Basic education has been one of IEA's priority topics since the early 1990s and has become increasingly prominent on the Institute's agenda as evidenced by the existence of three chairs currently dedicated to it. This focus is also reflected in the recurrence of related material in the journal Estudos Avançados, which now features one of the most comprehensive collections of articles on the subject ever presented by the publication.

Assessment Systems

Sociologist Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, holder of the Ayrton Senna Institute Chair for Innovation in Educational Assessment, based at IEA's Ribeirão Preto Center (IEA-RP), is one of the authors of the dossier "Basic Education," participating with a summary of some of the main trends in innovations introduced in international large-scale educational assessment systems, considering the need to improve Brazilian systems, according to her.

She believes it is crucial to improve the Basic Education Assessment System (SAEB) and the National High School Exam (ENEM), aligning them with the curricular changes implemented by the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). Her article also examines the expansion of educational assessment research centers in Brazil and the excellence of research, providing telling evidence to inform national assessments and update the country's public education policy agendas.

The researcher says that the SAEB has undergone significant improvements that have increased its capacity for monitoring and assessing learning in Brazil since its creation in 1990, "but it has not introduced conceptual and methodological changes in the last 20 years." On the other hand, the BNCC requires profound changes in the assessments conducted by both SAEB and ENEM, "so that the tests assess the competencies and skills expected throughout basic education as well as new formats, concepts, and methodologies for large-scale assessments aligned with technological advances such as observed in international assessments."

She emphasizes that the consequences of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic still persist. Only 56% of children were literate at the appropriate age in December 2023, according to data released by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in 2024.

Data from the 2021 SAEB, conducted during the aforementioned pandemic and released in September 2022, confirm this impact: "Only 31% of high school students in public schools demonstrated adequate Portuguese language proficiency and 5% demonstrated adequate mathematics proficiency. Unfortunately, the performance was no better than in previous years. The vast majority of children finish fifth grade unable to read simple sentences, unable to recognize distinct opinions on the same subject, unable to convert more than a full hour into minutes, or unable to recognize that a number remains unchanged when multiplied by 1."

The sociologist states that data from the SAEB and Brazil's results in international assessments show that even before the pandemic most Brazilian schools were unable to offer the necessary learning for students to reach adequate proficiency levels.

For her, any future agenda for basic education must begin with a clear diagnosis to propose policies to overcome inequalities and improve learning. Brazil is competent to carry out this diagnosis, she states, as it "has numerous research centers and high-level experts in the area of ​​assessment and curriculum who produce studies and scientific evidence to improve large-scale assessment systems in the country."

Inequality between Schools

Several of the articles in Estudos Avançados #115 present examples of the expertise of Brazilian scholars in providing diagnostics in the area of ​​learning assessment. This is the case of the collaboration between the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair, also based at the IEA-RP, and the municipal administrations of Cubatão and Taquaritinga, two cities in the state of São Paulo. Chair holder Mozart Neves Ramos and his team have analyzed the performance inequality of municipal schools in both locations before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis has considered five educational indicators for elementary school students in 2019: adequate learning in Portuguese and mathematics, school performance (pass rate), student performance on standardized assessments, and age-to-grade distortion. Only the last indicator is not one of the components considered in calculating the Brazilian Basic Education Development Index (IDEB).

The authors explain that the percentage of students with adequate learning corresponds to the proportion of students who have achieved academic proficiency above a certain number of points on the SAEB scale when compared to the total number of students assessed. This represents achieving a performance equal to or higher than 200 points in Portuguese and 225 points in mathematics for the fifth grade of elementary school. The standardized score, in turn, corresponds to the average score obtained by students on the SAEB's Portuguese and mathematics exams. School flow is the average pass rate of students at each stage of schooling, calculated by dividing the total number of students who have been approved by the total number of students enrolled in each grade. The age-to-grade distortion rate is defined as the proportion of students who have accumulated two or more years of academic delay, in line with data from the Brazilian School Census for a given year.

According to the researchers, the work shows that the use of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) integrated into the construction of school georeferencing maps can be useful for managers and staff in understanding existing inequalities in school performance.

The analysis has revealed that the percentage of students with adequate Portuguese and mathematics proficiency are the most important factors explaining the variance in the data collected. The study recommends the adoption of specific measures to mitigate educational inequalities, including interventions to reinforce Portuguese and mathematics proficiency and targeted actions to support municipalities with high age-to-grade distortion rates.

Ramos and his team, however, recognize that the study has limitations, as the PCA is an exploratory technique and does not establish causal relationships between the analyzed variables, in addition to not fully portraying the range of factors that influence academic performance.

Reformulation

The need to reformulate the SAEB, advocated by Guimarães de Castro in her article, has been analyzed by researchers from the São Paulo School of Economics at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EESP-FGV) and the Brazilian Industrial Social Services (SESI). The group conducted a systematic review of documents, interviews with experts, and an analysis of academic presentations. The study has identified the main consensuses and divergences regarding the objectives, format, structure, and governance of the new SAEB. The results indicate broad agreement on the need to update the assessment matrices to align them with the BNCC, but reveal disagreements regarding the scope of this update and the methods for implementing it. The authors state that, despite the extensive debate, there is a lack of practical actions and convergence between the different visions for the effective reformulation of the SAEB.

However, this alignment of assessment matrices with the BNCC must consider changes to the Brazilian Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB), which guides the BNCC. Eduardo Deschamps, from the Regional University of Blumenau (FURB), explains that the 2017 high school assessments presented a worrying scenario in terms of learning in addition to a high dropout rate. These results have been attributed to problems in the curricula, which were aimed at preparing students for higher education even though 80% of students did not pursue this path. Given this situation, he states, Law No. 13.415/2017 inserted competency development, interdisciplinarity, curricular flexibility, greater coordination with vocational education, and full-time training into the curricula. Nonetheless, before the reforms were completed, the Ministry of Education proposed changes that resulted in Law No. 14.495/2024, Deschamps emphasizes. In the article, he discusses both the principles of the 2017 law and the impacts of the 2024 law on the way secondary education is offered in Brazil.

The set of articles also presents a pointed critique of the BNCC regarding the limited space given to literature, using the concept of "non-place" as a reference. The authors, who are members of institutions in the state of Tocantins, describe an environment where utilitarianism and transience prevail, existing as a physical structure but lacking identity construction or relational and/or historical value. For them, by confining literature to the "literary non-place," making "empty, controversial, and sometimes impractical recommendations for the artistic-literary field," the BNCC acts to deplete access to literature in the educational sphere and "contributes to covertly directing it toward market utility and other neoliberal ideals."

It is also important to consider the importance of expanding the focus of educational assessments beyond academic performance, incorporating other aspects of the students' comprehensive development, as advocated in an article by researchers from several universities and the Ayrton Senna Institute. They clarify that this is a guideline of the BNCC in accordance with the LDB. Contributing to this process, the authors propose an assessment protocol for the ten general competencies listed in the BNCC, intended for application in empirical research and educational diagnostics.

While improving assessments aims to provide substantive support for actions that promote improved learning levels in elementary schools, it is crucial to address current problems. Researchers from the Center for Public Policy and Education Assessment Foundation (CAEd), a support institution for the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), have contributed to the journal with an article on the challenges of implementing learning recovery policies in Brazil in the post-pandemic context, focusing on student regrouping and formative assessment.

The discussion draws on the concept of learning reorganization and 2022-2023 research data from the CAEd and IMAGO Global Grassroots in partnership with the municipal education system of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, to address the strategy of regrouping students based on learning levels. Case studies from schools in different regions of Brazil have also been considered. The researchers believe that the regrouping should take the specificities and contexts of education systems and their schools into account. At the same time, they consider formative assessment to be an indispensable tool for any action aimed at overcoming learning gaps.

Early Childhood Education

The latest issue of Estudos Avançados focuses on more than just elementary and secondary education. Two articles specifically center on early childhood education (ages 0 to 3). Two researchers from USP's Laboratory of Studies and Research in Education and Social Economy (LEPES) have addressed the challenges of this educational stage in Brazil and the importance of national quality standards. In October 2024, the National Board of Education (CNE) and the Basic Education Chamber (CEB) issued a resolution establishing the National Operational Guidelines for Quality and Equity for Early Childhood Education in Brazil. However, according to the authors, challenges remain to be overcome, such as the quality of early childhood education, the low political priority given to daycare, the impact of partnerships on service quality, and the need for intersectoral coordination to ensure comprehensive early childhood care.

Another study, authored by researchers at Fucape Business School, emphasizes that promoting equitable access to early childhood education is an effective public management strategy that requires priority on government agendas to achieve educational goals. The conclusion stems from an analysis that has found a positive correlation between enrollment in early childhood education and student performance at the end of the fifth grade considering data from the 2019 SAEB.

Diversity and Inclusion

Other topics covered in the publication are not directly linked to assessments and curricula but are fundamental to the full educational support of children and adolescents. These include accessibility and inclusion for students with disabilities, and the recognition and appreciation of ethnic and racial diversity.

According to Ivan Cláudio Pereira Siqueira, from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), for accessibility and inclusion to be effective, people with disabilities need to be served by appropriately trained professionals, as inclusive education poses specific challenges for personalized learning. He states that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools promise to facilitate productivity, which is feasible in administrative tasks and in the production of teaching resources, but learning objectives have not yet been demonstrated in studies correlating the use of GenAI and the achievement of educational goals. This is despite the fact that available technology already allows for the development of applications for specific audiences, the challenge being the availability of data for this audience, says Siqueira. Still, he sees GenAI as a window of opportunity for personalized learning.

Researchers from the DACOR Institute, an NGO dedicated to combating racism through data systematization and knowledge dissemination, present historical insights to understand the impact of colonialism and slavery on the social constructions of Black students today. They also discuss the importance of public policies on ethnic-racial relations that allow schools to recognize and value diversity, contributing to the formation and development of a well-rounded individual.

Violence

Attention must also be paid to the impacts of harmful social factors, which manifest themselves within schools and their environment. The increase in violence and other problems affecting student coexistence is one such issue. Researchers from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the São Paulo State University (UNESP) have addressed this topic. The discussion focuses on the final grades of elementary and high school, and explores the specificities and incidence of these problems. The paper also discusses the lessons learned from research conducted by the Study and Research Group on Moral Education (GEPEM), a partnership between UNICAMP and UNESP aimed at addressing and preventing violence, and contributing to improving coexistence in schools. The essay intends to inform those responsible for programs and interventions, as well as those developing assessments and studies on the topic.

Territorial violence and its effects on student life in the city of Rio de Janeiro and a municipality in the province of Buenos Aires are the subject of two articles. A group of researchers, primarily from institutions in the state of Rio de Janeiro, have investigated the effects of territorial control by drug trafficking factions and militias on learning in the examined urban center. The authors point out that there is evidence that crime and violence undermine educational opportunities and outcomes, but the impacts of organized crime are still poorly understood. In the other article, four researchers from Argentine universities have analyzed how the web of violence affects the daily lives of low-income youth who participate in youth centers in the country's capital. They state that "to understand the complex, heterogeneous, and ambiguous nature of violence, it is necessary to offer a more measured perspective that focuses on the smaller, everyday aspects of the games that create precariousness."

Immigrants

In the field of intercultural studies, four articles analyze the schooling processes and performance of immigrant students or students of immigrant descent in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal. Lineu Norio Kohatsu, a professor at USP's Institute of Psychology (IP) and a participant in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2020, authors a paper on the academic performance of immigrant students in public schools in São Paulo. The study has indicated that immigrants have higher grade point averages and lower failure rates.

The schooling processes in the context of immigration have been characterized by two anthropologists from the University of Buenos Aires based on surveys in a locality of the capital including the engagement of a high number of Bolivians, trips to the places of origin of this population, and the collaborative experience of a radio station. The researchers have observed the strength of the allusions to community life in the places of origin and how it continues to be a parameter for life and schooling in the new place of residence.

In the case of the Spanish context, researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have collected the life stories of 50 mothers of Moroccan origin over a period of five years. The data have allowed for the identification of the strategies developed in the processes of social integration, as well as the ways of supporting the children's schooling.

A study on the performance of immigrant students in Portugal has covered both basic and higher education. Affiliated with universities in the same country, the authors advocate for the adoption of measures related to the reception and integration of immigrants and their descendants in the educational sphere, the development of intercultural education in schools, the fight against academic failure and school dropout as well as against ethnic/cultural, religious, and gender discrimination, and the strengthening of teacher training.

This issue of the journal also includes an article that addresses literacy in the Portuguese language, presenting the history of the teaching method for children and adults created by António Feliciano de Castilho in 1849 on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores, and later disseminated and implemented in other parts of Portuguese territory. Another work, this one of philosophical nature, discusses the thought of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) on educational matters. The reference is Ricoeur's article La Parole est Mon Royaume ("The Word is My Kingdom"), published in 1955. According to the authors, he considered the word shared between generations as the core of teaching.

Reviews

Historian Tania Regina de Luca, a full professor at UNESP, has written about the book Primeiro Leitor – Ensaio de Memória ("The First Reader – An Essay on Memory"), by editor Luiz Schwarcz. At the beginning of the review, de Luca states that the book analyzes issues related to the social figure, role, and actions of a publisher. Half of the chapters are dedicated to the publishing world and its characters, and the other half address deceased writers who have been important to Schwarcz and to the publishing house he founded in 1986, Companhia das Letras.

Authored by writer and journalist Hugo Almeida, the other review is about the book E Viva a Vida! – Correspondência entre os Escritores Osman Lins e Hermilo Borba Filho ("And Long Live Life! – Correspondence between Writers Osman Lins and Hermilo Borba Filho"), published by Hucitec in 2024. The work features a faithful and annotated text edition, documentary research, and an introduction by Nelson Luís Barbosa, who carried out the work during his postdoctoral research at USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB). The book brings together, analyzes, and contextualizes 201 letters, including notes and telegrams, exchanged by the two authors from the state of Pernambuco from 1965 to 1976.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Basic Education

Artificial Intelligence and Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Basic Education - Ivan Cláudio Pereira Siqueira
The Trajectory of Blacks in Basic Education: Adversities and Coping Proposals - Alexandre Dantas et al.
Regrouping Students to Recompose Learning: Brazilian Experiences - Lina Kátia Mesquita de Oliveira et al.
An Analysis of Academic Performance in the City Schools of Cubatão (SP) and Taquaritinga (SP) - Mozart Neves Ramos et al.
A Proposal for Evaluating BNCC [Common Core] General Competencies in Basic Education - Ricardo Primi et al.
Socializing and Working Together in Schools: Challenges and Possibilities - Telma P. Vinha et al.
Proposals for the new Basic Education Evaluation System (SAEB): The Current Debate - Priscilla Tavares and Mariah Morikawa
Where are High Schools Going? An Analysis of the 2017 and 2024 Legal and Regulatory Frameworks - Eduardo Deschamps
Early Childhood Education: The Discussion of the National Quality and Equity Parameters (PNQEI) Starts in the Cradle - Daniel Domingues dos Santos and Camila Martins de Souza Silva
Reflections on the Future of Educational Assessment in Brazil - Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro
The Effect of Attending Early Childhood Education on Students' Academic Performance in Brazil - Hellen Cristina Araujo Penha et al.
A Literary Non-Place: The Provisional Space of Literature in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) - Antonio Ismael Lopes de Souza et al.
"Jupiter Vibrating the Ray" in Defense of the Portuguese Method by A.F. de Castilho - Cesar Augusto Castro and Carlota Boto
A Craft Governed by Words: Paul Ricoeur, Education, and Language - Denizart Busto de Fazio et al.

