Brazil

Law-and-society-related academic activities in Brazil are expanding on the frontier between law and the social sciences, especially sociology, political science, and anthropology. These activities result from two factors: (1) the consolidation of the Brazilian democracy and (2) the exportation and importation of specialized knowledge from academic networks in developed countries, particularly the United States, to those in peripheral countries, amply analyzed by Yves Dezalay and Byrant Garth.

The more successful initiatives concern human rights. In the 1970s, when Brazil was under an authoritarian military regime, which routinely tortured political prisoners, the Ford Foundation decided to sponsor human rights activities and the social sciences. This spread those activities over several fields of knowledge all around the country. Soon, research on human rights included themes related to violence and crime.

With the reestablishment of the rule of law in Brazil in 1988, new topics were introduced into the Brazilian law and society research agenda, but none of them achieved the same prominence as research on human rights. In 2004, there were 908 Brazilian PhD researchers in all areas of knowledge conducting research on human rights, according to a database maintained by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development). Of that total, 15 percent were in law. Other topics, such as legal education or labor law, counted 95 PhD researchers in all areas of knowledge.

Brazilian democracy and the international circulation of experts favored the diversification of subjects in law and society. The study of institutional issues received more academic attention, stimulated by the World Bank, which promoted legal globalization. Since the 1990s, the judiciary, public security, and the criminal justice system have received much more attention. There are 162 PhD researchers focusing on public security and 126 on the judiciary. Other emerging topics include access to justice, judicial activism, alternative dispute resolution, legal professions, and legal pluralism. There were 98 PhD researchers focusing on access to justice in all areas of knowledge, 64 percent of them in law.

The participation of Brazilian researchers in international law and society associations does not correspond to the growth of this specialization within the country. In 2004, the Law and Society Association counted twelve members working in Brazil. Since 1997, the Latin American Studies Association has organized six international meetings, in which twenty-seven researchers, focusing on law and society in Brazil, joined the Law and Society in Latin America section (LASLA).

The participation of the Brazilian academic elite in international networks has taken a subordinate form, characterized by relations of exportation and importation of specialized knowledge. When academic interaction between professionals of developed and peripheral countries expands in a horizontal pattern, it often occurs in isolation from local Brazilian networks. Segments of the Brazilian social sciences react to their subordinate positions on international networks by building networks among scholars of peripheral countries as a strategy for gaining international recognition. An example is the 2004 LusoAfro-Brazilian International Congress of Social Sciences in Coimbra, Portugal. With the same difficulties for obtaining grants, the final program included 968 papers, 67 percent of them from Brazil.

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