Narcoterrorism and the Narco-State: Genealogies, Political Uses, and Analytical Risks in Face of Criminal Factions in Brazil." They argue that the definition of narcoterrorism operates primarily as a rhetorical and geopolitical category, "lacking analytical consistency." According to them, the Brazilian case demonstrates how criminal groups produce forms of armed governance that are not to be confused with terrorism, requiring analytical distinctions between expressive violence, institutional capture, and illicit markets.
Labeling criminal factions as "terrorists" erases their social base and their economic character, "replacing the analysis with a grammar of war that authorizes exceptional policies," they argue.
Regarding the narco-state, the authors consider that the term can be useful to describe dynamics of institutional capture linked to illicit economies, "provided that they are used critically, avoiding generalizations that reinforce tutelage over peripheral countries." In the Brazilian case, the researchers assess that the dynamics involve less vertical captures of institutions, rather more capillary and fragmented infiltrations of illicit activities through "combinations of strategic omission, localized corruption, and immediate political interests."
The relationship between the PCC and violent property crimes, specifically large-scale robberies of financial institutions in various cities across the country, is analyzed in an article by sociologist Leonardo José Ostronoff, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). These robberies constituted what police jargon and the media began to call novo cangaço or "city takeover."
Through the examination of documents, interviews, and bibliography, Ostronoff analyzes the process that, starting from the novo cangaço, typical of small towns, led to the "domination of cities," which affects medium and large cities and involves larger groups, explosives, and more powerful firepower. The fieldwork has focused on Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian State of Paraná.
The conclusion is that these crimes are not institutionally organized by the PCC. Instead, they are operations carried out by independent individuals, although some members of the faction are involved. The relationships between these criminals and the faction stem from its control over the prison system. The networks formed within the prisons facilitate the recruitment of criminals specialized in the tasks required by the operations, as well as the loan of weapons and access to explosives, explains the author.
Still in the field of public security, Julia Maia Goldani, a researcher at the São Paulo Law School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), writes about the institutional dynamics that "undermine democratic reforms in the military police of post-1988 Brazil." She sees a gap in the understanding of the mechanisms that foster police resistance to institutional change.
To discuss this gap, Goldani analyzes what happened with a 2013 proposal for a constitutional amendment whose objective was a structural reform, as well as with the implementation of the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) in Rio de Janeiro, an example of incremental reform.
Regarding the proposal, she comments that the actions of the leadership of associations representing different police categories resulted in a political impasse in the National Congress. The Brazilian Presidency did not interfere in order to avoid the political cost of the initiative, and the result was the abandonment of the proposal. Furthermore, the gradual implementation of democratic policing through the UPPs "clashed with the interests of other groups within the corporation, who disagreed with the proposed vision of public security or perceived the paradigm shift as a threat to their positions and perspectives within the organization."
Philosophy
The dossier includes two translations accompanied by introductions from the translators: "Suffering is Not Pain," by French philosopher Paul Ricœur (1912-2005), translated by Caroline Fanizzi and José Sérgio Fonseca de Carvalho, both professors at the School of Education at the University of São Paulo (FE/USP), and "Invisibility: On the Epistemology of 'Recognition'," by Axel Honneth, translated by Arthur Meucci, from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV).
Ricœur's original text was presented at a colloquium of the French Psychiatric Association in January, 1992. According to the translators, the philosopher adopts suffering arising from the diminished power to act as the hypothesis of his work.
Honneth proposes an epistemological reformulation of the theory of recognition based on the analysis of social invisibility, inspired by Ralph Ellison's novel "Invisible Man." For Honneth, invisibility does not refer to literal perceptual absence, but to a symbolic form of disrespect: the act of "looking through" the other denies them recognition as a valid moral and social subject.
Literature and Music
The portrayal of violence in artistic works such as short stories and songs, and even how it has been facilitated by digital media, are the themes of three articles of issue 116. In her analysis of the short story collection Insubmissas Lágrimas de Mulheres ("Unsubmissive Tears of Women"), by Conceição Evaristo, Ianá de Souza Pereira, from the Paulista University (UNIP), points out that the work must be understood from the perspective of socio-economic, racial, and patriarchal structures that explain the social place assigned to Black women in capitalist societies. In the book, it is the women who communicate and reflect on the experience of being Black within the patriarchy of white supremacy and capitalism. The objective of the article is to compose a critical analysis of the racism and patriarchy exposed by Evaristo's text.
Adriano de Paula Rabelo, from the Kazan Federal University, compares how a song from the United States of America and a Brazilian song address a specific type of urban violence: state agents and other individuals murdering young people driven to crime by social inequalities. The chosen songs are "In the Ghetto," by Mac Davis and recorded by Elvis Presley in 1969, and O Meu Guri, by Chico Buarque, recorded in 1981.