Immigration, Education, and Violence

Immigrant Students in Public High Schools: Academic Performance in Question - Lineu N. Kohatsu
Schools in Bolivia and Argentina: Contributions from an Ethnographic Research, Two Trips and a Collaborative Experience - Gabriela Novaro and María Laura Diez
Invisible Educational Oversight: The Presence of Moroccan Mothers at a School in Catalonia (Spain) - Fatiha El Mouali et al.
Viewpoints and Perspectives on Education and Immigration in Portugal: From Basic to Higher Education - Maria da Conceição Pereira Ramos and Natália Ramos
State Violence and Schemes: The Daily Life of Children and Young People in Lower-Income Neighborhoods - Valeria Llobet et al.
Education under Siege: Impacts of Territorial Control by Militias and Drug-Trafficking Gangs on Academic Performance - Rogério Jerônimo Barbosa et al.

Reviews

On the Art of Editing - Tania Regina de Lucca
"And Long Live Life!": The Dialectic of Letters - Hugo Almeida

Photos by Elza Fiuza/Agência Brasil. Public domain.

Climate Negotiations

Goldemberg states that emissions increased globally by 33% between 1992 and 2022, with a 78% increase from developing countries (including China), which in 1991 were already responsible for more than 50% of the emissions. "Therefore, it is clear that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established at the 1992 Earth Summit, and the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, did not achieve the expected success," says the physicist.

He traces the climate negotiations back to a decision made at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen for developed countries to allocate US$ 100 billion annually until 2020 to meet the needs of developing countries. "Bitter discussions on this topic took place over the years and it was decided that COP29 (Baku, 2024) would be dedicated to finance and review the 2009 decision under the Paris Agreement of 2015."

The physicist highlights that at the closing session of COP29, faced with the imminent risk of failure, the president of the Conference presented a final decision "without consulting the plenary": to adopt the anual target of at least US$ 300 billion in climate finance from various public and private, bilateral, and multilateral sources, including alternative ones, until 2035. Goldemberg explains that this happened despite the fact that UNFCCC's Standing Committee on Finance estimates that US$ 5 to US$ 7 trillion (approximately US$ 455-485 billion per year) will be needed from 2022 to 2030.

He remembers that several countries questioned the COP29 decision and lamented the lack of a minimum allocation of resources for least developed countries, as well as the absence of guidelines for advancing the energy transition, in addition to arguing that China and Saudi Arabia should also contribute to climate finance.

"What we hope is that COP30, under the Brazilian presidency, will improve this situation." However, Goldemberg considers it unlikely that the anual US$ 300 billion allocated for climate finance until 2035 will increase, since "Trump's election will reduce the United States' participation in the process." Additionally, there is the impact of global inflation on the amount. "What can be improved is trying to increase the share of concessional resources that will come from public resources," he ponders, citing examples such as the Marshall Plan, created in 1948 by the USA for the European reconstruction, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), adopted in 2022, which "can actually be considered a Marshall Plan to help North American industry face the energy transition."

Nonetheless, he states that climate finance from industrialized countries to developing countries is only part of the effort to reduce emissions: "Internal actions taken by governments can play an important role depending on the right public policy choices." Among these actions, Goldemberg mentions taxes on carbon emissions or the regulation of the emissions market by setting a maximum emission level per sector (or enterprise) and the creation of a market for buying and selling carbon credits like the one created by Brazil in 2024.

Emphasis on renewable energy: a more ambitious strategy that developing countries could adopt, according to Goldemberg

A more ambitious strategy for developing countries is trying to guide their growth using more efficient technologies and renewable energy sources, the physicist adds.

In the Brazilian case, he comments that the federal government is, "at least rhetorically", taking this path through the New Growth Acceleration Program (Novo Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento/PAC), which should invest a total amount of R$ 1.7 trillion: R$ 1.3 trillion by the end of 2025 and R$ 400 billion after 2026. "Due to the economic vicissitudes the country is going through and the low investment, the implementation of the Novo PAC is occurring slowly, but still paving the way through indispensable legislative measures to attract 'green' investments."

Goldemberg concludes by saying that holding COP30 in Belém will place a greater emphasis on preserving the Amazon rainforest, even considering that Brazil's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is modest (4.43% in 2022). "The success in reducing deforestation in the Amazon and the adoption of a law creating a carbon market in Brazil, which has only occurred in a few developing countries to date, will enable us to lead the way," he says.

Sustainable Society

Physicist Paulo Artaxo, coordinator of USP's Center for Studies on Sustainability of the Amazon Rainforest, also believes that COP30 will be an opportunity for Brazil to regain global leadership on issues related to climate change. He is the author of the article "COP30 and the Worsening Climate Crisis – Pathways to Build a Sustainable Society."

Some of the strategies he cited for adapting to climate change are: improving water resource management; protecting and restoring ecosystems by conserving natural areas; developing sustainable agricultural systems by developing plant varieties more resistant to extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods; strengthening the health system to address heat-related and vector-borne diseases; disaster resilience planning with contingency plans that include community empowerment and the improvement of infrastructure to protect populations; and implementing educational programs on climate change and sustainability to increase public awareness and engagement.

However, Artaxo warns that the international landscape in which the Conference is taking place is unfavorable to the intensification of global governance. "We need to chart a course for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels, which are the root of the climate problems we face. We also need to structure policies for adapting to the new climate, particularly in the most vulnerable countries. In this task, implementing financing mechanisms is crucial so that less developed countries can implement their energy transition and adapt to the new climate."

According to him, although Brazil accounted for 4.5% of global emissions in 2023, it is not yet among the countries that price greenhouse gas emissions. "This creates difficulties in implementing regulatory policies for the so-called carbon market."

Artaxo emphasizes that the externalities of carbon emissions are not taken into account, adding that zeroing out net emissions (the difference between gross emissions and removals) can boost economies due to the investments needed to enable reductions and damage control. "Obviously, this transition to a low-carbon society must be carried out gradually and in a coordinated manner, also considering the reduction of social inequalities."

Assisted natural regeneration (RNA) project in the region of Cotriguaçu, in the state of Mato Grosso

He lists a series of measures aimed at reducing Brazilian emissions: reducing deforestation and restoring forest areas; increasing the use of renewable energy; promoting sustainable agriculture with the implementation of agroecological practices; and investing in quality public transportation and urban mobility with low greenhouse gas emissions, having an added benefit of reducing urban air pollution, which affects the health of millions of Brazilians.

Risks for the Amazon

"Amazon at Risk and COP30 as a Critical Opportunity to Avoid the Point of No Return" is an article authored by climatologist Carlos Nobre, a visiting professor at the IEA and holder of the Climate & Sustainability Chair (a partnership between the Institute and USP's President's Office), and researchers Julia Arieira and Diego Oliveira Brandão, both members of the Scientific-Technical Secretariat of the Science Panel for the Amazon. For them, the Conference represents a key opportunity to discuss and develop solutions for "preserving the ecological limits that sustain the integrity of the Amazon rainforest and the well-being of its people."

For this to happen, the authors consider it essential that dialogue between governments, civil society, local communities, the private sector, and academia be anchored in both science and local knowledge. Thus, "COP30 will be decisive in building pathways that reconcile sustainable development and a climate justice that recognizes that the impacts of climate change affect different social groups unequally, both in intensity and vulnerability."

The article analyzes the main threats pushing the Amazon towards its critical thresholds, the tipping points, and discusses governance and nature-based strategies that can halt its destruction and boost its regeneration and sustainable use.

Currently, 23% of the Brazilian Amazon is deforested, an area equivalent to 1 million km², according to the study. Although there has been a reduction in deforestation in recent years, forest fires intensified by the historic drought of 2023-2024 have generated an alarming increase in greenhouse gas emissions, as pointed out by the authors.

The Amazon is also suffering from global warming. Some regions have already exceeded the 1.5°C increase limit (compared to the second half of the 19th century) established by the Paris Agreement: "In 2023, record temperature values were recorded in Manaus and Monte Alegre with annual averages of 28.8°C and 27.9°C, respectively, which were surpassed in 2024. Compared to the average for 1990-2010, these values represented an increase of 1.7°C in Manaus and 0.9°C in Monte Alegre in 2023, and an increase of 1.8°C in both Manaus and Monte Alegre in 2024."

Extreme droughts in the region have become more frequent. Previously, they occurred once every 20 years, but this century the recurrence interval was shortened to 5 years. An extreme drought event is a natural phenomenon associated with rising ocean surface temperatures in the North Tropical Atlantic and the Equatorial Pacific, but it has intensified and become more frequent due to human-induced global warming, the researchers comment. The consequence is a drastic reduction in the water levels of many important rivers in the region. The study explains that global warming above 2°C could further intensify the warming of surface waters in both oceans and, consequently, increase the occurrence of droughts in the Amazon.

Floating houses based on the bottom of Lake Aleixo, near Manaus, during the drought of 2023

A synergistic combination of deforestation between 20% and 25%, and global warming of 2°C to 2.5°C could push more than half of the region into a state of irreversible degradation, according to the authors. The interaction between deforestation, forest degradation, fires, and global warming is associated with five potential tipping points: 1) a 2°C increase in average global temperature compared to pre-industrial levels; 2) local annual precipitation below 1,000 mm; 3) accumulated water deficit greater than -400 mm; 4) a dry season lasting more than six months; and 5) a cumulative forest cover loss of 20%. "Some telling evidence of these processes include prolonged dry season, increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit, and increased tree mortality rates."

The article warns that exceeding the point of no return will jeopardize greenhouse gas emissions control, alter rainfall patterns, and reduce agricultural and forestry productivity (both within and outside the Amazon). Other consequences will include the worsening of social inequalities, and losses in biological and cultural diversity, fueling a cycle of environmental degradation and social injustice.

Given these risks, the researchers emphasize that large-scale forest restoration, the implementation of sustainable infrastructure, regenerative livestock and agriculture practices, and bioindustrialization are essential nature-based solutions to keep the Amazon from environmental and social collapse in addition to curbing destruction. They add that the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and other communities of the region in the discussions is crucial to promoting social justice, sharing benefits, and reducing inequalities.

Other articles

The dossier includes five additional articles analyzing the consequences of climate change for Brazil in various areas and presenting proposals for minimizing and/or adapting to them. Some of the authors are pathologist Paulo Saldiva, a full professor at USP's School of Medicine and former director of the IEA; soil specialist Carlos Eduardo Pellegrino Cerri, a professor at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ/USP) and a researcher at the Center for Carbon Research in Tropical Agriculture (CCARBON/USP); and economic and social development specialist Marcel Burztyn, a full professor at the Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília (UnB).

"Municipal Health Systems and Climate Change: Infrastructure and Resilience Challenges in Brazil," which addresses the harmful effects of climate change on human health, proposes a conceptual, operational, and budgetary transformation for building resilient systems in the country, emphasizing the integration between levels of care, the strengthening of regional governance, and the valuing of community social capital.

Crop and livestock farming is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but it is also one of the most vulnerable activities to climate change. A paper dedicated to the sector's role in addressing climate change presents information on some agricultural management practices considered options for adaption and mitigation of effects.

Socio-environmental protection is also addressed in the dossier. Researchers from UnB have analyzed the evolution of social protection instruments and present a proposal for integrating public policies to combat poverty and sustainable development. In this proposal, the abundant sunlight in Brazil's semiarid region becomes a solution intstead of a problem due to its use in clean energy generation, resulting in an income for vulnerable communities.

Legal aspects related to greenhouse gases are the subject of two further articles. One of them addresses the monitoring of the integrity and safety of CO₂ storage facilities, while the other is a comparative study of the legislative landscape for this area in Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the European Union. A third paper focuses on the creation of a regulated carbon market in Brazil. After analyzing international and national experiences, and legislative initiatives such as bills and the establishment of the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System by Law 15.042/24, the authors conclude that fundamental issues remain to be resolved, including those related to the agricultural sector.

The dossier ends with a review of "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea," a book by David Livingstone published in 2024 by Princeton University Press. Nilson Cortez Crocia de Barros, a tenured professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), comments that given the evidence of the severe effects of climate change, "Livingstone recovers the broad spectrum of considerations regarding the influence of climate on the human species. This spectrum is mapped along four paths: the medical path, the path of soul-searching, the economic path, and, finally, the military path."

Related themes

An interview with filmmaker Cacá Diegues (1940-2025) in 2021 is one of the highlights of issue #114

In addition to the opening dossier, issue #114 contains a second set of texts entitled "Society and the Environment." Although it covers a variety of topics, the section is equally connected to those to be discussed at COP30, according to the journal's editor, Sérgio Adorno. The themes range from natural resources (forests, water, and natural gas) to land issues. The proposal for citizen science and the concept of urban commons are also addressed.

The third section of the issue is dedicated to arts and culture. The operetta "Abel, Helena," by Artur Azevedo, the religious influence on artistic production, and the promotion of culture and the arts in Brazil are some of the covered subjects. There is also an interview with filmmaker Cacá Diegues, who died last February at the age of 84. Conducted in 2021 by Noel dos Santos Carvalho, a professor of Brazilian Cinema at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), it focuses on public policy, the film market, and attempts to institutionalize film production in the country.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

COP30 Challenges

Expectations for COP30 in Belém - José Goldemberg
COP30 and the Worsening Climate Crisis – Pathways to Build a Sustainable Society - Paulo Artaxo
Amazon at Risk and COP30 as a Critical Opportunity to Avoid the Point of No Return - Carlos Afonso Nobre et al.
Municipal Health Systems and Climate Change: Infrastructure and Resilience Challenges in Brazil - Flavio Pinheiro Martins et al.
Crop and Livestock Farming as Part of the Solution to Tackle Global Climate Change - Carlos Eduardo Pellegrino Cerri et al.
From Social to Socio-Environmental Protection in Times of Climate Change: A Retrospective and a Proposal - Marcel Bursztyn et al.
Legal Comparative Analysis of CO₂ Storage Monitoring in Selected Countries - Thaiz da Silva Vescovi Chedid et al.
The Regulated Carbon Market in Brazil - Adriana Carvalho Pinto Vieira et al.
The Climate Change Apocalypse and the Echoes of the Classical Geographic Mindset - Nilson Cortez Crocia de Barros

Society and the Environment

Ecological-Economic Zoning: Overview and Interface with Planning and Public Policies - Marcia Renata Itani et al.
The Challenge of the Water/City Dyad in the Management of Urban Aquifers - Filipe da Silva Peixoto and Itabaraci Nazareno Cavalcante
A Genealogy of Urban Common Good - Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti and Leandro Silva Medrano
Private Management of Public Forests in Brazil: Analysis of Concession Contracts - Victor Pegoraro et al.
The Brazilian Academic Milieu and the Application of Citizen Science to Ecological Research - Eduardo Roberto Alexandrino et al.
Santa Catarina’s Natural Gas Adhesion to Ascher’s Neo-Urbanism - Leonardo Mosimann Estrella et al.
From Royal Land Grants to Latifundia: Reconstituting the Chain of Ownership in a Rural Settlement in Goiás - Graciella Corcioli et al.
Land Ownership Regularization in the Context of Agrarian Reform: The Case of the Santa Monica Rural Settlement in Terenos, MS - Luciane Cleonice Durante et al.
Unfinished Discussions: Disaster and Complex Systems - Leandro Roberto Neves

Arts and Culture

Artur Azevedo and the Operetta: "Abel, Helena" - João Roberto Faria
Film Production, Cinema Novo, and Brazilian Modernity – Interview with Filmmaker Cacá Diegues - Noel dos Santos Carvalho
In the Colors of Creation: Living Religion and Regional Culture in Antônio Poteiro - José Reinaldo F. Martins Filho
Towards a Policy of Encounters: Reflections on the Advancement of Culture and Arts in Brazil - Sharine Machado Cabral Melo

Photos (from the top): Science in HD/Unsplash; HD Mídia/WRI Brasil; Alberto César/Amazônia Real; and personal archive of Cacá Diegues

Issue #113 of the journal Estudos Avançados, corresponding to the first four months of 2025, focuses on the setbacks and disruptions that democracy has faced both in Brazil and in other countries. It consists of three dossiers: "Democracy," "Denialism and Authoritarianism," and "Disinformation and Democracy," which total 19 articles written by 34 researchers from several Brazilian universities.

