The threats to social life caused by the advance of man on ecosystem boundaries in the last two centuries have contributed to the emergence of movements committed to reconnect ethics and economics, society and nature. The idea will be the starting point of the exhibition of Ricardo Abramovay, professor of USP’s Economics, Administration and Accounting Faculty (FEA) at the conference “The Human Being and Nature”. Held by the IEA-USP, the event will take place on September 3, at 3 pm, in the Congregation Room of USP’s Institute of International Relations (IRI).

To discuss this approximation, Abramovay will address the changes raised by new forms of decentralized social cooperation, and by scientific achievements and innovative technologies, which, according to him, "have begun to revolutionize the way matter, energy and biotic resources are used in contemporary societies."

The exhibition will focus on two key issues: 1) Does the environmental awareness question the traditional view of science as the controller of nature? 2) Can the awareness of environmental problems produce a new sense of collective life?

This will be the third conference of the cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”, coordinated by Bernardo Sorj, visiting professor at the IEA-USP. The panelists will be Dalia Maimon, a professor at the Institute of Economics (IE) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and John Wilkinson, a professor at the Department of Development, Agriculture and Society (DDAS) of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). Moderation will be in charge of Sorj.

EXHIBITOR

Ricardo Abramovay is a professor at IRI and at FEA, where he coordinates the Center for Social and Environmental Economics (NESA). His research is focused on economic sociology, ecological economics and sustainable development, especially on the behavior of social actors against contemporary social and environmental challenges, and processes of transition to a low carbon economy. Abramovay is the author of “Muito Além da Economia Verde” ("Far Beyond the Green Economy") (2012) and “Lixo Zero: Gestão de Resíduos Sólidos para uma Sociedade Mais Próspera” ("Zero Waste: Solid Waste Management for a More Prosperous Society") (2013).

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

In a text that ponders the metaphor of God being a sphere whose the center is everywhere, Jorge Luis Borges begins by saying that, “It may be that universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors.”

In our own time, however, soccer as a representation of Brazil is seemingly not a valid metaphor to talk about the country. At least not in the eyes of almost every participant of the Debate in Two Halves: The Phantasmagoria of Defeat – Soccer as Metaphor, held by IEA-USP on July 25. Throughout the discussions, metonymy was the prevailing figure of speech for contemporary Brazilian soccer, a part that represents the whole of everything that is wrong in the country.

Production of knowledge

Opening the debate, IEA-USP’s director, Martin Grossmann, said that soccer is a complexity in itself, but one that allows us to establish bridges with society, with what it means to be Brazilian and with Brazil’s role in the world. For him, the fact that soccer is suitable to build up metaphors and analogies grants it the power to produce knowledge.

First-half

Another important feature of soccer, according to Grossmann, is that it facilitates relationships: “In England, the first conversation topic when two people meet is the weather; in Brazil, it is soccer.”

In view of the importance of soccer and of the derisory performance of the Brazilian team at the World Cup held in Brazil, with the demeaning defeat to Germany by 7x1 and to the Netherlands in the third place match, IEA-USP decided to organize a broad debate on the possible effects of this debacle on Brazilian self-esteem and on the image the country has tried to project internally and externally in recent years.

The debate brought together scholars from IEA-USP, School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP), Paraná Federal University, Princeton University (USA), Museum of Soccer, University of Oldenburg (Germany), Institute of Education and Research (Insper) and a filmmaker.

Pro and con the metaphor

Renato Janine Ribeiro

Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at FFLCH-USP and coordinator of IEA-USP’s Research Group on The Future Questions Us, moderated the debate and made the initial remarks in both "innings."

Seeing what happened in the World Cup, Janine asked the panelists to what extent soccer is or is not a metaphor of Brazilian society, especially at a time when the country is facing a polarized presidential campaign. He mentioned that the desire for a Brazilian victory at the World Cup might represent a metaphor for a victorious political project: “This would be the crowning of a period that began in 2003, with the election of the Workers’ Party to the presidency, during which we saw a process of inclusion of the masses.”

