Workers in Brazil and the United States have followed parallel and entangled histories for many centuries. Recent experiences with progressive, popular presidents and authoritarian, populist presidents in the two most populous countries in the hemisphere have underscored important similarities. The contributors in this volume focus on the comparative and transnational histories of labor between and across Brazil and the United States. The countries' histories bear the marks of slavery, racism, transoceanic immigration, and rapid urbanization, as well as strong regional differentiation and inequalities. These features decisively shaped the working classes. Brazilian and US labor history debates have erupted and subsided at different times. This collection synthesizes those debates while adding new topics and new sources from both countries. The international group of historians' methodologically innovative chapters explore links, resonances, and divergences between US and Brazilian labor history. They widen the scope of analysis for themes and problems that have long been familiar to historians of work and workers in the two countries, but have not provoked close dialogues between scholars in the respective places. Though the histories themselves were often entangled, the debates about them have too rarely intertwined.

The past century has witnessed profound transitions in Brazil's economy: from a surge of industrialization connected to export economy, to state projects of importsubstitution industrialization, followed by a process of neoliberal global market integration. How have Brazilian entrepreneurs and businesses navigated these contexts? This comprehensive text explores the institutional and sectoral structure of the Brazilian economy through a collection of new case studies, examining how key institutions work within Brazil's specific economic, political and cultural context. Offering a long-term evolutionary perspective, the book explores Brazil's economic past in order to offer insights on its present and future trajectory. The contributions gathered here offer fresh insights into representative sectors of Brazil's economy, from aerospace to software, television, music and banking, paying particular attention to sectors that are likely to drive future growth. Chapters include questions about the roles of foreign and state capital, changes in market regulation, the emergence of new technologies, the opening of markets, institutional and organizational frameworks, and changing management paradigms. When examined together, the contributions shed light not only on Brazilian business history, but also on the country as a whole. Brazil's Economy: An Institutional and Sectoral Approach offers fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in: Latin American Economics; the business history of the region; and in doing business in present-day Latin America.

The past century has witnessed profound transitions in Brazil's economy: from a surge of industrialization connected to export economy, to state projects of importsubstitution industrialization, followed by a process of neoliberal global market integration. How have Brazilian entrepreneurs and businesses navigated these contexts? This comprehensive text explores the institutional and sectoral structure of the Brazilian economy through a collection of new case studies, examining how key institutions work within Brazil's specific economic, political and cultural context. Offering a long-term evolutionary perspective, the book explores Brazil's economic past in order to offer insights on its present and future trajectory. The contributions gathered here offer fresh insights into representative sectors of Brazil's economy, from aerospace to software, television, music and banking, paying particular attention to sectors that are likely to drive future growth. Chapters include questions about the roles of foreign and state capital, changes in market regulation, the emergence of new technologies, the opening of markets, institutional and organizational frameworks, and changing management paradigms. When examined together, the contributions shed light not only on Brazilian business history, but also on the country as a whole. Brazil's Economy: An Institutional and Sectoral Approach offers fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in: Latin American Economics; the business history of the region; and in doing business in present-day Latin America.

In Brazil, the country with the largest population of African descent in the Americas, the idea of race underwent a dramatic shift in the first half of the twentieth century. Brazilian authorities, who had considered race a biological fact, began to view it as a cultural and environmental condition. Jerry Davila explores the significance of this transition by looking at the history of the Rio de Janeiro school system between 1917 and 1945. He demonstrates how, in the period between the world wars, the dramatic proliferation of social policy initiatives in Brazil was subtly but powerfully shaped by beliefs that racially mixed and nonwhite Brazilians could be symbolically, if not physically, whitened through changes in culture, habits, and health.
Providing a unique historical perspective on how racial attitudes move from elite discourse into people's lives, "Diploma of Whiteness" shows how public schools promoted the idea that whites were inherently fit and those of African or mixed ancestry were necessarily in need of remedial attention. Analyzing primary material--including school system records, teacher journals, photographs, private letters, and unpublished documents--Davila traces the emergence of racially coded hiring practices and student-tracking policies as well as the development of a social and scientific philosophy of eugenics. He contends that the implementation of the various policies intended to "improve" nonwhites institutionalized subtle barriers to their equitable integration into Brazilian society.

In the wake of African decolonization, Brazil attempted to forge connections with newly independent countries. In the early 1960s it launched an effort to establish diplomatic ties with Africa; in the 1970s it undertook trade campaigns to open African markets to Brazilian technology. "Hotel Tropico" reveals the perceptions, particularly regarding race, of the diplomats and intellectuals who traveled to Africa on Brazil's behalf. Jerry Davila analyzes how their actions were shaped by ideas of Brazil as an emerging world power, ready to expand its sphere of influence; of Africa as the natural place to assert that influence, given its historical slave-trade ties to Brazil; and of twentieth-century Brazil as a "racial democracy," a uniquely harmonious mix of races and cultures. While the experiences of Brazilian policymakers and diplomats in Africa reflected the logic of racial democracy, they also exposed ruptures in this interpretation of Brazilian identity. Did Brazil share a "lusotropical" identity with Portugal and its African colonies, so that it was bound to support Portuguese colonialism at the expense of Brazil's ties with African nations? Or was Brazil a country of "Africans of every color," compelled to support decolonization in its role as a natural leader in the South Atlantic? Drawing on interviews with retired Brazilian diplomats and intellectuals, Davila shows the Brazilian belief in racial democracy to be about not only race but also Portuguese ethnicity.