The publication's editor, sociologist Sérgio Adorno, points out the convergence of the three sets of texts and highlights that the first of them, "Democracy," explores the current dilemmas of this government regime, "many of which are manifested in the decline in levels of trust in political institutions and the emergence of populist political projects."

The topic is discussed in the opening article of the dossier, "Does Democracy Have a Future?," by Elisa Reis, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She argues that, although its intrinsically expansive nature does not guarantee the survival of democracy by itself, it can provide the basis for the development of political strategies that, by combining human and technological resources, manage to "foster innovative ways to promote justice, inclusion, and participation, the elements that give life to democratic coexistence".

The debate on the principle of equality, one of the pillars of democracy, is essential in an era in which "social inequalities of all kinds are deepening," as the editor points out. The issue is addressed in an article by José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes, from USP's Law School, based on the concept of equality as belonging defended by Aristotle. For the professor, democratic and republican legitimacy depends on the idea of ​​general justice in which equality means belonging and indifference to it constitutes fertile ground for distrust and authoritarian solutions.

The Brazilian case

Bringing the discussion about democracy to the Brazilian situation, political scientist Bruno Reis, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), analyzes the political crisis experienced by the country from 2013 to 2022. His work seeks a synthesis of the components present in the period, examining topics such as institutional dynamics and their conditions of stability, dysfunctionalities in the regulation of electoral campaign financing, the drift towards a government hostile to the constitutional order, the interaction of the Brazilian crisis with the international framework of democratic erosion, and the prospects for overcoming the "destructive drift."

The crisis of Brazilian democracy is also discussed in a study by seven researchers from USP, the São Paulo State University (UNESP), the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), and the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). The work reflects on the legal and institutional dimension of this crisis and its specificities in the global context. The authors state that "it is necessary to consider the problem of democracy from a legal and institutional perspective in a systematic way and in all its complexity, and not in a manner restricted to the themes usually explored: the party-electoral and government systems, and the role of the Judiciary."

Intelligences

The dossier also addresses changes that impact the dynamics of democratic regimes today, such as the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). Researchers from UFMG and the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) point out that the coexistence of individual, collective, and artificial intelligences poses new challenges for democratic theory in the context of human-machine interaction.

They state that there is no a priori determination about how humans will reconstruct their forms of learning in the layers of individual and collective intelligences when feeding on feedback produced in the AI ​​layer: "The challenges are enormous and human centrality is central to the future of democracy."

Reproduction of O Mais Importante É Inventar o Brasil que Nós Queremos (2021), by Elian Almeida, image that illustrates issue #113

Claims

Another topic addressed by the dossier is the unfulfilled promises of liberal-democratic traditions regarding feminist and anti-racist demands. The article by Luciana Tatagiba, from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and Flávia Biroli, from the Univeristy of Brasília (UnB), provides an interpretation of what is at stake in the normality and in the crisis of democracies based on interviews conducted with Brazilian feminist and anti-racist leaders in 2023.

The dossier concludes with a case study by Jefferson Nascimento, a doctoral student at the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). He analyzes the process of militarization and dedemocratization in Venezuela during the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Nascimento comments that during Chávez's term the military received incentives to participate in politics at institutional levels. The relationship with the government deepened under Maduro's administration, ensuring their survival in power amid the economic crisis and attacks by opponents, but contributing to the erosion of the country's democratic system.

The decline of the democratic system in various parts of the world is accentuated directly or indirectly by several factors. One of them is denialism, the belief in a supposed loss of legitimacy of science from different perspectives.

Denialism

The second dossier in issue #113, "Denialism and Authoritarianism," discusses the topic from different perspectives. Among them, the journal’s editor cites the absence of a denialist movement in Brazil on the scale of those occurring in other countries, the predominance of denialist attacks on public policy issues (vaccines, universities, and social policies), the assumption of epistemic denialism, and clashes between epistemic authority and the uses of science based on the debates that took place in the COVID-19 Parliamentary Investigation Commission.

Adorno adds that denialism "is equally present, active, and strong in the public and political sphere, especially in this era of polarization and right-wing extremism." This is revealed in the articles that address anti-intellectualism, the cultivation of masculinity, and the elimination of gender perspectives in the policies of the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights during the Bolsonaro government. The closing of the set of texts is a review of the book Dicionário de Negacionismos no Brasil ("Dictionary of Negacionisms in Brazil"), organized by José Szwako and José Luiz Ratton.

Disinformation

But denialism is not an isolated phenomenon that erodes the credibility of information available to the public, a fundamental resource for the full exercise of citizenship in a democratic society. In this context of deteriorating public debate, the dossier "Disinformation and Democracy" completes the analysis of the complex contemporary situation with articles written by members and guests of IEA's research group on Journalism, Law, and Freedom.

The articles discuss topics such as the need to deepen the concept of disinformation, the trends in transnational journalism with its data validation processes by information agencies, the risks to journalism and democracy represented by digital platforms, the curtailment of freedom of the press and expression promoted and encouraged by the federal government, especially under the Bolsonaro administration, and the role of social media in disrupting democracy.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Democracy

Does Democracy Have a Future? - Elisa Reis
Equality and Justice Today, on the Steps of Aristotle - José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes
Institutional Dynamics and International Ballast: Toward a Diagnosis of the Brazilian Political Crisis (2013-2022) - Bruno Pinheiro Wanderley Reis
Crisis of Brazilian Democracy and Legal-Institutional Arrangements - Murilo Gaspardo, Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, Vanessa Corsetti Gonçalves Teixeira, Carolina Gabas Stuchi, José Duarte Neto, Rubens Beçak, and Daniel Campos de Carvalho
Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: Humans, Machines, and Algorithmic Institutions - Fernando Filgueiras, Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça, and Virgílio Almeida
Feminist Critiques of Democracy in Brazil: Analysis of the Crisis and the Limits of Normality - Luciana Tatagiba and Flávia Biroli
Militarization and De-Democratization During the Chavista Governments in Venezuela - Jefferson Nascimento

Denialism and Authoritarianism

The Meanings of the Crisis or Reflective Manifesto on Denialism and Science - José Szwako
Epistemic Denialism - Renan Springer de Freitas
The Public Life of Scientific Facts: Science and Politics at the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the Pandemic in Brazil - Daniel Edler Duarte, Pedro Benetti, and Marcos César Alvarez
"Good War, Boy(s)!": Bolsonarism, "Anti-Intellectualism," and Masculinity - Maria Caramez Carlotto
"Woman" and "Family": Conventional Wisdom as Public Policy in the Bolsonaro Government - Marília Moschkovich
The Past, Intermittency, and Future of an Illusion - Daniel Afonso da Silva
From A to Z: a Guide to Understanding Denialism - Guilherme Queiroz Alves

Disinformation and Democracy

Disinformation, Democracy, and Regulation - Vitor Blotta and Eugênio Bucci
From Transnational Journalism to Blockchain Experiments in the Struggle Against Disinformation - Ben Hur Damenek and Magaly Prado
Threats to Journalism from Digital Platforms: Contributions to Regulation - Rogério Christofoletti
Shut up, Journalist: Intimidation and Disinformation as State Policies - Camilo Vannuchi, João Gabriel de Lima and Taís Gasparian
Social Media and Disruptions of Democracy - Clifford Griffin and Vitor Blottar

"The current levels of technological development place the old dilemmas between the positive or perverse effects of the use of technologies in all fields of social existence under new perspectives," says sociologist Sérgio Adorno, editor of IEA's journal Estudos Avançados, when presenting the dossier "Human Implications of Technosciences," the main one of its 110th issue. The digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

Adorno emphasizes that the opening article of the dossier, "Diagnostics of Contemporaneity," by semiologist Lucia Santaella, former holder of the Oscar Sala Chair (a partnership of the IEA with the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee), highlights the characteristics of the so-called second era of the internet, "characterized by big data, the explosion of data, and datafication." The author identifies five attributes of this era: hybridity, temporal entanglement, omnipresent interactivity, acceleration, and discursive shattering.

Fragmentation

According to Santaella, "the political, cultural, and psychic consequences of these disruptions are many and profound, including the fragmentation and dispersion of old concepts of people, populism, public space, public debate, etc." For her, "ill-informed, rhetorical, and nostalgic sensationalism does nothing to help facing the challenges." As a militant for the advancement of knowledge throughout her entire career, she defends the motto "to understand well to act better, even though this implies engagement in the ethics of the intellect that costs time, dedication, and a lot of study of what counts against the intellectual farces that breed in self-indulgent gregariousness."

Consumption and hypervigilance

Adorno states that the other six articles in the dossier seek to dialogue with Santaella's theoretical-empirical perspective through the analysis of various themes. One of them is the articulation between the experience of consumption as subjectivity and the transformations in global markets over the last 40 years, the subject of “Data Capitalism and Aesthetic Wars,” by Abel Reis and Silvia Piva.

In "Sociotechnical Silencing and the Limits of Instrumental Power," Alcides Peron and Anderson Röhe discuss how electronic resources enable not only hypervigilance, but also risk classification and predictive devices. They warn that these systems, despite acting in crime prediction and risk management, provide the State with a non-violent form of power focused on shaping individuals' behaviors and decisions.

However, digital technologies also enable innovative educational perspectives. An example of this is discussed in the article "Aesthetics, Playability, and Narrative for the Anthropocene," in which Clayton Policarpo, Guilherme Cestari, and Luiz Napole study two video games that, through immersion, premises, and proposed critical scenarios, relate environmental impacts and dystopian perspectives to the future of the human species, a perspective in which "some of the epistemological, ethical, and identity challenges of the Anthropocene are present."

Flying car

A matter of the moment is the technological context of development of the so-called flying car, whose already developed and future models tend to be autonomous (without a pilot). Magaly Prado and Gustavo Galbiatti are the authors of "A Lot of Hot Air? A Feasibility Analysis of Flying Cars as Emission-Free Autonomous Machines." Based on interviews with experts and related bibliography, they analyze technical issues, environmental sustainability, and economic viability of the new vehicle.

Adorno comments that the dossier also revisits "old questions regarding the impact of digital technology in the Brazilian context, focusing on its virtues arising from the expansion of sharing and access to information for a greater number of citizens, but also its dangers in terms of possible effects of domination."

The final article in the dossier, "Technototalitarianism and the Risks for Democracy and Individuals," by Eder Van Pelt, addresses the risks of legitimacy in the exercise of power with the use of new technologies in a possible technocracy that makes the political use of technologies as instruments for controlling individuals' activities. He defends the need to think about effective means for the integration between specialized technology systems and democracy, which leads to concrete possibilities for a more consistent and participatory public debate, especially with the inclusion of all those affected by these new control devices.

Literature

The issue also contains two sets of texts. One of them is the "Presences" section, a collection of "suggestive and rich essays on literary criticism," according to Adorno, as well as articles on gender issues. The essays on literature address the following themes: a self-criticism by Euclides da Cunha regarding the meaning of the War of Canudos; precariousness and memory in the fiction of Nélida Piñon and Ana Teresa Torres; the edition of an unpublished poem by Caldas Barbosa; the decomposition of the detective novel genre into a short story by Machado de Assis; the origins of poetry in French by Sérgio Milliet; and the theatrical scene in Bahia in 1551/1552 produced by a Jesuit group linked to Father Manuel da Nóbrega.

Women's participation

The meanings and psychological transformations that accompany women's political participation are discussed based on the life trajectory of one of the participants in the World March of Women (a movement started in 2000), feminist and anti-racist activist Helena Nogueira, who died in 2020. Based on Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, and "Fetishism – Colonizing the Other," by Vladimir Safatle, a further text discusses the "fetishism of the equal, one of the ramifications of commodity fetishism," based on the relationships between the characters from the film "The Second Mother," directed by Anna Muylaert. The section ends with an article about the emancipation of women and the presence of science and mathematics in the newspaper O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, a "fortnightly, literary, recreational, news, and political journal" published in Rio de Janeiro in 1889 and 1890 by Francisca Senhorinha de Motta Diniz.

Human evolution

The section "Evolution, Nemory, and Discrimination" presents three articles. The first, with the participation of paleoanthropologist Walter Neves, a senior professor at the IEA, provides a synthesis of human evolution with special attention to issues of the Middle Pleistocene (the period when Homo sapiens emerged), advances in the area, and the Brazilian contribution to the topic. The second critically analyzes how the legacy of the professors of the French Mission at the former Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages and Literature at USP became a relevant aspect of memorialistics among participants in the history course. The third theme of the section is the scarcity of conservatives in American academia, with an assessment of the relative strength of four hypotheses for this: meritocracy (less academic aptitude), discrimination, conversion (the environment inducing to the left), and self-selection (voluntary option in not joining the academy).

