“Double Movement” of the Construction of Citizenship Rights in the Capitalist Semi-Periphery: the case study of Brazil
The aim of this project is to investigate the construction of social citizenship since 1990s in such a highly unequal modern semi-peripheral1 society as Brazil. In the context of expanding commodification of all spheres of social life, according to some authors (Draibe and Riesco 2011), what we can observe in Brazil is a tendency, even if precarious, of re- embedding, which implies the emergence of new forms of social protection and social incorporation and a change from “regulated citizenship” to “citizenship rights”. The question is how can we explain it? It will be argued that new forms of incorporation, granting of social citizenship rights and recognition has changed the relationship between subaltern groups and the State, and legitimated like that also the political system.
In order to explain this new reconfiguration of social protection and social citizenship, I will use the Polanyian perspective of “double movement”, which helps to understand social transformation as conflicting movement between the expansion of capitalist modernization through the commodification of labour and social life, and the construction of the sphere of citizenship rights as a form of re-embedding of market to society. Karl Polanyi’s analytical framework of “double movement” becomes especially useful in examining the unequal development inherent to the market capitalism and possibilities of creating mechanisms of social protection based on citizenship.
This research proposal combines historical analysis with the analysis of recent concrete events in order to understand the development of social protection system.