Taking the Wheel

Caren Addis's Taking the Wheel is the result of a thorough investigation of the political history of contemporary industrialization in Brazil. Addis aligns herself with recent revisionist studies of the process of industrialization in Brazil over the last five decades, including such works on the development of the automobile industry as Glauco Arbix and Mauro Zilbovicius, A reinvenção dos carros (Sao Paulo, 1997). Addis describes the complex interrelations and movements that have shaped the Brazilian auto parts industry since the 1940s. Her thesis concerns the active role of industry leaders in the implementation of a "horizontal" automobile complex, with assemblers being supplied by a diversified parts sector. Focusing on these firms, she shows how Sindipeças (the National Syndicate of Auto Parts Industries) struggled to establish rules allowing for the growth of suppliers, and how it fought against the vertical integration promoted by assemblers and by the flow of imports. Addis makes a persuasive case, although her depiction of industry leaders as "opponents of the military regime" (p. 204) goes beyond the reality

Auto industry · Automotive industry · Business · Economics · Economy · Industrialisation · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Process (computing) · Syndicate · Brazilian History and Foreign Policy · Engineering · Law