The issue is completed with reviews of four books: "Arrabalde: In Search of the Amazon," by João Moreira Salles; "The Whiteness Pact," by Cida Bento; "The Margins of Fiction," by Jacques Rancière; and "Conflict Management and Justice: Small Claims in a US Court," by Ann Arbor.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Human implications of the technosciences

A Diagnosis of Contemporaneity - Lucia Santaella
Data Capitalism and Aesthetic Wars - Abel Reis and Silvia Piva
Sociotechnical Silencing and the Limits of "Instrumental Power" - Alcides Eduardo dos Reis Peron and Anderson Röhe
Aesthetics, Playability, and Narrative for the Anthropocene - Clayton Policarpo, Guilherme Henrique de Oliveira Cestari, and Luiz Felipe Napole
A Lot of Hot Air? A Feasibility Analysis of Flying Cars as Emission-Free Autonomous Machines - Magaly Prado and Gustavo Galbiatti
Consumerism, Citizenship, and Surveillance: Refections on Technological Expansion and its Impact on the Brazilian Context - Bruno Pompeu, Eneus Trindade, and Silvio Koiti Sato
Technototalitarianism and the Risks for Democracy and Individuals - Eder Van Pelt

Presences

The "Madness of Crowds." Criticism and Self-Criticism in Euclides da Cunha - Ulysses Pinheiro
Fictions of the Spoils. Precariousness and Memory in the Writings of Nélida Piñon and Ana Teresa Torres - Jesús Arellano
An Unpublished Poem by Caldas Barbosa: Introduction, Edition, and Commentary - Caio Cesar Esteves de Souza and Leonardo Zuccaro
Machado de Assis and His Parody of the Detective Novel - Cleber Vinicius do Amaral Felipe
In the Beginning it Was Serge: Sérgio Milliet’s Poetry in French - Valter Cesar Pinheiro
Manuel da Nóbrega and the Performance of Merchandise - Sérgio de Carvalho
Taking the Floor: Helena Nogueira and the Spoken Word as a Political and Psychological Achievement - Mariana Luciano Afonso
The Mechanism of the "Fetishism of the Equal" and its Revelations in the Film "The Second Mother," by Anna Muylaert - Camila Franquini Pereira
The Emancipation of Women and the Presence of Science and Mathematics in the Fortnightly Journal "O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino" - Zaqueu Vieira Oliveira and Victoria Maria Lopes Corrêa

Evolution, memory, and discrimination

The Middle Pleistocene in Human Evolution - Walter Neves and Gabriel Rocha
The French Mission in USP’s History Department: Inaugural Report and Monumentalization (1949-1971) - Diego José Fernandes Freire
Four Hypotheses for the Conservative Dearth in North American Academia - Pedro Franco

Reviews

New Words in Amazonian Literature - Jacques Marcovitch
Pact of Whiteness: Institutional Racism and Inequalities in the Workplace - Raul Gomes de Almeida
The Space-Time of Contemporary Literature: on Jacques Rancière’s "The Edges of Fiction" - João Arthur Macieira
On Fairness, Legal Rites, and Bargaining: An Anthropological Reading of the United States’ Small Claims Courts - Eduardo C.B. Bittar

The three dossiers that make up Estudos Avançados #109, launched last month, maintain the journal's tradition of "addressing current themes of social relevance, combining the communication of research results with public debate," in the words of editor Sérgio Adorno. The themes covered by this issue are "Health Promotion", "Food Security," and "Cities and Technologies". The intention, as always, is to collaborate with the "formulation and implementation of government policies aimed at overcoming problems that affect quality of life and reducing social inequalities." The digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

The interdisciplinarity of the analyzes is demonstrated in the opening article of the first dossier, entitled "Cardiovascular Health and Housing: An Important Dialogue Held in Precarious Settlements in São Paulo." Authored by experts in geography, urbanism, and pathology, the study analyzed data from residents of São Paulo who died due to diseases of the circulatory system from 2010 to 2016 or were hospitalized through the Brazilian public health service (SUS) due to the same illnesses from 2011 to 2016. The type of housing settlement of individuals (subnormal, precarious, or regular), age, and sex have been taken into account.

The difference in cardiovascular health between the three types of settlements assessed through the proportions of hospital admissions and mortality rates has shown that almost 1.7 million people in São Paulo are at a great disadvantage in relation to the remaining 85% of the population .

Although precarious housing is "the cause or a determining factor of many physical and mental pathologies," another study in the dossier demonstrates that "the legal health framework in Brazil restricts or even prohibits the use of health resources in housing issues, delimits the composition of health teams to medical-hospital professions, as well as does not consider the use of resources from other budgetary functions in the provision of housing for specific health purposes."

Such delimitations should be removed in situations where there is scientific evidence that the housing issue is a social determinant of health, according to the recommendation of the article "Why Investment and Focus on Housing Issues are Also a Measure of Health."

Vulnerability

One must also consider the multiple vulnerabilities of peripheral territories, which makes intervention in these spaces a challenge that needs to be faced from the logic of complex problems, as "they do not have a single, linear solution to overcome them," warns a third study. Based on work developed by the Tide Setubal Foundation on the outskirts of São Miguel Paulista, in São Paulo, the article "Intersectoriality and Urban Improvements in the Outskirts of São Paulo: The Case of São Miguel Paulista" proposes that intersectorality should be promoted from the public budget, impact measurement, and community protagonism.

The dossier also presents a study on the history of ideas regarding the conditions for the development of individuals. The article "Education, Health, and Progress: Discussions on Environmental Effects on Child Development (1930-1980)" shows how there was a "strong association between promoting the development of individuals and social progress" in the covered period.

"It was understood that public investments in creating better health and education conditions for children would favor the country’s advancement." School was seen as "an environment conducive to the healthy development and civilization of children."

In terms of health, this development perspective has become vulnerability in many peripheral areas where the control of the territory is exercised by organized crime. The situation is exemplified in a study of a basic health unit located in an area dominated by drug trafficking.

Based on a field diary and open interviews with different interlocutors in the territory of a peripheral health unit in a medium-sized municipality in the state of São Paulo, the work pointed out that, "given the absence or insufficiency of the State in territories of social vulnerability, trafficking can function both as an agent of precarious working relationships between health teams and the community, and as a provider of support and protection mechanisms for the population, mediation, and management of the population's daily relationships, including their relationship with health equipment.

Health Promotion

Even in the face of countless social vulnerabilities, it is necessary to find ways to promote health. It becomes relevant to understand the different interpretations of health promotion, despite the fact that the field is going through a process of institutionalization and strengthening. An article by public health experts discusses these interpretations, whose diversity demonstrates the need to delve deeper into some topics, such as the role of the health sector, behavioral change, and individual approaches, according to the researchers.

In their study, they present other ways of understanding these themes through the contribution of workers, primary care managers, and experts on the issue. The idea is to "expand the possibilities of practicing health promotion in primary care".

The work methodology has included semi-structured interviews with experts and consultation with municipal managers and workers in primary care using the electronic form FormSUS. 13 experts were interviewed between November 2017 and February 2018. The interviewees joined the Working Group on Health Promotion and Sustainable Development (GTPSDS), linked to the Brazilian Public Health Association (ABRASCO), "a group that defends action in social determination and does not restrict itself to risk and protective factors for chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs)".

Another study in the dossier has analyzed the impact of the implementation of cycle paths in the city of São Paulo on the practice of leisure-time physical activities and the correlations of this practice with high blood pressure rates. A group of 1,431 people have been evaluated, living within a maximum of 1 km of cycle paths. The work highlights the need to improve environmental conditions (implementation of cycle paths, for example) in areas of greatest socioeconomic need in the city in order to generate greater opportunities to practice physical activity and the consequent reduction in rates of high blood pressure and other chronic diseases.

Well-being

Improving quality of life is also the subject of another article, which brings together notions of well-being in four main matrices: that of indigenous worldviews, that of the Latin Americanist utopian thought, the state-owned one, and the socio-environmental one. According to the authors, these matrices "hold convergent aspects among themselves, forming a common core that emulates new philosophical, economic, and political proposals as alternatives to the model of life, work, and relationship with the environment produced by neoliberal capitalism."

The autonomy of people under guardianship is also discussed in the dossier. A study by researchers in the field of law examines the possibility of substitute consent in the context of health in cases of people in a guardianship situation to determine whether the legal representative of people with disabilities would also be allowed to decide on existential aspects.

The dossier ends with an article on the socio-environmental reality of implementing reverse medication logistics to minimize drug contamination and achieve the relevant Sustainable Development Goal. The study highlights control, monitoring, and environmental education actions to reduce the impacts of pharmaceutical waste and promote sustainability.

Nutrition

The first article in the dossier entitled "Food Security" aims to contribute to the analysis of the current scenario on food insecurity in Brazil, based on studies carried out by two IEA research groups (Nutrition and Poverty, and Planetary Health) in partnership with the AgriBio Axis of the Center for Artificial Intelligence (C4AI) at USP.

The contribution of agricultural production to improving this scenario in cities is explained in an article about the results of the debate Urban Agriculture and Food and Nutritional Security: Organic Food in School Food, which took place at the 11th Service, Research, and Public Policy Seminar. The event was organized by the Nutrition and Poverty Research Group and the Urban Agriculture Study Group, both based at the IEA.

The set of texts includes the analysis of a practical health and food care project for families with children and adolescents in situations of malnutrition. The work dealt with the "short production-commercialization chain" of food to support project actions involving families with children and adolescents served by the Nutritional Recovery and Education Center (CREN).

A recent topic in the spectrum of eating habits, flexitarianism, is also present in the dossier, with a study on the factors that lead flexitarians to different levels of reduction in meat consumption.

Urbanism

Through a 2009 municipal law, strategies for adapting to climate change and disaster management were established in the city of São Paulo. The initial article in the dossier entitled "Cities and Technologies" analyzes the effectiveness of the legal framework of this policy, its articulation with other relevant standards and environmental law, and how its governance has been constructed.

Climate change and other factors, such as El Niño, have a direct impact on water availability, as demonstrated by the current drought affecting several municipalities in the Amazon, which lack policies and structures to face the problem. Hence the importance of municipalities having greater participation in the National Water Resources Management System (SINGREH), warn the authors of the article "Water Governance in Brazil: What is the Role of City Governments?".

In addition to weak participation in the system, researchers indicate that municipalities do not have a policy on water resources. Another problem highlighted is the fact that legal reforms regarding water resources tend to further weaken the role of municipalities in the SINGREH.

Nature-based solutions are also present in the dossier, for instance in an article that addresses the integration of this type of solution in a brownfield revitalization project. Brownfield is an underutilized and degraded urban area whose transformation provides benefits to the population.

The evolutionary process of cities is approached in a philosophical and technological way. An article discusses some concepts created by French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984), such as discipline and biopower, and applies them to the history of Brazilian urbanism, especially in the cases of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Another text examines the technologies that have led to an urban revolution with the emergence of smart cities, due to the proliferation of continuously connected electronic equipment, which allows managing the urban structure in a more efficient and optimized way, say the authors.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Health Promotion

Cardiovascular Health and Housing: An Important Dialogue Held in Precarious Settlements in São Paulo - Ligia Vizeu Barrozo, Carlos Leite, Edson Amaro Jr., and Paulo Hilário Nascimento Saldiva
Why Investment and Focus on Housing Issues are Also a Measure of Health - Eduardo Castelã Nascimento, Wesllay Carlos Ribeiro, and Suzana Pasternak
Intersectoriality and Urban Improvements in the Outskirts of São Paulo: The Case of São Miguel Paulista - Mariana Almeida
Education, Health, and Progress: Discussions on Environmental Effects on Child Development (1930-1980) - Ana Laura Godinho Lima
Basic Healthcare in a Scenario of Vulnerability: Health Production and the Informal Governance of Drug Traffickers - Amanda Dourado Souza Akahosi Fernandes, Sabrina Helena Ferigato, Massimiliano Minelli, and Thelma Simões Matsukura
Health Promotion in Primary Care: The Role of the Healthcare Sector, Behavioral Change, and Individual Approaches - Fabio Fortunato Brasil de Carvalho, Marco Akerman e Simone Cynamon Cohen
Bike Paths, Leisure-Time Physical Activity and High Blood Pressure: A Longitudinal Study - Alex Antonio Florindo, Guilherme Stefano Goulardins, and Inaian Pignatti Teixeira
Between Desirable Utopias and Possible Realities: Contemporary Notions of Living Well - Gabriel Castro Siqueira, Bruno Simões Gonçalves, and Alessandro de Oliveira dos Santos
The Limits of Guardianship, and the Free and Informed Consent of People With Disabilities - Jussara Maria Leal de Meirelles and Ana Paula Vasconcelos
Reverse Medication Logistics in Brazil: A Socio-Environmental Analysis - Sara Raquel L. B. de Lima, Viviane Souza do Amaral, and Julio Alejandro Navoni

Food Security

Food Security: Reflections on a Complex Problem - Semíramis Martins Álvares Domene et al.
Healthy Diets, and Urban and Family Farming - Ana Lydia Sawaya et al.
In the Gaps of Everyday Life: Reflections on Professional Practices and Insights Based on Local Foodstuffs - Giulia de Arruda Maluf, Maria Paula de Albuquerque, Maria Fernanda Petroli Frutuoso, and Bernardo Teixeira Cury
What Influences Flexitarians to Reduce Meat Consumption in Brazil? - Mariele Boscardin, Andrea Cristina Dorr, Raquel Breitenbach, and Janaína Balk Brandão

Cities and Technologies

Adaptation to Climate Change and Disaster Prevention in the City of São Paulo - Ana Maria de Oliveira Nusdeo, Andresa Tatiana da Silva, and Fernanda dos Santos Rotta
Water Governance in Brazil: What is the Role of City Governments? - Valérie Nicollier, Asher Kiperstok, and Marcos Eduardo Cordeiro Bernardes
Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Brownfield Revitalization Projects: New Paradigms for Urban Problems - Evandro Nogueira Kaam and Amarilis Lucia Casteli Figueiredo Gallardo
On Foucault and Brazilian Urbanism: A Genealogy of Planning (c. 1850s-1945) - Joel Outtes
Cognitive Cities: Technological Utopia or Urban Revolution? - Marcio Lobo Netto and João Francisco Justo
Intrapreneurship and Innovation in Public Organizations: The Case of Brazil’s Census - Roberto Kern Gomes and Magnus Luiz Emmendoerfer

The new professional and occupational requirements, the precariousness of employment, and the suppression of rights and guarantees are the central themes of the dossier "Work and Exclusion," part of Estudos Avançados #108, whose digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

The issue also features a set of 11 articles on the activity of Alfredo Bosi (1936-2021) as a literary critic and engaged thinker. Professor emeritus from the University of São Paulo's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Bosi has been director of the IEA and editor of the journal Estudos Avançados for 30 years.

Paradox

In the editorial, the journal's editor, Sérgio Adorno, points out that, "in a parallel and paradoxical way, the advanced forms of work organization represented by the complex digitization of industrial production are articulated and coexist with the reinvention of slavery, which was believed to be banished with the emergence of modern society."

An example of the dynamics of this hateful practice is reported in an article with the main results of research on contemporary slave labor carried out in Açailândia, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, based on the narratives of workers rescued from this condition.

Another extremely relevant issue addressed in the dossier is the analysis of the discussions that have led to the ratification of Convention no. 189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) by Brazil in 2018. It refers to the establishment of dignified working conditions for domestic workers, a category that brings together more than 7 million workers in the country.

Two articles address the socioeconomic impacts of infrastructure works and distortions in the production chain. The first case is discussed in a study on the adequacy of residents of a beach on the coast of the state of Pará to the construction of a highway on the site. Another article adresses the maintenance of injustices in the production chain of Brazil nuts in quilombos in the region of Alto Trombetas, also in Pará.

Literature and Society

The essays on Bosi especially examine aspects of his work as a literary critic, articulated with social and political concerns that have always been present in his trajectory. The composition of a dossier on "an outstanding humanist, who has denounced violence and the abusive use of power to seek solutions that reconciled the conflict, typical of human relations, with the solidarity inherent in the lives of common men and women," in the words of Adorno, could not be different.

He highlights three concepts present in Bosi's works that are discussed in the dossier: resistance, ideology, and dialectic. The first focuses on the analysis of the poem "The Machine of the World," by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and on Bosi’s reflections since the 1970s, when he wrote the essay Poesia e Resistência ("Poetry and Resistance").

The topic is taken up again in a text that articulates literature and cinema, using films by Roberto Rosselini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and is also present in an essay on candomblé featured both in the novel "Tent of Miracles," by Jorge Amado, and in its respective cinematographic adaptation by Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

Traits of Bosi's personality and his passion for poetry are recalled in an article that comments on his book O Ser e o Tempo da Poesia ("The Being and the Time of Poetry"). There is also the identification of a psychoanalytic approach of the critic in his analysis of "Counselor Ayres’ Memorial," by Machado de Assis.

The reflections of Bosi and other critics are addressed in a study on the critical position of Graciliano Ramos in relation to the so-called Romance de 30, a set of literary works produced in the second phase of Brazilian Modernism, between 1930 and 1945.

