State Elites in Contemporary Brazil: Trajectories and Statements of the Directors of the Brazilian Development Bank (1994-2011)
Author: Kluger, Elisa , elisa.kluger@gmail.com
Department: Sociology
University: Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Supervisor: Sylvia Gemignani Garcia
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: Portuguese
Keywords:
Economic Sociology
, Sociology of Elites
, Sociology of Education
Areas of Research:
Economy and Society
, Professional Groups
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
Abstract
The dissertation aims to correlate the social origins and trajectories of the former board members of the Brazilian national development bank (BNDES), with their intellectual and political orientations, and their positions in some of the most controversial matters involving the bank. The main hypothesis is that there are homologies between the positions that bank executives occupy in social space and the positions they take once in the government. To verify if such homologies exist, I conducted interviews with 38 of the 43 executives who were on the BNDES board between 1994 and 2011, a period that corresponds with political party transition in Brazil. The interviews focus closely on the executives’ biographies. In addition, I have used Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to quantitatively explore the interview data. The MCA revealed how agents were distributed in the social space and allowed me to test if their social positions \ correlated with the preferences they expressed in the interviews. In the dissertation, I outline the history of the field of economists in Brazil and its connections with the structural history of the field of power as a strategy to get to know how the position of the institution and the directors changed over time.
