Produção Nacional
Dimensions of Citizenship in Contemporary Brazil
2007; Fordham University School of Law; Volume: 75; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0015-704X
Autores Tópico(s)Social and Political Issues
Resumoformal it includes invention or creation of new rights that emerge from specific struggles and their concrete practices. In this sense, very determination of meaning of right and assertion of something as a right are themselves objects of political struggle. The rights to autonomy over one's own body, environmental protection, and housing are examples (intentionally very different) of this creation of new rights. In addition, this redefinition comes to include not only right to equality, but also right to difference, which specifies, deepens, and broadens right to equality. 16 An additional important consequence of such a broadening in scope is that citizenship is no longer confined within limits of relationship with state: The recognition of rights shall regulate not only relationships between state and individual; rather, it has to be established within society itself, as parameters presiding over social relations at all levels. This may be more evident in struggles of social movements such as, for instance, women, blacks, or homosexuals, since a significant part of their struggles are directed towards fighting discrimination and prejudice embedded within social relations of daily life. But it is also clearly present, as Assemblia do Povo's first public initiative shows, 17 in popular movements whose more material claims, such as housing, health, education, transportation, sewage, etc., are directed towards state. The process of building citizenship as affirmation and recognition of rights was seen as a process of transforming practices rooted in society as a whole. Such a political strategy implies a moral and intellectual reform: a process of social learning, of building up new kinds of social relations. All of this obviously implies, on one hand, constituting of citizens as active social subjects; on other hand, for society as a whole, it requires learning to live on different terms with these emergent citizens who refuse to remain in places that were socially and culturally defined for them. Participants of social movements of both popular sectors, organized around claims to rights such as housing, water, sewage, education, and health, and those of a wider character such as women, race, or ecological movements, placed a crucial emphasis on constitution of active social subjects, able to become political agents, as a central dimension of citizenship. In some definitions, citizenship is even thought of as consisting of this very process. Thus, consciousness, agency, and capacity to struggle are seen by some as evidence of citizenship, even if other rights are absent. Among fifty-one civil society activists interviewed in Campinas, Sdo Paulo in 1993, this view was a distinctive feature in answers of members of those movements and of workers' unions, when contrasted with 16. For a discussion on citizenship and connections between right to difference and right to equality, see Dagnino, Os Movimentos Sociais, supra note 7. 17. See supra note 13 and accompanying text. 2476 [Vol. 75 CITIZENSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL views of members of middle class and entrepreneurial organizations. 18 The role of social movements of 1970s and 1980s in shaping of this redefinition of citizenship is obviously related to their own struggle and rooted in their practices. If, on one hand, they were able to rely on previous history of ensured by regulated citizenship, 19 they reacted against concept of state and of power embedded in that history. They also reacted against control and tutelage of political organization of popular sectors by state, political parties, and politicians that had sustained populism for so long. Finally, they reacted as well against favor relations that permeate their clientelistic relations with these political actors, which outlive populism as predominant political arrangement in relations between civil and political society. The adoption of a redefined conception of rights and citizenship expressed a reaction against previous notions of rights as favors and/or objects of bargaining with powerful (known as citizenship by concession (cidadania concedida)).20 In this sense, struggle for also influenced by human rights movements that emerged in 1970s in struggle against authoritarian military regime, carried with itself not only claims for equality, but also negation of a dominant political culture deeply rooted in society as a whole. THE RISE OF THE NEOLIBERAL VERSIONS OF CITIZENSHIP The dissemination of this notion of citizenship and its correlate, participation of civil society as a mechanism for extension of citizenship, are two central principles of democratic participatory project. They achieved its formal recognition in Constitution of 1988.21 In next year, Fernando Collor's election marked beginning of implementation of neoliberal project, which reached its peak during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government from 1994 to 2002, and established what this essay refers to as a perverse confluence between two projects in dispute. 18. Evelina Dagnino, Ana Claudia C. Teixeira, Daniela Romanelli da Silva & Uliana Ferlin, Cultura Democrdetica e Cidadania, 5 Opiniao Pfiblica 11 (1998). Answering same question (Why do you consider yourself a citizen?), entrepeneurial organizations emphasized fact that they fulfill their duties and have rights, whereas middle class activists stressed their position in society, derived from their professional activities, as indicators of citizenship. It is also interesting that a large majority of both participants of social movements of both kinds and members of workers' unions do not consider themselves to be treated as citizens, while proportion is inverted in answers of two other sectors interviewed. Id. at 40-41. 19. It is not by chance that Getfilio Vargas, also known as the Father of Poor, is still a powerful positive reference in memory of Brazilian popular sectors. 20. Teresa Sales, Raizes da Desigualdade Social na Cultura Politica Brasileira, 9 Revista Brasileira de Ciencias Sociais (ANPOCS) 26 (1994). 21. See supra note 3. 2007] 2477
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