The meaning and functioning of the concept of dialectic expressed by Bosi in the book "Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization" are discussed in a dense article that articulates several aspects, such as the reception of the work by critic Roberto Schwartz and "a certain affinity of interests and procedures" with spectropoetics, a philosophical and critical approach developed by Jacques Derrida.

Other essays address Bosi's work on the short story as a literary form and on the poet's position as an intellectual in the face of war, with reference to the poem "The Rose of the People," by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and España, Aparta de Mí este Cáliz, by César Vallejo.

Reviews

Issue #108 also features reviews of five books: Dar Corpo ao Impossível: O Sentido da Dialética a Partir de Theodor Adorno ("Giving Body to the Impossible: The Sense of Dialectic from Theodor Adorno" (Autêntica, 2019), by Vladimir Safatle; the translation to Theodor Adorno's "Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism" (Editora Unesp, 2020); Teatro Legislativo ("Legislative Theater") (Editora 34, 2020), by Augusto Boal; Imaginação como Presença: O Corpo e seus Afetos na Experiência Literária ("Imagination as Presence: The Body and its Affections in Literary Experience," (Editora UFPR, 2020), by Lígia Gonçalves Diniz; and Conversa Comigo ("Talk to Me") (Penalux, 2019), by Ricardo Ramos Filho.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Work and Exclusion

In the Webs of Slavery: Perceptions of Workers Rescued from Situations of Slave Labor in the state of Maranhão - Luciano Rodrigues Costa, Alessandra Gomes Mendes Tostes, Ana Pereira dos Santos, and Bráulio Figueiredo Alves da Silva
Memories from the Construction of the PA-458 Highway Connecting Bragança to Ajuruteua in Northeastern Pará on Brazil’s Amazon Coast - Zenúbia Oliveira Silva, Francisco Pereira de Oliveira, and César Martins de Souza
Brazil nut Farming and Quilombos in Alto Trombetas (State of Pará): A Proposal for Socio-Environmental Justice - Felipe Souto Alves and Patrícia Chaves de Oliveira
ILO Convention no. 189: Notes on the Ratification Process in Brazil - Thays Monticelli and Alexandre Barbosa Fraga
Agricultural Policy for Agribusiness: The Use of Taxpayers’ Money to Indirectly Benefit Foreign Multinational Corporations - Graciella Corcioli and Gabriel da Silva Medina
Indigenous Peoples of the Desert: The Bedouins of the Negev. Congress in Beer Sheva, 2000: The Future of Indigenous Peoples - Betty Mindlin

Alfredo Bosi

Faustian Pact and Resistance in the Poem "The Machine of the World" - Marcus Vinicius Mazzari
Alfredo Bosi: Two Approaches - Alcides Villaça
Traits of Psychoanalysis "in Two Figures from Machado de Assis" - Cleusa Rios P. Passos
Times of Insomnia: Graciliano Ramos and the Inflections of the Neorealistic Novels of the 1930s - Erwin Torralbo Gimenez
Poetry and War: Action and Melancholy in Vallejo and Drummond - Pedro Meira Monteiro
Different Forms of Resistance Poetry - Fernando Baião Viotti
Dialectics and Alteritarian Politics in Brazil and the "Dialectic of Colonization" - Ravel Giordano Paz
Alfredo Bosi and the Short Forms - Diego A. Molina
Libertarian Christianity and Redemption in Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini - Paulo Roberto Ramos
Aganju, Xangô, Alapalá: Religious Racism, Resistance and Justice in "Tent of Miracles" (the Novel and the Film) - Soleni Biscouto Fressato
Women’s Cinema as Resistance to Dictatorship: Readings from a Research Source - Ana Maria Veiga

Reviews

Dialectics and Political Action: On Dar Corpo ao Impossível, by Vladimir Safatle - Ronaldo Tadeu de Souza
Adorno, Fascism, and the Aporias of Reason - Fabio Mascaro Querido
What Makes Representative Government Democratic? - Gustavo Hessmann Dalaqua
Reflections on Heideggerian Aspects of Lígia Gonçalves Diniz’s Essay - Rafael Fava Belúzio
Understanding Made of Dialogues and Silences - Ieda Lebensztayn

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP

Deficiencies that highlight inequalities in the Metropolitan Region of Rio Janeiro are the subject of the opening dossier of Estudos Avançados #107. Its digital version is available on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only). Entitled "Urban Infrastructure," the five studies in the set discuss both the very concept of "infrastructural turn" in urban studies in the last two decades and aspects related to the precariousness of access to water, waste management, distribution of the electricity network, and the social life connected with a cycle path. The authors are from the areas of sociology, anthropology, and urbanism.

According to the journal's editor, Sérgio Adorno, the dossier explores the new dimensions of social inequalities, "as well as highlights the strangulation of urban policies implemented by different government administrations."

The article by Mariana Cavalcanti and Marcella Araújo, both from the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), discusses the "structural turn" from the theories and temporalities of the urbanization of Brazilian cities. The objective, they say, is to bring a "panoramic view of theoretical discussions produced in Brazil, based on ethnographic research that has been the subject of everyday production in cities for fifty years" to the international debate.

The importance of water in the daily life of women living in favelas (local slums) and occupations in Rio de Janeiro is analyzed in the study by Camila Pierobon, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), and Camila Fernandes, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Through small domestic events, dialogues with residents of those places, or more extensive ethnographic descriptions, the researchers show how "water carries the strength of what is ordinary and is one of the objects that allow us to see the power and vulnerability that daily life carries in terms of gender, class, and race."

Based on the infrastructural changes in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, urbanist Francesca Piló, from Utrecht University, examines how the configuration of electricity networks collaborates in formatting the urban fabric of the city in its material and technological forms, symbolic discourse, and everyday practices. The article identifies three ways in which this contribution occurs: 1) reordering of urban space, 2) urban fragmentation, and 3) daily practices of handling meters and direct connection to the network (gatos).

The work of sociologist Maria Raquel Passos Lima, from UERJ, adopts the spaces of waste dumps and landfills, usually made invisible and stigmatized, as a privileged focus of analysis to think about the production of the city. She introduces the concept of "residual infrastructure" as a strategy for this examination. Based on the case of the closure of the waste landfill at Jardim Gramacho, in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, she addresses "a process of infrastructural change or dismantling of an infrastructure." The ethnographic part corresponds to the fieldwork carried out during her doctoral research, when she accompanied the activities of recyclable waste pickers for 14 months.

Collapse of part of the Tim Maia Cycleway, in the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, in April 2016

The effects of the implantation of the Tim Maia Cycleway on social life is the subject of the article by anthropologist Julia O'Donnell. She recalls that the equipment was hailed at its inauguration, in 2016, for offering new frameworks for the oceanfront landscape in addition to new alternatives for urban mobility, a combination that made it a "central element of a broader city project, which had the harmonization between man and nature as one of its main axes." By following the process of idealization, construction, and inauguration of the equipment and its successive collapses, the work intends to discuss how this peculiar case allows reflection on important aspects of urban infrastructure from anthropology.

The nine articles in the second section of the issue, "Presences," brings articles on various topics related to history, education, culture, and the history of science. In the first one, Milena Fernandes de Oliveira analyzes the way in which the relationship between economy and history has been presented in the work of Gilberto Freyre, particularly in "The Masters and the Slaves" (Casa-Grande & Senzala) and "The Mansions and the Shanties" (Sobrados e Mucambos).

In his article, Victor Santos Vigneron de la Jousselandière seeks to identify the tensions that cross the work of critic Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes in a period marked by the emergence of a new cinematographic production and by discussions around the economic development of the country. The reference is the conference Cinema Brasileiro e Realidade Social, written by the critic in the early 1960s. The relationship between cinema and literature present in the film La Flor (2018), by Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás, is explored in the article by Rogério de Almeida and Cesar Zamberlan, which aims to understand the interpretative perspectives that emerge from the film and the way in which they relate to the literary and cinematographic resources used by Llinás.

Literary critic Antonio Candido (1918-2017), whose work is analyzed from the point of view of its importance for education

The works of literary critic Antonio Candido and Peruvian Marxist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui are the subjects of articles by Márcia Machado and Deni Alfaro Rubbo, respectively. For Machado, it is not an exaggeration to say that Candido has provided important contributions, subsidies, and theoretical tools to rethink the way in which the training process has been conceived, and education and university have been historically constructed in Brazil. Rubbo's work makes a critical evaluation of the book "In the Red Corner: The Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui," by historian Mike Gonzales, to observe the scope and gaps of the work from the comparison with other works.

Three articles address specific literary works. Edinael Sanches Rocha undertakes a stylistic analysis of Meu Tio o Iauaretê, by João Guimarães Rosa, and seeks to identify data in the culture of native peoples that could establish links of meaning with the tale. Based on Winnicottian psychoanalysis, the study by Luan Felipe de Souza Junqueira and Fabio Scorsolini-Comin reflects on the psychic illness process of the character Laura in the short story A Imitação da Rosa, by Clarice Lispector. The relationship between the characters Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and Dulcineia is the subject of the article by Maria Augusta da Costa Vieira, whose objective is to understand the reasons that lead the reader to "admir and intensely respect a character who, in essence, is a complete madman."

The section ends with a study by Heráclio Tavares on the non-verbal dimension of scientific practice. He examines ideas from different authors, and drafts of articles and entries by physicist César Lattes in his laboratory notebooks. Lattes has been one of the main people responsible for the experimental observation of the decay of the pi meson. Tavares explains that part of this process took place through the development of the visual scientist's ability to perceive the shapes of the traces left by the particles in the detectors.

The editor of the journal highlights the opportunity of the article by physicist and environmentalist José Goldemberg about the 30 years of the Climate Convention, which opens the "Current affairs" section. The other studies in the section are about the enunciative-discursive differences in street demonstrations in Brazil in 1983-84 and 2013, the challenge of environmental and social integration of primitive and contemporary humanity, the historical contextualization of the relationships between consumption, capitalism, and human passions that have shaped contemporary consumer culture, and the discourses present in articles about tattoos published in Brazilian journals between 1990 and 2020.

''Crooked Plow: A Novel'' (Torto Arado), one of the books reviewed in issue #107

The issue closes with six book reviews, including "Crooked Plow: A Novel" (Torto Arado), by Itamar Vieira Junior, reviewed by Winifred Knox and Miridan Britto Falci. The other texts address books about the interest of Americans of African descent in knowing the strong connections of the Brazilian state of Bahia with Africa, the history of literary and cultural relations between Brazil and France, the characteristics of the Soviet revolutionary process until Stalinism, the typology of bildungsromane, and the development of artificial intelligence in China.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Urban infrastructures

Autoconstruction and City Production: Another Genealogy of Urban Infrastructure Studies - Mariana Cavalcanti and Marcella Araujo
Caring for Others, Taking Care of Water: Gender and Race in the Production of the City - Camila Pierobon and Camila Fernandes
From "Cycle-view" to "the Bike Path to Death": The Social Life of Urban Infrastructure - Julia O’Donnell
Residual Infrastructures: Colonialisms in Waste Management and Catador Politics - Maria Raquel Passos Lima
The Techno-political Fabric of Rio de Janeiro: Insights from Electricity Infrastructure - Francesca Pilo’

Presences

On the Economic Interpretation of History in Gilberto Freyre (1933-1956) - Milena Fernandes de Oliveira
"Brazilian Cinema and Social Reality," by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes - Victor Santos Vigneron de la Jousselandière
La Flor, by Mariano Llinás: Cinema Re-encounters Literature - Rogério de Almeida and Cesar Zamberlan
Literature, Instruction, and Education in the Work of Antonio Candido: The Humanization of Man - Márcia Machado
Iauaretê, Further Beyond: New Relations between the Culture of Original Peoples and "My Uncle, the Iauaretê," by João Guimarães Rosa - Edinael Sanches Rocha
The Ineffable Luminosity of Madness in "The Imitation of the Rose" - Luan Felipe de Souza Junqueira and Fabio Scorsolini-Comin
Don Quixote, Sancho Panza. and Dulcinea - Maria Augusta da Costa Vieira
Mariátegui in Debate: Marxist Ghosts and Critical Horizons - Deni Alfaro Rubbo
Non-verbal Knowledge in the History of Science: The Prowess of César Lattes - Heráclio Tavares

Current affairs

Thirty Years of the Convention on Climate Change - José Goldemberg
Postmodern Tension in Street Demonstrations in Brazil: Dialogical Notes on Political Signature - Anderson Salvaterra Magalhães
An Integrative Conception of Humanity - Julio Aurelio Vianna Lopes
Ethical Dilemmas in Consumer Culture: Anthropocene, Psychoanalysis, and Capitalism as the Operational Mode of Passions - Isleide Arruda Fontenelle
Tattooing: a Rhizomatic Map of a Research Theme - Valéria Cazetta

Reviews

Bahia as an African Destination - Nathalia Silva
Crooked Plow and the Deep Brazil - Winifred Knox and Miridan Britto Falci
French-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Space - Marise Hansen
From Lenin to Stalin: Continuances and Ruptures - Lincoln Secco
Bildungsroman: The Multiple Variations of a Genre - Klaus Eggensperger
Artificial Intelligence in the East-West Divide - Isadora Maria Roseiro Ruiz and Cristina Godoy Bernardo de Oliveira

Photos: Fernando Frasão/Agência Brasil; Mauro Bellesa/IEA-USP

Highlighting the elections in Brazil and the theme of forest governance, issue #106 of the journal Estudos Avançados was launched in November. Its digital version is available on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

The first dossier, entitled "Elections," brings articles that are based on investigations in the field of political sciences to approach the Brazilian electoral history. "The articles explore concerns present in public opinion, in the media debate, and in the political agenda, whether at the national, regional or local level", explains editor Sérgio Adorno.

Three themes of the greatest relevance, according to Adorno, are addressed by the issue: electoral polls, candidacy programs, and the ideological foundations of Bolsonarism.

The trends and performance of electoral polls have been analyzed by Fernando Meireles, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), and Guilherme Russo, a lecturer at the São Paulo School of Economics (EESP) of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), based on estimates from surveys carried out between 2012 and 2020. Bruno Wilhelm Speck, from the Department of Political Science at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), has concluded that political leaders are capable of retaining voters more than parties, having analyzed data on the elections for mayors held between 2000 and 2020 for the article "Parties Dominate the Registration of Candidates, Leaders Connect Better with the Electorate." Lucio Rennó, from the Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasília (UnB), has analyzed the ideological components of the voters who support Jair Bolsonaro based on preferences on political issues in the article "Bolsonarism and the 2022 Elections."

"Is Brazil Really a Polarized Country? Analysis of Presidential Elections from 1989 to 2018," by Antonio Carlos Alkmim, from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and Sonia Luiza Terron, PhD in Political Science, considers the eight Brazilian presidential elections in the post-military dictatorship period as an object of analysis. "The geographic polarization between the first and second placed is a characteristic of the Brazilian presidential elections from 1989 to 2018. The meaning, intensity, and geography of the confrontation varies, but the polarization is present in all elections," the authors point out.

Electoral reforms as reflections of the maturation of the Brazilian political system after the 1988 Constitution have been addressed by Arthur Fisch and Lara Mesquita, researchers at FGV's Center for Politics and Economics in the Public Sector Studies (CEPESP), who have explored the changes in the proportional system and electoral financing. For them, "it is important to be aware of such changes so that the system evolves in a way that consolidates the gains of democracy."