However, according to Janine, this political project began to falter last year, with the popular demands for quality public services. “The metaphor of the ‘Fifa standard’ meant winning the Cup inside and outside the stadiums. Those who cheered for or against were actually engaged in a political metaphor.” However, in his view, soccer ended up being demetaphorized.

Fortuna and virtù

With the Brazilian defeat, “a German team characterized by planning and organization was set against the decline of Brazilian soccer and the corresponding decline of the country.” Janine sees in Germany’s favorable outcome a hint of Machiavelli’s thought: fortuna would account for 50% of the outcome, in terms of either good or bad luck; the other 50% would be due to virtù, identified as a virile action: “When setting a goal, planning is a virtù.”

Martin Grossmann

Responding to Grossmann on whether in today’s Brazil, with its new middle class, the society that built democracy is capable of reforming it, Janine said that the media sets forth the discourse and arrogates its terms – as when it appropriated the manifestations of the Free Pass Movement, which were initially inspired by the Left but when they proved efficacious became demonstrations against corruption. “But there are some auspicious signs. There is freedom of expression and there is no tutelage over the freedom of the press, despite the media wanting to inhibit what takes place in the social networks.”

Internal malaise

In the morning session, the first half of the debate brought together, in addition to Janine and Grossmann, political scientist Bernard Sorj, visiting professor at IEA-USP; historian Luiz Carlos Ribeiro, from Paraná Federal University (UFPR); filmmaker Ugo Giorgetti; and anthropologist Daniela Alfonsi, content director of the Museum of Soccer.

Bernardo Sorj

Bernardo Sorj observed that Brazil was being transformed economically and politically into an emerging power, but then came June 2013 and its internal malaise showed through. “As the blazoned image was that of a better country, people wanted internal improvements as well and said: ‘Soccer is soccer, but there are more important things’.”

Sorj noted that, in 2013, only 30% of the population supported the World Cup, but when the event was about begin this percentage jumped to 60%. Be that as it may, he does not believe that the World Cup or the Olympics can serve as metaphors of Brazil’s public policies. One indication of this severance, in his opinion, was how fans reacted to the defeat to Germany: “Already at the end of the first half, the social networks on the internet were full of jokes about the 5x0 defeat so far.”

For him, what must be questioned is whether a developing democratic country should take it upon itself to organize an overly expensive international spectacle such as the World Cup. In his view, legacy benefits (access roads, public transportation, airport expansion etc.) are no excuse, for the public works should be carried out regardless. “This type of event is appropriate for rich countries or, perhaps, for authoritarian nations that require this kind of self-assertion,” he said.

Asked by Janine what should be done now that the public works have been executed, Sorj said that today people have democratic demands: “There is no need for expressions involving soccer or carnival; the country does not need this for its self-esteem. People are increasingly less willing to listen to speeches by nationalists on things that don’t matter.”

National identity: a project of the elites

Luiz Carlos Ribeiro

In his presentation, Luiz Carlos Ribeiro said that “soccer has symbolic power and has for long had its own historicity; thinking about it is to think about the history of Brazil itself.” For him, soccer was always used in the pursuit of a national identity, “as a way to legitimize our identity in the international scene.”

Ribeiro said that soccer was the most visible popular component in the development of Brazil’s national project and that this project has been slowly carried out over the years: “In the early 20th century, the political elite, the intellectuals and the ruling leaders sought to use it to build a national identity. Getúlio Vargas attempted the same thing with capoeira, but failed.” For him, the idea that soccer explains Brazil “is a project of the elites, an ideological and political project.”

For Ribeiro, many of the ideas introduced with Lula’s inauguration in 2003 were taken into account. “Dialectically, however, new expectations arose. The Workers’ Party and certain spheres of the international market provided a paradoxical experience: contemplation and frustration of expectations.”

This led to a redirection of expectations: “The national question lost momentum. In the case of social movements, the best example is June 2013. There was a tapering off of the need for a national identity.”

Transposing the situation to the sports arena, Ribeiro exemplified with the internationalization of soccer players, who until the early 1980s had an almost civic relationship with the national team. And this does not occur only in Brazil: “Messi does not hold the Argentinean mind’s eye as Maradona did.”

