Challenging Social Inequality
DEMOS research projects have examined the impact of social inequality on development and democracy. These efforts include a flagship publication, Challenging Social Inequality: The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Agrarian Reform in Brazil, a more than 500-page volume edited by Miguel Carter, and published by Duke University Press (in English) and the Editora da UNESP (in Portuguese).
Brazil is one the most inequitable nations in the world. Its great disparities of wealth have deep historical roots. This book addresses a critical legacy and enduring aspect of Brazil’s social injustice: its sharply unequal agrarian structure. The chapters comprising this volume probe the causes, consequences, and contemporary reactions to this situation. In particular, they shed light on the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST), Latin America’s largest and most prominent social movement, and its ongoing efforts to confront historic patterns of inequality in the Brazilian countryside.
Challenging Social Inequality offers a wide-ranging picture of the MST and its engagement in the Brazilian struggle for land reform. The 17 chapters included here were produced and revised following a conference sponsored by the University of Oxford’s Centre for Brazilian Studies. All the contributors to this volume, an assembly of Brazilian, European, and North American–based scholars and development practitioners, have ample fieldwork experience on the subject. In concert, they offer a unique international and multidisciplinary perspective of this phenomenon.
The following sections of Challenging Social Inequality prepared by Miguel Carter are available here:
Introduction, “Social Inequality, Agrarian Reform and Democracy in Brazil.”
Conclusion, “Challenging Social Inequality: Contention, Context and Consequences.”
The epilogue, “Broken Promise: The Land Reform Debacle under the PT Governments.”
PowerPoint presentation with an overview of the book, Challenging Social Inequality.
Photographs published in the book, Challenging Social Inequality.
Photo credits: Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas images (banner, photos 1, 5, 8, 15), João Ripper (photo 2), Zero Hora (photos 3, 4), Arquivo CPT (photos 6, 7, 8), Douglas Mansur (photo 10), Francisco Rojas (photo 11), Leonardo Melgarejo (photos 12, 13), Verena Glass (photo 16).