Other contributions to the dossier have addressed Brazilian voters' perceptions of political parties since the redemocratization process, campaign financing, and women's performance in the national elections.

"If, on the one hand, recent legislative innovations have produced positive impacts, on the other hand, conservative reactions have still mitigated achievements and maintained male representation as predominant," said Sérgio Adorno about reforms and gender equality in the Brazilian electoral arena in the last three decades.

Forest Governance

According to the article that opens the second dossier, forest governance has been a strategic theme for IEA's journal since the publication of issue #9 on the Floram Project – Forests for the Environment (1990), led by professor Aziz Ab'Saber, from FFLCH. The articles bring subsidies for a reflection on the advances in the field of forest governance in Brazil, and the global perspectives in the field of environmental and climate governance.

To talk about Brazilian forest legislation, the article by Paulo Eduardo dos Santos Massoca, a researcher associated with the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL) at the University of Indiana, and Eduardo Sonnewend Brondízio, from the Department of Anthropology at the same University, starts with an examination of the narratives about the values of trees and forests in law since the 16th century, and its recent revaluation and the conflict of opposing interests.

Next, the article "Sectarian Fundamentalism Prevents the Strengthening of the Sociobiodiversity Economy," by Ricardo Abramovay, from USP's Institute of Energy and Environment (IEA), explores the ideological and cultural roots of incentives for forest destruction, and presents forces that seek to oppose the current federal policies and initiatives with the potential to pave the way for an economy of forest socio-biodiversity.

The other articles address topics such as reactions and resistance led by civil society associations and by virtue of multisectoral coalitions and platforms, socio-ecological innovations that shape social relationships that have the local community as protagonist, and an analysis of the highlights of the web seminar "Building Dialogues on Forest Governance."

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Elections

Is Brazil Really a Polarized Country? Analysis of Presidential Elections from 1989 to 2018 - Antonio Carlos Alkmim and Sonia Luiza Terron
Electoral Reforms in Contemporary Brazil: Changes in the Proportional Representation and Electoral Financing Systems - Arthur Fisch and Lara Mesquista
Where Did the Parties Go According to Public Opinion? Perceptions of the Political Parties in the Redemocratization of Brazil - Rachel Meneguello and Oswaldo E. do Amaral
Parties Dominate the Registration of Candidates, Leaders Connect Better with the Electorate - Bruno Wilhelm Speck
Campaign Funding and Women’s Electoral Performance in Brazilian Elections (1998-2020) - Vitor de Moraes Peixoto, Larissa Martins Marques, and Leandro Molhano Ribeiro
Election Polls in Brazil: Trends and Performance - Fernando Meireles and Guilherme Russo
Left, Right, and Presidential Elections in Brazil - Gabriela Tarouco
Bolsonarism and the 2022 Elections - Lucio Rennó

Forest Governance

Forest Governance: Three Decades of Advances - Cristina Adams, Luciana Gomes de Araujo, and Liviam E. Cordeiro-Beduschi
We Protect When We Value: History of Brazilian Forestry Legislation - Paulo Eduardo dos Santos Massoca and Eduardo Sonnewend Brondízio
Sectarian Fundamentalism Prevents the Strengthening of the Sociobiodiversity Economy - Ricardo Abramovay
Governance Experiences in Ecosystem and Landscape Restoration in Brazil - Robin L. Chazdon, Rafael B. Chaves, Miguel Calmon, Ludmila Pugliese de Siqueira and Rodrigo G. Prates Junqueira
Brazilian Cases of Socio-Innovative Landscape Restoration - Aurélio Padovezi, Jordano Roma, Daniela Coura, Lucas Antunes da Silva, Marina Campos, Patrick Ayrivie de Assumpção, and Laura Secco
Multilevel Collective Action and Socio-Ecological Innovation in Forest Governance - Liviam E. Cordeiro-Beduschi, Cristina Adams, Luciana Gomes de Araujo, Aurelio Padovezi, Jordano Roma Buzati, Marcus Vinícius Chamon Schmidt, and Raquel Rodrigues dos Santos

The analysis of relevant themes of the Brazilian social and political life in the last two centuries is the central aspect of the dossier "Bicentennial of Independence," present in the latest issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, a four-monthly publication of the IEA. The online version of issue #105 is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

Although the set of texts is not intended to review the historiography of Independence or to fill gaps pointed out by historians and other social scientists, aspects of this type are also present in the articles, says the editor of the publication, sociologist Sérgio Adorno.

The dossier is curated by three USP professors: Carlos Zeron, from the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), Alexandre Macchione Saes, from the School of Economics, Management, Accounting, and Actuarial Sciences (FEA), and Antônio David, from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA). They are authors of the opening article "3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022," which questions the revisions of the ideas of sovereignty and modernization in essayism and historical-economic thought.

Two main questions have motivated the curators in composing the set of texts: What makes the ideas of sovereignty and modernity unique in Brazilian society? How did the dialectic between modernity and tradition materialize in actions, government plans, public policies, social thought, science, culture, and education, and what are its consequences?

Based on these questions, the dossier explores "challenges and impasses, especially in the contributions that focus on paradoxes and antinomies of social thought in Brazil," explains Adorno. With this perspective, the essays address "the tensions between memory, politics, and the writing of history by highlighting different narratives about Independence as a fact and historical process." One of the texts with this concern is "Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later," by Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira, from USP's Paulista Museum.

In the article "State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy," Andre Botelho, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Grabriela Nunes Ferreira, from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), discuss decisive moments in which the relations between State and society were problematized, highlighting themes such as political centralization and decentralization, the adequacy of political institutions to the characteristics of society, and the confrontation of the democratic issue.

Close to the present, "2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles," by Camila Rocha, from FFLCH, and Jonas Medeiros, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), points out how the "crisis of the democratic pact of 1988 originated from new dynamics fostered by the Brazilian post-bourgeois public sphere itself, which developed in the midst of the national redemocratization process."

Commenting on the Brazilian reality of the last 20 years, Kabengele Munanga, a professor retired from FFLCH, reflects on issues regarding diversity. He highlights that conflicts are notably translated into racist and xenophobic practices that engender the violation of the human rights of different people and the resulting social inequalities. The question that arises, he says, is how to establish equity and equality of treatment "without first recognizing the collective existence of the bearers of differences and their identities."

The role of science in the constitution of the Nation and the contribution of the arts in the conformation of the so-called "late modernisms" are analyzed in the articles "The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future," by three researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), and "The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s," by Ivan Francisco Marques, from FFLCH.

Among the texts that discuss post-Independence historiography, the editor cites the "stimulating overview of reference works" present in the interview given to the curators by historian Carlos Guilherme Mota, also retired from FFLCH, and founder and first director of the IEA.

The dossier also brings together analyzes of facts and social processes relevant to the understanding of the Bicentennial. Among them, Adorno lists:

• the construction of the public sphere since 1822 and its current crises,
• the social dynamics that establish the existence of armed groups with hegemonic ambitions over territories, populations, and illegal markets,
• the destruction and degradation of national biomes, beckoning an environmental catastrophe,
• and the patterns of socio-spatial accumulation and segregation in São Paulo, leveraged by large-scale real estate operations.

Education

"Classics of Education" is the dossier that complements issue #105. According to Adorno, the articles address problems and dilemmas of contemporary education from a specific angle: "Books and authors that, when becoming 'classics' in this field, guided strategic themes for understanding relationships between actors, everyday school life, changing values, challenges in unique periods such as those of pandemics, and, above all, for the formulation of educational public policies."

The texts analyze aspects of works by Israel Scheffler, Maria Helena Souza Patto, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, José Mário Pires Azanha, John Goodlad, Michel Foucault, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, and Roger Chartier. The authors of the articles are researchers from UNIFESP, UFRJ, USP's School of Education (FE), the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE), Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU).

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Bicentennial of Independence

3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022 - Antônio David, Alexandre Macchione Saes, and Carlos A. de M. R. Zeron
Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later - Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira
State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy - André Botelho and Gabriela Nunes Ferreira
2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles - Camila Rocha and Jonas Medeiros
Country of the Future? Time Conflicts and Historicity in Contemporary Brazil - Rodrigo Turin
On "Misplaced" Concepts, Historiography, and Ideas - Carlos Guilherme Mota
The World and Diversity: Issues in Debate - Kabengele Munanga
Armed Domains and Their Criminal Governments: A Non-phantasmic Approach to "Organized Crime" - Jacqueline de Oliveira Muniz and Camila Nunes Dias
The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s - Ivan Francisco Marques
Brazil, 200 Years of Devastation: What Will Remain of the Country after 2022? - Luiz Marques
São Paulo: One Hundred Years of an urban Growth Machine - Mariana Fix and Pedro Fiori Arantes
The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future - Nísia Trindade Lima, Dominichi Miranda de Sá, Ingrid Casazza, and Carolina Arouca

Classics of Education

Convergences: Thinking about Teaching and Inequality with Scheffler, Patto, Bourdieu, and Passeron - Juliana de Souza Silva, Katiene Nogueira da Silva, and Renata Marcílio Cândido
“Thinking with” José Mário Pires Azanha about Elaborating Brazil’s Educational Future - Patrícia Aparecida do Amparo, Ana Laura Godinho Lima, and Denice Barbara Catani
Education, Society, and Democracy: John Goodlad’s Legacy - Domingos Fernandes
Michel Foucault in (De)formations: On the Classics and their Uses in the History of Education - José Cláudio Sooma Silva e José Gonçalves Gondra
Science, Evolution, and Education in Herbert Spencer - Décio Gatti Junior e Leonardo Batista dos Santos
Teaching Away from School: Essay on the Representations in E. Durkheim and R. Chartier - Roni Cleber Dias de Menezes e Vivian Batista da Silva

The 104th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados brings the centenary of the 1922 Modern Art Week, the role of research at universities, and the 60 years of the creation of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) as its central themes. The digital version is available on the SciELO platform (Portuguese only).

The opening dossier, dedicated to the Modern Art Week, features articles that evaluate how timely this "complex and plural" movement still is, being "one of the most important movements in Brazilian culture," according to the publication's editor, Sérgio Adorno.

Regarding the landmark of the last century, "a lot has been written about the main events, the participants, the motivations, the reference works, the polemics that surrounded it, the noisy reception, and the nonconformity with the dominant traditionalism in the arts." Estudos Avançados, however, "did not intend to repeat what is already known, but to add new contributions," says Adorno.

In the article "Notes on Modernism," Eduardo Jardim exposes two different times in the 1920s as two ways of conceiving modernism between the incorporation of modern languages of European influence and the adoption of national traits in the art produced in the country.

The original myths about the rediscovery of Brazil and the resumption of colonial roots as achievements of modernism are themes present in the article "The Reinvention of the Week and the Myth of the Discovery of Brazil," by Rafael Cardoso. The author also brings up critical disputes around the Modern Art Week.

Further contributions explore Mário de Andrade's achievements in the movement, such as his way of thinking about Brazilian unity and the diversity of "Brazils." In this sense, the project of a country that invested in the ethnic and cultural mixture through art is analyzed. The article "Brazil and Mário de Andrade's Brazils: the End of the Apprentice Tourist?" points out how the country was questioned due to the need to determine cultural differences to face internal inequalities.

The dossier also has articles addressing similarities and differences between Argentine and Brazilian avant-gardes in the 1920s, and the importance of clothing for Brazilian modernism.

Research Universities

The articles in the second dossier address the contribution of universities and research to the country's development in several areas, a "current and inexhaustible" issue that "raises polemics and divergent positions," as Adorno states.

According to the article that opens the dossier, "Research and Graduate Studies in Brazil: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," written by Simon Schwartzman, the distribution profile of researchers and graduate courses in Brazil started to follow the profile of enrollment in undergraduate courses from the 2000s onwards. With an analysis of the characteristics of the system and the occupation of graduate students, the author concludes that the expansion of the research system responded to the demands for titling of higher education professors in detriment of the country's research priorities.

The second article ("The Abandonment of the 'University Spirit' in the Construction of the Armando de Sales Oliveira Campus") brings the history of the foundation and the fundamentals of USP, and considers the absence of a university spirit. It highlights the lack of an integrating environment in the project by not taking the academic aspect into account.

Closing the dossier, the article "The University as a Reliable Source for the Formulation and Improvement of Public Policies" evaluates the influence of USP on public policies. The analysis is based on the University's performance during the COVID-19 pandemic and its scientific production in various areas of knowledge during this period, which served as a source for the implementation and evaluation of public policies.

60 Years of FAPESP

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP,) the journal features articles that address the solid role of the institution in proposing decisive strategies for the development of the country based on knowledge. Despite facing repeated threats to its assets and budget, the Foundation stands out in the articles for its budgetary and administrative management, and for the execution of its activities.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

100 Years of the Modern Art Week

Eduardo Jardim
Rafael Cardoso
Pedro Duarte
Eduardo Coelho
Ivan Francisco Marques
Marcos Antônio de Moraes and Rodrigo de Albuquerque Marques
Gênese Andrade
Flávia Camargo Toni and Camila Fresca
Carolina Casarin
Carlos Sandroni

Research Universities

Simon Schwartzman
Caio Dantas
Vahan Agopyan and Glauco Arbix

60 Years of FAPESP

Marco A. Zago and José R. Drugowich de Felício
Jacques Marcovitch
Hernán Chaimovich

The digital and printed versions of issue #103 of IEA's journal Estudos Avançados are available to be downloaded and purchased. It includes three dossiers: "Culture and Society," "Hybrids of Knowledge II," and "Religious Spaces II." The articles can also be accessed on the SciELO platform (Portuguese only).

According to the editor, Sérgio Adorno, "Culture and Society" contains texts that "revisit relevant themes of our contemporaneity." From different methodological perspectives applied to various thematic and conceptual territories, the dossier "seeks to approach the possible or perhaps even lost meanings of the present times."

Of the nine articles, seven address themes raised by the works of writers Carolina Maria de Jesus, Franz Kafka, Artur Azevedo, João Guimarães Rosa, William Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Hermann Block. The other two discuss political aspects involved in the language of Brazilian psychoanalysts and the political-cultural performance of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute (BACI,) which operated in Washington from 1964 to 2007.

In "(Ob)scene and Spectacle in Carolina Maria de Jesus: Reflections from her Unpublished Manuscripts," Valéria Rosito, from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ,) reflects on the conflicts that de Jesus has faced from her professionalization as a writer with the publication of the best seller Quarto de Despejo.

According to Rosito, there is a "clash between a polished vision of the person of the favela (or favelada) as a first-person witness and a "reporter" as opposed to the prismatic desire of the author for creative writing disjointed from the references that were immediate."

Kafka is the subject of two articles. In "Belonging/Not-Belonging in Franz Kafka: An Example to Remember," Celeste Ribeiro-de-Sousa, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), points out the decisive psychic, social, and historical circumstances that have led the author to include his particular feelings of "belonging/not-belonging" in his writings. Although there are many ways to explore the author's writings, the idea of "belonging/not-belonging" is presented as a key to understanding not only the man and the writer but also the texts he has written, according to Ribeiro-de-Sousa.

As part of a study on re-readings of the myth of Odysseus, the article "The Sirens that Keep Silent (or Not)," by Adelia Bezerra de Menezes, from the Institute of Language Studies at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), addresses the short story "The Silence of the Sirens," by Kafka, based on Walter Benjamin's ideas about the impossibility of traditional narrative due to the degradation of experience. For the researcher, Kafka astonishingly anticipates what is currently in force in Brazil in a century: "The era of post-truth, of fake news, of the overwhelming demoralization of politics, of lies as a strategy."

