Measuring the Middle

Technopolitics and the Making of Brazil's New Middle Class

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4297929
AutoresM Kopper (0000-0003-0327-7681, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen52
Número3
Páginas561-587
Fecha de publicación2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182702-8304867
OpenAlexW3011415357
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas39

Between 2004 and 2013, an array of social policies converted Brazil into an international showcase of economic growth and income redistribution. Economists, policymakers, politicians and marketers heralded the end of endemic poverty and the incorporation of millions into a newly defined "middle class." This article unpacks this story of inclusionary development by considering the controversies surrounding the production and circulation of large numbers, and how such controversies sustained the technopolitics of Brazil's "new middle class." I draw on multisited ethnography conducted in Washington, DC, Brasilia, and São Paulo among think tanks, governmental sectors, the World Bank, and market research institutes. By foregrounding the workings of a transnational network of experts, I chronicle how the middle-class language traversed circuits of science, policymaking, and market research. The article contends that methodological breakthroughs-including microeconometric counterfactuals and market ethnography-become salient fixtures in the public appraisal of inequality and in the creation of national political futures

Class formation · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Ethnography · Foregrounding · Futures contract · Inequality · Middle class · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Redistribution (election · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law · Political Economy and Marxism