Before and after 1970

Ugo Giorgetti

Ugo Giorgetti said there is a “tendency to see soccer as something that traverses history monolithically.” For him, until the 1950s, soccer was somewhat restricted; it was not a sport for the masses. “In the field of art, soccer was wholly absent, except for a 1927 short story by José Alcântara Machado, ‘Corinthians (2) x Palestra (1)’." He recalled that in the 1950s the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo dedicated only one page to sports, in which soccer had to share space with chess, horseracing and boxing.

“The leaders were ignorant, despotic, the players were slaves. We won [the World Cup] in 1958 and things continued the same. Change only happened in 1970, when Brazilian society became a mass society. It was the first Cup in which everyone that was trying to sell something to someone got organized.”

According to the Giorgetti, the 2014 World Cup was foisted upon the people by television, advertising and the corporations. “The big winners were Odebrecht, the Globo Television Network, and TV manufacturers and retailers. The Cup was very good for those who scored big. The people, who derided the event on the social networks, put soccer in its proper place.”

The desire to be great

Daniela Alfonsi

Daniela Alfonsi explained that the curators of the Museum of Soccer always worked with the assumption that soccer is Brazil gone right: “The key issue for the curators is the notion that people’s desire to be great is materialized in soccer: the greatest number of Cups, the greatest number of victories, the biggest stadium, a breadbasket of soccer superstars etc. This remained true until this latest Cup, with 12 host cities and the slogan ‘The Cup of Cups’.”

The museum has special areas on the onset of soccer in Brazil, its expansion in society, a room called Rite of Passage, dedicated to the trauma of 1950, and the Cup Lounge, with a chronology and facts of soccer, society and the world regarding each Cup. According to Alfonsi, the space where visitors spend most time is the Cup Lounge.

Asked if the Rite of Passage room will undergo changes because of the defeat to Germany and what the contents of the Cup Lounge will be regarding 2014, Alfonsi said no decision has been made on the matter and that an interdisciplinary team will be convened to define how the two issues will be dealt with.

Second half

In the afternoon session, the debate brought together Janine, Grossmann and five scholars: political scientist Carlos Melo, from the Institute of Education and Research (Insper), and member of IEA-USP’s Research Group on Quality of Democracy; political scientist Fernando Mires, from the University of Oldenburg, Germany; professor of Spanish Literature Germán Labrador Méndez, from Princeton University, USA; anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, visiting professor at IEA-USP; and the philosopher and art critic Lorenzo Mammì, from FFLCH-USP.

In favor of the metaphor

For Carlos Melo, soccer is a deep, cultural, historical and conjunctural metaphor of the country: “Until the late 1980s, Brazil had two or three generations of soccer stars. But in other periods, the national team showed that having ace players is not enough, you must have an atmosphere. And we have no longer have superstars in soccer, music, politics, as we had in the latter half of the 20th century. "

Janine asked Melo about the role of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula as political leaders, as he believes there are no more leaders like Ulysses Guimarães. He also asked if Melo thought teamwork is superior to the individual talent of superlative players.

Carlos Melo

Melo answered by saying that Brazil has undergone a series of transformations, but the political system remains intact: “Politics is archaic compared to the rest of the country. In this sense, the organization of soccer is a portrait of Brazilian politics, or a metonymy of a larger reality. In addition to Ulysses Guimarães, you could have mentioned Juscelino Kubitschek, Getúlio Vargas. In the past, there were many leaders. Fernando Henrique and Lula may have been the last ones. Who will come after them? Fernando Henrique is more than 80 years old and Lula is approaching 70.”

Regarding the role of star players, Melo argued that it is not true that Brazil has always won because of them: “In 58, 62 and 70 we had teams. And the fact is that in soccer, as in politics, things have changed and teams only cut a sorry figure when they lose, not when they play badly.”

Soccer and politics as spectacle

For Germán Labrador Méndez, social life consists of games and “there is no distinction between the spectacle of soccer and the spectacle of politics; both are unpredictable.”

