Democratic challenges in the context of Brazil’s neo-extractivist trap

The presentation intends to offer a particular interpretation of neoextractivism, seeking to show how it might help us understand Brazil’s recent history – and maybe not only Brazil’s. Putting forward the general idea of a “neoextractivist trap” as a starting point and research focus also entails questioning formulations that have used the same notion of a “trap” for other purposes — particularly to delineate groups of countries typically identified as belonging to the Global South. I refer here to formulations such as the “middle-income trap” or the “low-growth trap.” Moving beyond uses like these of the “trap” concept means, above all, restoring the centrality of dependency and the climate emergency, a framework in which the aforementioned formulations appear limited, to say the least. In order to be up to the challenge it is required to look at the neo-extractivist trap as a multidimensional phenomenon, encompassing environmental, economic, cultural, political, social, geopolitical, and technological dimensions.

Marcos Nobre is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Senior Researcher and former President of the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), Principal Investigator and former Co-Speaker of the Maria Sybilla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila), Researcher and member of the Deliberative Council of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and Director of the Center for Critical Imagination (CCI/Cebrap). In 2022 he published Limits of Democracy: From the June 2013 Uprisings in Brazil to the Bolsonaro Government (Cham: Springer) for which he has received in 2023 the Prêmio Jabuti, the most prestigious book award in Brazil, for best book of the year in Social Sciences.

Venue
Freie Universität Berlin – ZI Latin American Institute
Rüdesheimer Str. 54-56, Room 201, 14197 Berlin

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