"From Father to Son: Transmission, Permanence, and Change in João Guimarães Rosa's 'The Third Bank of the River'," by Belinda Mandelbaum, from USP's Institute of Psychology, discusses the "transmission chains" present in Guimarães Rosa's narratives. The argument uses a framework of bond psychoanalysis, which considers the family as a privileged space for the transmission of messages between generations. In the article, the processes of permanence and change in the narratives' chain of transmission, that include the literary work and the readers, are approximated to the disorders of transmission between the father, the son, the story, and the readers in the short story "The Third Bank of the River."

The two articles that do not refer to literary works maintain the concern of the dossier in relating cultural aspects to the characteristics and challenges of Brazilian society. In "The Language of the Other and Ours: Politics, Translation, and Psychoanalysis," Paulo Sérgio de Souza Jr., also from UNICAMP's Institute of Language Studies, discusses the inadequacy and elitism of the language used by Brazilian psychoanalysts, based on translations that are poorly produced and / or originated from a language other than the original of renowned authors of the European psychoanalytic thought.

Dária Jaremtchuk, from USP's School of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (EACH), is the author of "The Brazilian-American Cultural Institute as a Political-Cultural Tool." According to her, following the history of the BACI, created in 1964, allows you to learn about aspects of Brazilian cultural diplomacy in the United States during the Cold War. The hypothesis that she adopts is that the spaces of art and culture have functioned as important environments of social articulation in diplomatic and commercial activities, with the BACI being a very revealing case of this process. "However, this reality changes in the contemporary globalized world, as artistic and cultural spaces seem to have ceased to be vital for the practice of cultural diplomacy, as the closing of the institute reveals."

The other two sets of texts in the issue complement the dossiers started in issue #102 of the journal. "Hybrids of Knowledge II" brings analyzes of new topics within the scope of issues addressed by IEA's Environment and Society Research Group," including energy governance, environmental impact assessment, nature and impact of participatory research in the production of knowledge, and hybrid nature of the concept of cultural heritage. "Religious Spaces II," on the other hand, adds articles on the formation of museum collections and institutional collecting, the contributions of artists such as Cândido Portinari, Mino Cerezo Barredo, and Claudio Pastro to the formation of collections in the state of São Paulo, and the architectural legacies and their transformations over time.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Culture and Society

Valéria Rosito
João Roberto Faria
Paulo Sérgio de Souza Jr.
Celeste Ribeiro-de-Sousa
Belinda Mandelbaum
Adelia Bezerra de Meneses
Juliana P. Perez, Daniel R. Bonomo, and Danilo C. Serpa
Andrio J. R. dos Santos
Dária Jaremtchuk

Hybrids of Knowledge II

Andrea Lampis, João Marcos Mott Pavanelli, Ana Lía del Valle Guerrero, and Célio Bermann
Evandro Mateus Moretto, Simone Athayde, Carolina Rodrigues da Costa Doria, Amarilis Lucia Casteli Figueiredo Gallardo, Neiva Cristina de Araujo, Carla Grigoletto Duarte, Evandro Albiach Branco, Sergio Mantovani Paiva Pulice, and Daniel Rondineli Roquetti
Marina Ribeiro Corrêa, Luciana Yokoyama Xavier, Leandra R. Gonçalves, Mariana Martins de Andrade, Mayara de Oliveira, Nicole Malinconico, Camilo M. Botero, Celene Milanés, Ofelia Pérez Montero, Omar Defeo, and Alexander Turra
Leandro L Giatti, Jutta Gutberlet, Renata Ferraz de Toledo, and Francisco Nilson Paiva dos Santos
Sílvia Helena Zanirato, Tatiana Gomes Rotondaro, Maria Letícia Mazzucchi Ferreira, and Cyril Isnarto

Religious Spaces II

Christian Mascarenhas
Andréa Franzoni Tostes
Márcio Luiz Fernandes
Hilda Souto e Márcio Luiz Fernandes
Ubiratan J. A. Silva

Issue #102 of IEA's quarterly publication, the journal Estudos Avançados, is now available (Portuguese only) for free download on the SciELO platform, featuring the dossiers "Energy and Environment," "Hybrids of Knowledge," and "Religious Spaces."

According to the editor, Sérgio Adorno, the multiple facets of the dossier "Energy and Environment" pose strategic questions for sustainable development. "Regardless of the complexity that the relations between energy and environment raise, the dossier addresses problems that have been mobilizing the attention of the scientific community, at least of informed public opinion." Part of the articles deal with case studies, "suggestive of broader trends that are underway in the domain of these relations" between energy and environment, he says.

Air quality

According to the article that opens the dossier, "Analysis of Air Quality Monitoring in Brazil," written by researchers from the Health and Sustainability Institute, IEA, and USP's Medical School (FM), only ten states and the Federal District monitor air quality. This is carried out through 371 active stations, 80% of them in the Southeast Region. Five of these states communicate monitoring data to the population in real time. The authors emphasize that the National Air Quality Network is still incomplete 30 years after its creation, "making it impossible for environmental agencies to adequately manage air quality."

Another article in the dossier, "Green Infrastructure to Monitor and Minimize the Impacts of Atmospheric Pollution," analyzes the role of trees in retaining particulate matter, one of the main air contaminants in cities, on their surface. The work has used samples of tree bark from five parks in the city of São Paulo.

The other five articles in the dossier address water integration on the Brazil-Uruguay border, the potential of the state of Rio Grande do Norte for the production of wind energy and the policies necessary for the production of this energy to be consolidated, the problems in the implementation of the Joint Urban Operation for the Port Region of Rio de Janeiro, the importance of biodiversity in the tropical forests of Africa and South America for the production of medicines, pesticides, and other products, and the approximation of the formulations of the Kaiowa and Guarani peoples of Mato Grosso do Sul to the reflections of political ecology.

Climate Adaptation

The second dossier, "Hybrids of Knowledge," brings together articles by members of IEA's research group Environment and Society and dialogues with the previous dossier by addressing issues such as climate adaptation at the local level (including a comparative study between Brazil and Portugal), and policies for water and water resources governance. The purpose of the dossier is "to promote the integration between different fields of knowledge from the perspectives of co-design, co-production, and co-dissemination," explains Adorno.

The article "Integrating Knowledge to Advance Climate Adaptation at the Local Level," written by researchers of USP, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and Waikato University, warns that climate adaptation is a particularly urgent challenge for decision makers at the municipal and regional levels, considering the gaps in the development of local responses such as lack of data and political will or resources.

Are climate change adaptation policies, plans, and strategies adequately focused on achieving justice, reducing inequalities, and demanding rights? The issue is discussed in the article "Climate Justice and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in Brazil and Portugal." The study analyzes the scientific production on climate justice in both countries and discusses how their adaptation strategies and policies incorporate justice-related components.

The themes of the other three articles in the dossier are the challenges of water governance from the concept of hydrosocial territory, how this governance takes place in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, and the conflicts of water and sanitation policies as well as the universalization of these services as a common.

The approach to the themes of the dossier "focuses on the multiplicity of actors, interests, and disputes, which makes it possible to assess impacts on the aggravation of social inequalities and on the impasses in the guarantees of human rights for the greatest number of citizens," states the editor. In addition, the articles' methodological, systemic, and interactive approaches allow "knowing and evaluating ongoing experiments and innovations, pointing to a more sustainable future adapted to the scarcity of resources in the context of global environmental changes."

Historical and artistic heritage

The dossier "Religious Spaces" brings together texts presented at a seminar organized by IEA's research group Time, Memory, and Belonging in November 2019. The event took stock of current studies on historical and artistic heritage preserved in religious and institutional Catholic spaces in Brazil.

From the context of connected global/local histories, the text "Encrypted/Connected Paths: Jesuit Heritage between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo" addresses the trajectories of destruction, dispersion, reconstruction, and preservation that marked the history of Jesuit heritage in the Southeast Region, particularly from the old schools in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and from mission locations on the coast of these states.

In additional four articles, the dossier also discusses the decoration of the São Miguel Arcanjo Chapel, located in the East Zone of the city of São Paulo, the formation of the Jesuit Sacred Art Museum in Embu das Artes, the establishment of Catholic spaces by the black population of São Paulo in the 19th century, and the artistic aspect of the restoration of the Brazilian Benedictine Congregation, promoted by the Congregation of Beuron through the work of members of the Beuron Art School.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Energy and Environment

Evangelina da M. P. A. de Araújo Vormittag, Samirys Sara Rodrigues Cirqueira, Hélio W. Neto, and Paulo H. N. Saldiva
Ana Paula G. Martins, Andreza P. Ribeiro, Maurício L. Ferreira, Marco Antonio G. Martins, Elnara M. Negri, Marcos Antônio Scapin, Anderson de Oliveira, Mitiko Saiki, Paulo H. N. Saldiva, and Raffaele Lafortezza
Fernanda de Moura Fernandes, Gilberto Loguercio Collares, and Rafael Corteletti
Gerbeson Carlos B. Dantas, Marcus V. S. Rodrigues, Leonardo M. X. Silva, Marisete D. de Aquino, and Antônio Clécio F. Thomaz
Eunice Helena S. Abascal and Carlos A. Bilbao
Paulo Roberto Feldmann
Spensy K. Pimentel

Hybrids of Knowledge

Michele D. Fontana, Fabiano de A. Moreira, Silvia Serrao-Neumann, Giulia Lucertini, Denis Maragno, and Gabriela M. Di Giulio
Pedro Henrique Campello Torres, Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti, Carla Gomes, Luísa Schmidt, Ana Lia Leonel, Sandra Momm, and Pedro Roberto Jacobi
Vanessa Lucena Empinotti, Natalia D. Tadeu, Maria Christina Fragkou, and Paulo Antonio de Almeida Sinisgalli
Mariana G. Arteiro da Paz, Ana Paula Fracalanza, Estela Macedo Alves, and Flávio J. Rocha da Silva
Pedro Roberto Jacobi, Marcos Buckeridge, and Wagner Costa Ribeiro

Religious Spaces

Renata Maria de Almeida Martins
Thais Cristina Montanari
Angélica Brito Silva
Fabrício Forganes Santos
Klency Kakazu de Brito Yang

Algorithms of applications and social networks, autonomous vehicles, automatic translation, facial recognition, machine learning, artificial neural networks, medical diagnosis... There are many concepts, technologies, and uses of artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly present in everyday life, a result of the great development of the field in the last decades.

In order to provide non-specialized audiences with a comprehensive view of this technological revolution, the 101st edition of the journal Estudos Avançados devotes its main dossier to the discussion of the current state, perspectives, and impacts of AI. The digital version (Portuguese only) is available for free at SciELO.

Composed of nine articles authored by 17 researchers from USP, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the dossier "Artificial Intelligence" analyzes the development of the field since its origin in the 1950s, its numerous applications, and the debates it raises in the scientific and technological scenario. They do not neglect "the risks, the associated ethical care that its massive employment requires, and the social, political, cultural, and moral implications that rapidly transform contemporary societies," as summarized by the publication's editor, sociologist Sérgio Adorno.

The opening of the dossier is dedicated to the methodological aspects of AI research, with an article by Fabio Gagliardi Cozman, from USP's Polytechnic School (EP). He explains that there are two "fundamentally different styles of approach to AI: on the one hand, the empirical style, strongly supported by observations about the biology and psychology of living beings and ready to embrace complicated architectures that emerge from the interaction of many disparate modules; on the other hand, an analytical style supported by general and organizing principles, interested in abstract conceptions of intelligence and assisted by mathematical and logical arguments."

According to Cozman, around 1980, the terms "scruffy" and "neat" were coined to respectively refer to these two styles of work in AI. This methodological divergence remains with the constant dilemma between "the search for rational artifacts based on clear principles or empirical artifacts that reproduce patterns," he says. His proposal is to invest in architectures based on principles of rationality that allow to simultaneously house several modules, many of which are based on massive data collection.

The concern with the form of AI development is shared by André Carlos Ponce de Leon Ferreira de Carvalho, from USP's Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science (ICMC): "What we have to decide now is no longer whether or not we will have AI, but how we will have it." To reduce possible risks "it is necessary to develop new AI algorithms or to use them in new and innovative ways, taking ethical, social, and legal issues into account," he points out.

Reasons for excitement

This new period of euphoria in relation to the possible benefits of using AI is due to three factors, according to Jaime Simão Sichman, from EP: the current low cost of processing and memory, the emergence of new paradigms such as deep neural networks, and the huge amount of data available on the internet due to the large use of resources such as networks and social media.

Sichman warns that there are potential risks in this "technology, as in any other, which can be provoked if the actors involved in the production and regulation of its use do not create an adequate space for discussing these issues."

According to Teresa Bernarda Ludermir, from UFPE's Computer Center, the "extraordinary" advance of AI in recent years and its importance in solving technological and economic problems is mainly due to machine learning techniques, especially the use of neural networks. In addition to addressing the current status of the area, and its research challenges and opportunities, her article mentions social impacts and ethical issues arising from the uses of AI.

The changes that have occurred in AI since its emergence, especially regarding educational systems, are the object of the panorama presented by Rosa Maria Vicari, from UFRGS's Institute of Informatics. The researcher recalls that in 1980 and 1993 "the applications were interesting, but did not provide adequate answers in terms of language comprehension and medical diagnosis." In the last two decades, however, "the applications have remained, but there have been advancements in automatic translation, image recognition, cancer diagnosis. and autonomous cars."

Some applications

Nine researchers from UNICAMP's Institute of Computing are the authors of an article on digital forensic science, which is the use of scientific methods and techniques for investigating crimes in the digital world. According to them, the current importance reflects from the challenges resulting from the emergence of social media and the immense volume of data that they generate, intensified by the advances of AI. Such amount of data is analyzed using AI techniques. The article presents challenges and opportunities associated with the application of these techniques, and examples of their use in real situations.

A specific case in which AI plays a fundamental role is natural language processing (NLP), which is essential for analyzing large amounts of data contained in texts, among other uses. The topic is discussed by Marcelo Finger, from USP's Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME), in particular regarding the Portuguese language. He explains that the NLP is at the confluence of areas such as computer science, linguistics, logic, psychology, among others, and requires a multidisciplinary approach by nature.

However, all the advancements in NLP with the consequent generation of products and the facilitation of a series of services "seem to have brought no substantial information about the human process of reproducing and communicating through language," says the researcher. Following this line of reasoning, "natural language processing would have dissociated itself from language study." There are those who say that "technology will eventually kill the traditional study of language," he adds. For Finger, these two views are exaggerated: "Linguistics is absolutely fundamental for the area of language processing, since this computational task does not explain the language, and does not help to predict or explain the natural evolution of languages."

Ana Bazzan, from UFRGS's Informatics Institute, analyzes the use of AI to improve transportation systems. For her, the application of AI in the service can improve the use of the existing infrastructure in order to better meet the demand of displacement of people and goods. Her article addresses two tasks in which AI has relevant contributions in the sector: the control of traffic lights and the choice of routes.

Impacts on labour

The dossier ends with an article by Ricardo Abramovay, a senior professor at USP's Institute of Energy and Environment (IEE), on one of the issues that most concern society with regard to AI: the loss of job positions. The author states that, although the most advanced forms of the digital revolution (AI, machine learning, and the internet of things) are replacing a considerable part of the workforce, "this is not where its greatest threat lies." The problem is that this revolution "is strengthening a social polarization of the labour market that goes against the foundations of the welfare state in the 20th century," he says.