Germán Labrador Méndez

Méndez said that Spain won the European Championship in 2008 and the World Cup in 2010, “but no one felt the country possessed the soccer crown.” In his view, the 2008 victory was useful as an international reaffirmation, at a time when Spain was considered the 8th economy in the world.” In 2010, with the ongoing crisis, victory in the Cup served as a reaffirmation of collective aspirations. In 2012, with another victory in the European Championship, the situation was different; the country was in crisis, having to be rescued by the IMF, with material losses being consoled by immaterial victories.”

Méndez sees an important significance in the success of the Spanish teams in recent years, something suggesting an articulation, a joint coordination of the nations that comprise Spain.

With regard to 2014, he believes everything was prepared for a quixotic spectacle for the winning team of a country in crisis. “It was significant that the day Spain was eliminated by Chile coincided with the abdication of King Juan Carlos, ending a reign marked by scandals in its later years.”

Effects of evangelical growth

Massimo Canevacci

In his presentation, Massimo Canevacci said that psychology can instruct sports and that it is not possible to understand soccer without understanding the emotions at stake. He cited British anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), who said that each culture tries to formulate its emotions of the most stable way.

Canevacci sees a metonymic dimension in Brazilian soccer, with the increasing growth of a specific subset of players: those who profess the evangelical faith, accrediting to God the actions of men.

“In the game against Germany, it was as if God was no longer on the side of these players. When Brazil began to lose, the religious metaphor went into reverse, as if they were thinking that if God is not for someone, then God is against them.”

For Canevacci, Luiz Felipe Scolari is a good coach, but does not understand that a certain intervention is needed to affirm the ability to act of each player and of the team in general. “However, the growth of the evangelical outlook on life makes that impossible, as the actions are attributed to God.”

“There is a political and ideological struggle for evangelical hegemony that is transforming Brazil. What is this creating in the country? This kind of hegemony tends to homogenize everything, to the point of declaring war on African-Brazilian religiousness.”

Entertainment and its contingencies

Fernando Mires

Fernando Mires stressed that, besides being a game (“and everything that has rules is a game”), soccer is a form of entertainment, a “having something in-between.” But if that is so, “it is something between what? Life and death? Far and Near? If it’s entertainment, then I refuse the notion of metaphor. Every metaphor is a substitute. All words are metaphors, including the word metaphor.”

As they were conceived, it is not possible to explain soccer as a metaphor or politics as a metaphor. “The rules of soccer are applied more accurately than in politics and soccer is more democratic than many democracies.”

For Mires, politics does not determine soccer and soccer does not determine politics; both are subject to contingencies. “There is a mutual transference, which is neither egalitarian nor harmonious, but depends on the type of politics that we are talking about.”

Proceeding with the links between soccer and politics, Mires said that metaphors are related to time and space; they are associations that seek something that will never take place. “A lot has changed. Speeds are much greater, and not only in soccer. Furthermore, there is no longer a national soccer.”

Metonymy of backwardness

Lorenzo Mammì

Lorenzo Mammì, the last panelist of the debate, said that players develop their career abroad and are steeped into the culture of the teams they play for: “Even if the Brazilian national team won the Cup, it would have nothing to do with soccer that is played in Brazil.” For him, there are no longer soccer schools typical of each country; therefore, we can no longer define soccer as a metaphor for the culture of a country.

Another comparison that we must avoid, he said, is between spontaneity and organization: “There is nothing more difficult than organizing the parade of a samba school and the Brazilians are capable of it. Tourists visiting Rio think no one works there, but there are more people working than in Europe. The difference is that in Rio nobody dresses up to work.”

Mammì listed several deficiencies of Brazilian soccer: the decline of the Brazilian Championship; loss of players to soccer-irrelevant countries such as Ukraine; patriarchal structure; misalignment with the European soccer calendar and the consequent departure of players in the middle of the Brazilian Championship; lack of fiscal responsibility policies; inability to renew the project. However, for him “soccer is not a metaphor, but a metonymy for backwardness in other areas.”

