Contenu du sommaire : Droit, politique, espace agraire au Brésil

From Plantation to City : The Ambiguity of a Choice - The rural exodus in Brazil since the 1960s has often been interpreted as the consequence of extending labor rights to those who work the land. Accordingly, rising labor costs have forced bosses to get rid of permanent hired hands. This cause-effect explanation comes under critical examination : it does not account for social actors' behavior. Questions are raised about the social conditions underlying this exodus. In the Nordeste plantation area, bosses have not laid masses of workers off. Instead, the latter have themselves decided to leave. Light is shed on the origins of these choices ; and the social context is analyzed wherein they have been made.

The Factory and the Veranda : Staging Domination - What were the procedures for recruiting labor to a big textile factory in the Nordeste from 1930 to 1950 ? Families from the countryside were attracted to settle in town and work in the factory. During an institutionalized ceremony in front of the veranda at the boss's house {casa- grande), families were presented to the boss. The similarities and dissimilarities are pointed out between this staging of the boss's authority and the traditional senhorlmorador relationship on sugar plantations, which also took place in the setting of the casa- grande' s veranda. This ceremony plays out a specific form of domination and illustrates the history, with all its contradictions, of how workers have internalized this domination.

The Marketplace and Form of Domination - The ethnographical analysis of the Serro-Azul marketplace, located in the middle of a big sugar plantation in the Nordeste, Brazil, casts doubt on the widely accepted idea that market relationships rime with freedom and open doors toward the world. Following a description of its historical, social and institutional context, the market is shown to be a way of restoring the senhors traditional domination over the morador. The concentration of land-holdings and the appearance of new actors in the local context threatens this form of domination.

The Time for Politics - How do political meetings during election campaigns affect the support that the inhabitants of rural communes give to the factions dividing local society ? Among the many sorts of public events abounding during campaigns, attention is focused on meetings as a staging of the encounter between the top and bottom of the social hierarchy and between rival political factions. These political ceremonies are essential to constructing a special moment, the time for politics, when the society can form networks of sociability other than those based on the family, neighbourhood and religious community.

Converting Land-Holding Elites to National Politics - Following the 1930 revolution, the Brazilian state underwent unprecedented centralization. New public institutions were set up in order to modernize the country politically, economically and socially. The analysis of the biographies and political activities of this movement's two major leaders in the Nordeste - the one civilian, the other military - shows how descendants of the major plantation families contributed to the national state's reconstruction. Located in outlying areas, these families, on the decline, were looking for ways to improve their situation. The newly introduced institutional innovations and their newly acquired authority enabled descendants to establish or reinforce their allies' power at the local level.