A new form of violence against women has emerged with the digital world: erotic websites. In the article A Dialética do Visível e do Oculto na Cibercultura ("The Dialectic of the Visible and the Hidden in Cyberculture"), Priscila Gonçalves Magossi, a PhD in Communication and Culture, points out that "the results reveal an architecture of global impunity sustained by illegitimate contracts and fake news that appropriate progressive agendas." According to the author, the masterminds of this underworld operate in a total legal vacuum, imposing clauses that silence victims and violate fundamental rights. Combating this requires transnational regulation, critical media literacy, and public policies that prioritize human rights, she says.
History
The scars of the brutal violence experienced by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States of America in 1945 are analyzed in a text by Cristiane Izumi Nakagawa, a psychoanalyst with a doctorate in psychology from USP's Institute of Psychology (IP). The work is based on an interview the author conducted with Keiko Ogura, a hibakusha, as those who survived the aforementioned bombs are called. The objective was to perform a psychological examination of the testimonies of these survivors, paying special attention to two fundamental psychological phenomena for understanding these memories: trauma and the feeling of guilt for actions or omissions that caused suffering to others.
But violence also raises discussions about institutional and public stances toward it. This is explored in an article about research and technical work developed through a partnership between the Department of Pathology and Legal Medicine, linked to the School of Medicine (FM), and the Institute of Biosciences (IB), both at USP, on the severed heads of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva (1897-1938), known as Lampião, and Maria Gomes de Oliveira (1910-1938), known as Maria Bonita. The researchers' approach was based on historiographical review and qualitative analysis of historical documents, interviews, and news reports. "This methodology allowed us to explore the narratives surrounding the consumption of tragedy and the controversies surrounding the preservation and exhibition of these vestiges, contributing to more in-depth discussions about memory, identity, and museological practices," the authors state.
Sociology
Three other texts in this issue comprise a mini-dossier dedicated to sociology, with proposals for its evolution, a debate on the role of classical authors in sociological discourse, and an essay on the book A Revolução Burguesa no Brasil ("The Bourgeois Revolution in Brazil: An Essay on Sociological Interpretation"), by Florestan Fernandes.
According to Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, from the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), given the accelerated changes in the contemporary world, "we are led to believe that our mission is to provide answers to the problems that afflict us from the everyday sphere, including the most distant and even the unknown ones." Her article "Towards a Provocative Sociology (of Responses)" is based on a lecture she gave at the 22nd Brazilian Congress of Sociology in July, 2025. The objective of the work, she states, "is to contribute to a sociology that provokes answers, in which sociological practice is in a constant process of critical and self-critical dialogue with the theories and methods adopted, and the points of observation of social reality are not taken as fixed and deterministic, but as moving and probabilistic."
What role is reserved for classical authors in the face of the need for transformation in sociology advocated by Silva? This is the subject of the text "What Should Be Done with the Classics of Sociology? Diagnosis and Prognosis," by Carlos Eduardo Sell, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). He examines the transformation of the role of these authors, highlighting the epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical implications of this. Sell identifies the emergence of a new discursive regime (negative heuristics) and a diffuse consensus that shapes the contemporary scientific ethos. In the second part of the article, he proposes a positive heuristics for reflection and teaching of sociological theory.
The section concludes with a text on the current importance of a classic book by one of the leading figures in Brazilian sociology: Florestan Fernandes. In 2025, his aforementioned book celebrated 50 years since its first edition. The authors of the article are André Botelho and Antonio Brasil Jr., both from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). They say that Fernandes's work is more relevant than ever, be it from a theoretical standpoint, which can be seen in the conception, the structure of the text, and the critical analysis forged from a unique sociological approach, or from a political perspective on the spirals of democracy in Brazil and the world.
Reviews
The final part of the publication features articles about the books Des Électeurs Ordinaires: Enquête sur la Normalization de l’Extrême Droite ("Ordinary Voters: An Investigation into the Normalization of the Far Right"), by Félicien Faury; Permanecer Bárbaro: Não Brancos contra o Império ("In Defence of Barbarism: Non-Whites Against the Empire"), by Louisa Yousfi; História da América Latina em 100 Fotografias ("History of Latin America in 100 Photographs"), by Paulo Antonio Paranaguá; and Razão Desumana: Cultura e Informação na Era da Desinformação Inculta (e Sedutora) ("Inhuman Reason: Culture and Information in the Era of Uncultivated [and Seductive] Disinformation"), by Eugênio Bucci.