Ribeiro asked Mammì how one should deal with the departure of Brazilian players to foreign teams, and if this has anything to do with the international market. Mammì believes that only a better organization of the Brazilian teams will give them bargaining power to retain their athletes.

Borges ends his text on the sphere whose center is everywhere by returning to the issue of metaphors, but with a twist: “It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.”  So, in view of what was presented and discussed by the panelists, it can be said that perhaps the history of the relationships between Brazilian soccer and the country is the history of different intonations of some given metonymies.

This issue will be addressed during the event A Debate in Two Halves: The Phantasmagoria of Defeat, Soccer as Metaphor, that USP’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA-USP) will hold on July 25, from 10 am to 4 pm, in the Ruy Leme Room, at the School of Economics, Administration and Accounting (FEA).

The debate aims to draw a parallel between soccer and society, discussing the sport’s role in the country’s national identity, within the context of a new geopolitics where Brazil is seen as a rising leader.

In the first-half, from 10 am to 12 pm, the panelists will be Ugo Giorgetti, filmmaker and columnist of the “Sports Edition” section of O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper; Daniela Alfonsi, anthropologist, director of the Museum of Soccer; Luiz Carlos Ribeiro, historian, professor of the History Department at Paraná Federal University; and Bernardo Sorj (via Web), sociologist and visiting professor at IEA-USP.

The second-half, from 2 to 4 pm, will feature Carlos Melo, political scientist, professor at the Institute of Education and Research (Insper) and member of IEA’s Research Group on the Quality of Democracy; Fernando Mires (via Web), political scientist, professor at the University of Oldenburg, Germany; Germán Labrador Méndez (via Web), professor of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Languages ​​and Cultures at Princeton University, USA; and Lorenzo Mammì, art critic and professor of the Department of Philosophy at USP.

Renato Janine Ribeiro, philosopher, will act as mediator. The debate is part of the ongoing discussions taking place within the Laboratory of Contemporary Societies, which began in June 2013 in the heat of the street demonstrations that overtook Brazil’s major cities.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. To register, please email leila.costa@usp.br. The event will also be broadcast live on the Web. FEA-USP is located at Av. Professor Luciano Gualberto, 908, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, SP (map).

English revision by Carlos Malferrari - Photo: Boris Mercado/Mídia Ninja

Diverse aspects of how the work ethics was built in Brazil will be discussed by sociologist Adalberto Cardoso, from the Institute of Social and Political Studies (Iesp) at Rio de Janeiro State University (Uerj), during the speech Multiple Modernities and the Metamorphoses of the Work Ethics in Brazil, on August 4, at 3 pm (GMT -3), in the Faculty Room of the Institute of International Relations (IRI). It will be the third event of the cycle Carioca Afternoons: The University of São Paulo Listens to Rio de Janeiro.

PROTESTANTISM

Cardoso notes that Protestant ethics and its links with the spirit of capitalism hold methodical work in high regard and, in keeping with good morals, advocate sacrificing the satisfaction of immediate needs for the sake of greater well-being in the future. He adds that Protestant ethics also see rewards as the result of exercising a “properly understood vocation.” Thus, “entrepreneurship, individualism, and rewards for merit and hard work have replaced the idea of ​​vocation in the bourgeois work ethic.”

SOCIALISM

The sociologist points out that an alternative work ethics has been built by organized labor in mutual support societies, labor unions and, later, political parties. This other ethics is based on “solidarity and class equality, avoiding the notion of merit and its religious justification. Its principle of justice is the socialist maxim, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’ a principle that is possible only in the affluent society of the communist utopia.”

BRAZIL

Cardoso emphasizes that, in Brazil, the main element in the building of a work ethics was slavery, which determined the country’s social relations for centuries, giving rise to the notion of manual labor as something degrading and undignified: “Redeeming manual labor from the stigma of unworthiness took decades, and neither bourgeois ethics nor its egalitarian counterpart became essential part of the expectations of Brazilian workers throughout history.” It is over this background sociologist will discuss the construction of Brazil’s work ethics (or, perhaps, its plural work ethics).

