Photo: Lula Marques/Agência PT (Flickr), CC BY 2.0. Some rights reserved.
The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization – the Brazilian Paradox explores three closely related issues, at distinct levels of analysis: first, neoliberalism and financialisation, both as defining features of contemporary capitalism and as drivers of social reproduction. Second, financialisation in Brazil, focusing on the macroeconomic and financial policies implemented by the federal administrations led by the Workers’ Party (PT, in power between 2003 and 2016). Third, the unique, and uniquely significant, role of social policy in Brazilian financialisation. In doing this, The Brazilian Paradox offers a searing indictment of the ‘social-’ or ‘neo-’ developmentalist model associated with Presidents Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.
Neoliberalism is the current phase of global capitalism, and financialisation is the economic core of neoliberalism. In country after country, neoliberalism and financialisation have reorganised the processes of production, exchange, distribution and accumulation of value, and led to the emergence of distinctive modes of social reproduction including specific modes of governance, ideologies, and subjectivities. In this context, the financialisation of daily life has intensified the subjection of households to financial markets and processes almost everywhere.