According to Abramovay, "the place of work in the cohesion of contemporary societies involves a fundamental philosophical discussion: what work is, what employment is, but more than that, how we can make our capacity for cooperation result in a better life for everyone in ways that are not unworthy and undervalued for the overwhelming majority, alongside creative and uplifting activities for a small minority."

Other sections

In addition to the main dossier, the issue includes an encouraging study on the diversity of higher education institutions in Brazil, a set of texts on urban agriculture, and reviews of five editorial releases.

In terms of pursued objectives and obtained results, this diversity requires an effort to classify the institutions by similarity of profile, establishing different evaluation criteria for each group. This is what the article "For a Typology of Brazilian Higher Education: Test of Conception," by Simon Schwartzman, Roberto Lobo Silva Filho, and Rooney Coelho, proposes.

According to the authors, the differences between the institutions are not recognized with all the implications by the legislation or by the evaluation system adopted by the Ministry of Education. The article presents a typology proposal that seeks to clearly identify these differences in order to serve as a basis for an information system and evaluation procedures.

To this end, the researchers propose to group institutions with similar profiles from the point of view of their size, legal nature, and involvement in teaching and postgraduate activities, in addition to verifying the extent to which this differentiation corresponds with the diversity of characteristics of professors, students, and their segment. The final part of the study discusses some of the implications of the typology for the higher education assessment system and for improving the quality and performance of higher education in the country.

Urban agriculture

According to the editor of Estudos Avançados, the articles on "Urban Agriculture" address specific issues connected with each other as modalities and alternatives for the promotion of food security.

The six texts discuss the multifunctionality, production, and commercialization of urban agriculture, its association with agroecology, the importance of community gardens and backyard gardens, and the contradictions of locavorism (food activism that emerged in the past decade and privileges the consumption of locally produced food) in the face of the experiences of urban agriculture in São Paulo.

Reviews

A set of six reviews addresses works with varied themes, including geology, history, intellectual production, and literature. Ricardo Soares and Wilson Machado write about "The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit: A Guide to the Scientific Evidence and Current Debate," which gathers data from the 35th International Geological Congress, held in 2016. Camila Ferreira da Silva and Janderson Bragança Ribeiro review Sobre o Autoritarismo Brasileiro ("About Brazilian Authoritarianism"), by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz. Fabio Mascaro Querido addresses Seja como For: Entrevistas, Retratos e Documentos ("Whichever Way: Interviews, Portraits, and Documents"), by Roberto Schwarz. Mariana Holms analyzes O Homem que Aprendeu o Brasil ("The Man Who Learned Brazil"), by Ana Cecília Impellizieri Martins (2020). Cecilia Marks writes about Franco Moretti's O Romance de Formação ("The Romance of Formation").

The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on economy, labor market, educational and financial systems, environment, research on drugs, and agribusiness are analyzed in the dossier of the new issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, whose digital version (Portuguese only) is available for free at SciELO.

The publication's editor, sociologist Sérgio Adorno, points out that the journal reaches its 100th issue without any interruption in the four-monthly periodicity, maintaining the editorial line defined from the beginning, which focuses on "our contemporaneity and the challenges that the present proposes for the consolidation of fairer societies with quality of life."

This harmony with the problems of the present is revealed with the continuity of the dossier on Covid-19, started in the previous issue. Under the title "Impacts of the Pandemic," the set of texts includes 12 articles, of which five are the result of a cycle of virtual meetings on possible scenarios after the pandemic. It has been organized by the IEA, USP's Dean of Research, and the São Paulo State Academy of Sciences (ACIESP).

According to Adorno, the characteristics that stand out in the articles are the density of the adopted perspectives, their timeliness, the basis on solid updated bibliography and on documentary reference sources, and the choice of fundamental issues present in the public debate, including current questions in the common and everyday conversations.

Part of the dossier includes discussions on medicines and treatment, health, biodiversity, climate change, and policies to protect the Amazon. "There are also important reflections on economic impacts, especially in the productive chains of commodities and value, food, goods, and services," he highlights. "In social terms, reflections on the serious impacts on the labor market, as well as on education, stand out at all levels."

The issue also features texts commemorating the centenary of the births of sociologist Florestan Fernandes and economist Celso Furtado, and the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, in addition to articles on the 100 years after the death of Max Weber.

Adorno also calls attention to a dialogue between Celso Furtado and Fernand Braudel, and to the audio of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 Appassionata as interpreted by pianist Eduardo Monteiro.

At the end of the issue there is an essay on the origin and constitution of the institutes for advanced study existing in the world and their role in the production of cutting-edge knowledge.

Issue #100 is dedicated to the publication's previous editor, Alfredo Bosi, who, in the words of Adorno, "ensured the preservation of this heritage from USP and the IEA for three decades (January 1989 - August 2019)."

Dossier

Medicines

According to Leonardo Ferreira and Adriano Andricopulo, both from the São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC-USP) and the Center for Research and Innovation in Biodiversity and Pharmaceuticals (CIBFar), there are about 2,000 records of clinical trials for investigating approved drugs and other possibilities against COVID-19, including small molecules and biological drugs, not counting vaccines.

However, "drug repositioning has not led to any new antiviral treatment against Covid-19." According to the researchers, the most realistic scenario comprises the development of specific antivirals against SARS-CoV-2 for the safe and effective treatment against the disease.

Education

The impacts on education are analyzed in an article by Bernardete Angelina Gatti, a member of the advisory committee to the Chair of Basic Education (a partnership between the IEA and the Itaú Social Foundation) and senior researcher at the Carlos Chagas Foundation. Gatti discusses the issue of students' learning during the pandemic, the diversity of social realities, the situation of teachers and managers, and curricular, relational and socio-emotional aspects related to isolation and return to schools. She also ponders about the changing possibilities in the educational offer in basic education networks.

Cláudia Costin, a member of IEA's Board and director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Educational Policies (CEIPE) at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, addresses trends in basic education in Brazil in the face of the conditions imposed by the pandemic, of the commitments that Brazil assumed in 2015 in relation to sustainability and, in particular, to the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (to provide quality education) and the so-called Industry 4.0, which tends to rapidly eliminate jobs.

Environment

For physicist Paulo Artaxo, from USP's Institute of Physics (IF), the world and the humanity face three important crises: 1) that of health, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) the loss of biodiversity; and 3) the climatic emergency. He points out that the three crises are linked despite having important differences, "but they all have strong social and economic impacts and affect the planet globally."

For him, the pandemic has revealed deficiencies in global governance and the climate crisis "has potential for very strong socio-economic damage, reflecting in effects that are already easily visible." As for the loss of biodiversity, he mentions the risk to food security and to the balance of the terrestrial system. "The Amazon, for example, contains thousands of viruses in its fauna and flora. The unrestrained process of the region's occupation will possibly make new viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 come into contact with our society."

It is necessary to recognize the link between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health, and thus join efforts in order to prevent the emergence of new pandemics, warn Carlos Alfredo Joly, from the University of Campinas's Institute of Biology, and Helder Lima de Queiroz, from the Mamirauá Instituto for Sustainable Development.

In line with Artaxo's warning, Joly and Queiroz point out that countries like Brazil, "with high levels of social vulnerability and environmental degradation, have a high probability that new pathogens living in wild species will be transferred to human hosts."

Economy

For Simão Davi Silber, a senior professor at USP's School of Economics, Business, and Accounting (FEA), the pandemic has demonstrated how "exogenous adverse shocks in the economic system" disorganize the economy and create a mismatch between the economic world and the possible actions of the State. In his opinion, these actions fail to reach all economic agents to preserve them from the crisis and the result is the "destruction of companies, and of physical and human capital" that will no longer be recovered.

For Camila Villard Duran, from USP's Faculty of Law (FD), however, the international financial market found a way to sustain itself during the pandemic thanks to the consolidation of a model of global monetary cooperation. According to the researcher, the hierarchical network of operations called foreign exchange swaps, headed by the American central bank Federal Reserve (the Fed), "was the legal arrangement structured to support the functioning of the global financial market and its currency par excellence: the Eurodollar."

The reconfiguration of global value chains is the theme of the article by Afonso Fleury, from USP's Polytechnic School (EP), and Maria Tereza Leme Fleury, from FEA-USP and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Both analyze the evolution of these chains - orchestrated by multinationals with the support of digital technologies -, how governments and companies are reacting to the difficulties imposed by the pandemic, and how the chains will be reconfigured.

Labour

If the financial market has found a way to preserve itself, the same does not apply to the labor market. According to sociologist Maria Aparecida Bridi, from the Federal University of Paraná, the health crisis caused by SARS-CoV-2 "has increased its fragility as it has been undergoing a rapid deterioration process in the last four years in Brazil."

In her article, she discusses the various aspects of the labor market scenario in the context of the pre-pandemic economic crisis, the indicators during the pandemic, and "the challenges imposed on unionism resulting from the intensification of the neoliberal agenda in the last four years."

Agribusiness

The scope and depth of the crisis resulting from the pandemic on agriculture and agribusiness in Brazil are discussed in the article written by Sergio Schneider, Abel Cassol, Alex Leonardi, and Marisson Marinho. They also look at the effects of the pandemic on family farming, the meat processing sector, and food distribution.

If, on the one hand, they point to the possibility of greater international insertion of Brazilian agribusiness, on the other hand they identify potential problems in domestic supply and possible price increases, as well as "food inflation, which results from both increased demand and production costs due to exchange devaluation, representing a stimulus to exports."

Food under the impact of SARS-CoV-2 is the subject of an article by three other researchers: Bernardete de Melo Franco, Mariza Landgraf, and Uelinton Manoel Pinto. The study is dedicated to answering whether food and its packaging can cause COVID-19, whether the industry and the food sector can be responsible for the spread of the virus, and what preventive measures consumers can take.

Dedicated to the COVID-19 victims, the 99th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados presents a dossier on the pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus. The online version (Portuguese only) is available at SciELO.

According to sociologist Sérgio Adorno, editor of the publication, the object of the dossier is the complexity of the pandemic, reflected in the 17 articles written by 47 researchers from two dozen universities and research institutions in several Brazilian states.

"Its multiple aspects are addressed by experienced researchers through extensive investigations, some of which are produced in the effervescence of events, in the seemingly uninterrupted search for scientific responses, and by government plans to stop its natural course, fertilized by unfavorable social and political conditions," notes the editor.

He points out that the pandemic is above all a public health problem, involving different types of collectives, which are represented, for example, by groups with different degrees of vulnerability.

"Not without reason, the dossier addresses issues more properly situated in this domain, such as the norms of international and national regulatory bodies, and the race for the discovery of vaccines, the performance of tests, and consequent epidemiological modeling that enable the assessment of both scenarios and guidelines for prevention."

However, the pandemic also reveals the harsh social reality, accentuated by the "acute process of economic recession that, in societies like Brazil, means the worsening of social inequalities that are projected with greater intensity in the metropolises, as is the case of São Paulo," says Adorno.

He reinforces that the space studies of the dossier demonstrate how inequalities affect the poorest, the black population, and the residents of neighborhoods where populations with low education and income predominate, "the most vulnerable to contamination and deaths" by COVID-19.

Other topics addressed by the dossier have been highlighted by Adorno, such as issues regarding the right to privacy in the face of intense data tracking and monitoring, the dangers of spreading Sars-Cov-2 in Brazilian biomes, and the absence of government policies capable of containing the pandemic's progress in the country.

The dossier begins with an article by the collaborator in the organization of the journal's set of texts, José da Rocha Carvalheiro, a professor of social medicine at USP's School of Medicine in Ribeirão Preto (FMRP) and a member of IEA's Innovation and Competitiveness Observatory.

In the article, Carvalheiro states that COVID-19 in Brazil will not be a disease limited in time, but in space: "An endemic disease or, perhaps, a collection of endemic diseases with different characteristics spread across the national territory. Due to the diversity, the control proposals will inevitably have their own characteristics. This requires a coordination effort and political skill on the part of the leaders."

The effort of the journal to collaborate with the academic and public debate about COVID-19 and its consequences does not end in the current issue. Issue #100, to be launched in the next four months, will feature articles on the impact of the pandemic in areas such as (national and international) economy, international relations, education, labor market, agriculture, food, and engineering.

Youth

Another highlight of the issue is a set of articles on the Brazilian youth, a topic addressed by Estudos Avançados for the first time. Organized with the collaboration of Professor Marilia Pontes Sposito, from USP's School of Education (FE) and co-author of one of the articles, the section "Portrait of Youth" contains six texts written by a dozen education and sociology researchers from USP, the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), the University of Brasília (UnB), Pará State University (UEPA), UNISINOS, and the Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL).

According to Adorno, the section "deals with an issue that is always present in public debates: youth as a social matter." Despite the variety of topics covered, he identifies "the effort to review theses that seemed consolidated in the specialized literature based on original investigations" as an axis that articulates all contributions.

With regard to the educational scope, there are articles on the participation of high school students in the institutional plan of schools (based on the results of research on the subject in urban centers in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Spain), the difficulties for schooling of the Brazilian youth that emerged since the 1990s, and what the occupation of schools in Rio Grande do Sul in May and June 2016 has represented for its protagonists.

The section also features articles on public performance through the Facebook profiles of young conservatives, youth cultural production on the outskirts of Fortaleza, and the policies and proposals for the professional training of young people and their insertion in the labour market in the last three decades.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Covid-19 Pandemic

José da Rocha Carvalheiro
Cláudio Maierovitch Pessanha Henriques and Wagner Vasconcelos
Paulo Marchiori Buss, Santiago Alcázar, and Luiz Augusto Galvão
Glauco Arbix
Carmen Phang Romero Casas, Julio Silva, Rodolfo Castro, Marcelo Ribeiro-Alves, and Carolina Mendes Franco
Naomar de Almeida Filho
Raul Borges Guimarães, Rafael de Castro Catão, Oséias da Silva Martinuci, Edmur Azevedo Pugliesi, and Patricia Sayuri Silvestre Matsumoto
Marcos Silveira Buckeridge and Arlindo Philippi Jr.
Vinicius Carvalho Jardim and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge
Gabriela Capobianco Palhares, Alessandro Santiago dos Santos, Eduardo Altomare Ariente, and Jefferson de Oliveira Gomes
André Luis Acosta, Fernando Xavier, Leonardo Suveges Moreira Chaves, Ester Cerdeira Sabino, Antonio Mauro Saraiva, and Maria Anice Murebe Sallum
Sandra Caponi
Márcia Pereira Alves dos Santos, Joilda Silva Nery, Emanuelle Freitas Goes, Alexandre da Silva, Andreia Beatriz Silva dos Santos, Luís Eduardo Batista, and Edna Maria de Araújo
Eugênio Bucci
Fernando Xavier, João Rodrigo Windischi Olenscki, André Luis Acosta, Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, and Antonio Mauro Saraiva
Marcos Antônio Mattedi, Eduardo Augusto Werneck Ribeiro, Maiko Rafael Spiess, and Leandro Ludwig
José Eli da Veiga

Portrait of Youth

Marilia Pontes Sposito, Elmir de Almeida, and Felipe de Souza Tarábola
Adriano Souza Senkevics and Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Livia de Tommasi and Maria Carla Corrochano
Glória Diógenes
Wivian Weller and Lucélia de Moraes Braga Bassalo
Luís Antonio Groppo and Rodrigo Manoel Dias da Silva