PROFILE

In addition to being a professor and researcher at Iesp-Uerj, where he heads the Center for Labor Research and Studies (Nupet), Cardoso is an associate researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research Scientist, as well as grant scholar of Faperj’s “Scientist from our State” program.

With a doctor’s degree in Sociology from USP’s School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), he is the author of 14 books and over 70 articles published in journals and books. He currently coordinates three research projects and works in various fields of labor sociology, urban sociology (including social inequalities) and social theory. The keywords of his Lattes résumé that contextualize his academic production are unionism, class formation, labor market, productive restructuring, globalization, automotive industry, labor law, neo-liberalism, democracy, Latin America, and Vargas Era.

CYCLE

The cycle “Rio Afternoons: The University of São Paulo Listens to Rio de Janeiro” invites prominent social scientists from Rio de Janeiro to discuss various aspects of Brazilian reality, in an effort to bring together scholarly reflections on social issues from Brazil’s the two major cities. The cycle is organized by Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at the FFLCH-USP and coordinator of the IEA-USP’s Research Group on The Future Questions Us.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. For information and registration, please send a message to leila.costa@usp.br. The event will also be broadcast live on the Web. IRI-USP is located at Av. Professor Martins Rodrigues, Travessas 4 e 5, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, SP (map).

English revision by Carlos Malferrari - Photo: Fiocruz

Among the issues to be addressed at the event there are:

• How does the individual live in the context of modernity? What is their place in public space and in politics?
• What aspirations, hopes and frustrations does modern life raise?
• How do individuals negotiate social pressures?
• What new forms of domination does the contemporary Western culture generate?

The exhibitor will be Danilo Martuccelli, a professor at the Faculté des Sciences Humaines e Sociales of the Université Paris Descartes, and member of the Centre de Recherche sur le Liens Sociaux (CERLIS) at the same institution. The debaters will be Maria Alice Rezende de Carvalho, a professor at the department of social sciences of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and Vera da Silva Telles, a professor at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH). Moderation will be in charge of sociologist Bernardo Sorj, visiting professor at the IEA-USP and coordinator of the cycle of seminars.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

CYCLE

The cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”, coordinated by Sorj, is planned to have four meetings. The goal is to address the changes caused by the decline of the great political ideologies and to discuss the production of meaning in this new sociocultural context.

According to Sorj, the everyday is invaded by the immediate concerns of success, status and consumption, by media that convey a flood of information that deplete themselves and social ties transferred to social networks, where quantity replaces density.

"We live in a world where technology permeates every angle of our lives, but we do not understand its knowledge bases. Communication is ubiquitous, but its content is shallow. The sense of time evaporates along the immediacy of the present and the insecurity of the future. The pursuit of individual happiness has evacuated of collective life and handed into the hands of therapists and drugs.", says the sociologist.

Focusing on this panorama of transformations, the cycle of events addresses some key issues:

• What is the role of university and scientific knowledge in this new world?
• Is there a new meeting point between natural and human sciences?
• Is there space for a dialogue between scientific knowledge producers and other areas that reflect on human condition?
• How can local and global interact and produce new cultural syntheses?

The first meeting of the conference cycle

The theme of the debut event will be “Life Is not Fair”. Jurist Andréa Maciel Pachá will discuss the new challenges faced by the Brazilian justice in light of social changes in the last two decades. According to her, "such changes require a plural look by the magistrate and the ability to accept and condone many rights that emerge."

Pachá will focus on family conflicts she has brokered as a magistrate, addressing the expectation of "fair" in face of affection and helplessness within the limits of State action and the alternative forms of settlement of disputes.

The exhibition of the jurist will be related to the book of chronicles "Life is Not Fair", of which she is the author. It contains stories she has witnessed over 15 years as a judge of the Family Court. Released in 2012 by the publisher Agir, the work is being adapted into a television series and a play.

Graduated in Law from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Andréa Maciel Pachá is a judge of the 4th Court for Orphans and Family Succession of the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro. She has been an adviser to the National Council of Justice (CNJ), being responsible for creating the National Register of Adoption, the Commission of Conciliation and Access to Justice, and the deployment of the Courts for Violence against Women across the country. In 2008 and 2009 Pachá aimed to discuss doctrinal issues and provide policy expertise to the courts.

Among the names confirmed for the next editions of Tardes Cariocas: A USP Ouve o Rio de Janeiro there are Luiz Eduardo Soares, a professor at the UERJ and former National Secretary of Public Security of the Ministry of Justice (MJ), Adalberto Cardoso Moreira, a professor at UERJ’s Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP), Alba Zaluar, a visiting professor at IESP, and Luiz Bevilacqua, professor emeritus from UERJ’s Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Graduation in Engineering (COPPE) and former executive secretary of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI).

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The formation of modern world is associated with the process of secularization, which owes a lot to the scientific and technological development of the last centuries. However, if on one hand rationality has led to a profound transformation of society, where freedom has replaced the dogmas and certainties previously provided by the immersion of culture and power in religious beliefs, on the other it has also led to a sense of relativity of values. The result seems to be a world where the meaning of life has become fragile and where individualism, utilitarianism and consumerism leave no room for seeking transcendence.

This analysis of nowadays is the starting point of the workshop “Science and the Polytheism of Values”, to be held by the IEA-USP on April 8, at 9.30 am. Among the topics to be discussed at the meeting there are the place of science and religion in this pluralistic universe, the challenges that pluralism of values put ​​in a globalized world and the position of Brazilian culture in this context. This will be the opening event of the cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”.

The exhibitor will be sociologist Bernardo Sorj, a retired professor from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and currently a visiting professor at the IEA-USP. The panelists will be Alfredo Bosi, professor emeritus from USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) and editor of IEA-USP’s journal  Estudos Avançados, and Enrique Larreta, director of the Institute of Cultural Pluralism (IPC) of the Universidade Cândido Mendes (UCM). Moderation will be in charge of Martin Grossmann, director of the IEA-USP.

According to Sorj, the political ideologies of modernity - as the Enlightenment liberalism, fascism, communism and nationalism – have maintained from religious monotheism the notion that values ​​can be organized around universal principles and that there is a single truth. With the decline of the "secular religions" a world of "polytheism of values ​, which transfers to the individual the right and responsibility to choose between often conflicting and mutually exclusionary beliefs and values" has arisen.

This polytheism of values ​​is the main feature of today in the opinion of Sorj, for whom "the challenge of democratic societies is to assume this position, completing the process of secularization that began in the Renaissance."

CYCLE

The cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”, coordinated by Sorj, will have four meetings. The goal is to address the changes caused by the decline of the great political ideologies and to discuss the production of meaning in this new sociocultural context.

According to Sorj, the everyday is invaded by the immediate concerns of success, status and consumption, by media that convey a flood of information that deplete themselves and social ties transferred to social networks, where quantity replaces density.

"We live in a world where technology permeates every angle of our lives, but we do not understand its knowledge bases. Communication is ubiquitous, but its content is shallow. The sense of time evaporates along the immediacy of the present and the insecurity of the future. The pursuit of individual happiness has evacuated of collective life and handed into the hands of therapists and drugs.", says the sociologist.

Focusing on this panorama of transformations, the cycle of events will address some key issues:

• What is the role of university and scientific knowledge in this new world?
• Is there a new meeting point between natural and human sciences?
• Is there space for a dialogue between scientific knowledge producers and other areas that reflect on human condition?
• How can local and global interact and produce new cultural syntheses?

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The speaker will be Scott McQuire, from the University of Melbourne's School of Culture and Communication. The researcher will discuss digital networks and urban space, focusing on the possibilities of creating a participatory public space through the use of new media.

According to him, since "the networked interactions have become an everyday dimension of negotiation of the contemporary public space, there is an urgent need to think about how this trajectory transforms the oldest geometries of power in the city".

The opening of the meeting will be in charge of anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, visiting professor at the IEA, who will give a lecture on 'Communicational Metropolis and Ubiquitous Subjectivities'.

The event will be broadcast live from IEA's Event Room at www.iea.usp.br/aovivo.

The meeting has been organized by the IEA with the support of UNESP, organizer of the '2nd International Seminar on Gender, Sexuality and Media', that will be hold from October 1 to 3 in Bauru, and also attended by McQuire.

In partnership with

To present an overview of racism in Cuba and Haiti through a comparative approach is the goal of the panel ‘The Place of Race: Contemporary Caribbean Debates’, to be held on June 27 at the IEA with exhibitions by Rachel Price and Nick Nesbitt, both professors at Princeton University. The encounter will also count with the participations of Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, from Unicamp, as discussant, and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), as coordinator.

The event was organized by the IEA and RACA (Global Collaborative Network ‘Race and Citizenship in the Americas’) with the support of the Dean of Research (PRP) and the Dean of Culture and University Extension (PRCEU) of USP. The panel is part of the schedule of activities of the strategic partnership agreement signed by USP and Princeton University. The purpose of it is to allow teachers and students to develop collaborative activities of teaching and research with the institutional support of both universities.

The meeting will be broadcast live from IEA's Event Room at www.iea.usp.br/aovivo.

Present

The topic under discussion will be discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective, in order to consider the cultural, historical and political approaches of the issue. According to the members of RACA, this is an important discussion in the Brazilian social agenda, as ‘an activity aimed at understanding this phenomenon in countries with similar experiences - but at the same time profoundly different - can enrich the national debates’.

They underscore the relevance of the proposed debate, since the criticism towards the biological concept of race has not eliminated racism: ‘If today we do not believe in a more naturalized definition of the concept, it is known that a ‘social racism’ is still present in our everyday practices’.

Participants

Rachel Price is an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton University. She specializes in Latin American, and particularly in Cuban and Caribbean literature, culture, and media studies. Her book, ‘The Object of the Atlantic: Concretude 1868-1968’, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.

Nick Nesbitt is Professor in the department of French and Italian at Princeton University. He conducts research on the history of the black Atlantic with focus on recovery, narration and critic of discontinuous events, and concepts from the standpoint of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis). He is the author of ‘Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant’ (Liverpool 2013); ‘Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment’ (Virginia 2008); and ‘Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature’ (Virginia 2003).

Omar Ribeiro Thomaz is professor in the department of Anthropology and of the Graduate Programs in Social Anthropology and History of Unicamp. He was a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) for over ten years. His works are focused on the areas of Anthropology of War and Conflict, and African and Caribbean Social History. In recent years, he has been focusing on field research in countries marked by conflict or local rearticulations around the notion of post-war, such as Mozambique and Haiti.

Lilia Moritz Schwarcz is professor in the department of Anthropology at FFLCH. She worked as a researcher at the universities of Leiden (Netherlands), Oxford, Brown, Columbia and Princeton. Her research lies on the intersection between Anthropology and History, with emphasis on the Anthropology of African-Brazilian populations, markers of difference, and the history of the Brazilian empire. Among her main areas of interest there are social identity, slavery, ethnicity and symbolic constructions.

The debate on race and social mobility in the Americas

RACA is a cooperative initiative between Princeton University and USP directed to the involvement of American and Brazilian teachers and students in a series of events held in Princeton and São Paulo from September 2012 to August 2015. It seeks to comprehensively discuss the multiple aspects involved in the racial debate related to social mobility in the American continent.

Due to the multicentered nature of the network, studies promoted by it are eminently comparisons, having as main points of contrast the realities of Brazil, North America and the Caribbean.

The network is coordinated at Princeton by teachers Pedro Meira Monteiro (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages ​​and Cultures) and João Biehl (Department of Anthropology), and at USP by teachers Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (Department of Anthropology) and Antonio Sérgio Guimarães (Department of Sociology). Both in the United States and in Brazil, the researchers bring contributions from diverse fields such as Anthropology, Sociology, History, Language and Literature, Political Science, and African-American Studies.

Photos (from the top): Colby Brown, Sergio Delgado, Princeton University, Unicamp and courtesy of Lilila Moritiz Schwarcz