COMMUNICATION, DEVELOPMENT AND INTERACTION IN THE

BRICS

SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

Tom Dwyer*1

Paper presented at the

The 30th Anniversary Celebrations of the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences
Roundtable Meeting on BRIC Sociology - Globalization and Social Development
Beijing, April 17th 2010.

1* Professor, Sociology Department, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São

Paulo, Brazil. Researcher at the CNPq. Immediate past-president of the Brazilian
Sociological Society (SBS).
When I started to write this paper I had two objectives: a) to write about the
importance of the notion of the BRICs from the viewpoint of sociological research
and practice, b) to examine the consequences of the notion from a Brazilian
viewpoint. These two key objectives still remain, but as I was writing the paper’s
scope grew. In this essay, I shall focus only upon the relations between the BRICs
countries, relations with other countries will only be mentioned in passing.

Introduction

Over many years the developing countries have sought to build political muscle to
change the way they are perceived by the industrialised countries. At a political level
a major mark was the 1955 Bandung conference, the formation of the non-aligned
movement in 1961 is another. In 2003 the (agricultural) G20 was created to attempt to
force changes in the World Trade Organisation’s agricultural agenda. Each of these
movements expresses a political will for both the development of and respect for
developing countries in the context of a world order that was seen as unequal.
However, it seems to have taken the World Financial Crisis of 2008 to bring to light a
new concept of world economic power, a different G20 met, one which united the
major industrialised countries, the European Union and to which they invited the
major developing economies. The perception behind this move was that the crisis,
created in the developed economies, could not be solved by them alone.

For decades Brazilian scholars have reflected upon the eventual possibility of Brazil
passing from a subaltern economic actor on the world stage, to one which would take
on a leading role as an economic producer and, as a consequence, acquire respect
from those nations that dominate the world order. Among the scholars who stand out
are Celso Furtado, Gilberto Dupas and Fernando Henrique Cardoso2. A recent book
on “Globalised Brazil” had the sub-title, which was also the title of Cardoso’s article,
‘Brazil in a surprising world’. This is indeed the way that I and many other scholars
see the present situation in which our country finds itself.

Over recent decades international scholars have reflected on the shifting dynamics of
economic, military, political and cultural power in the world. Paul Kennedy’s books
2 Former International Sociological Association President and President of Brazil from 1995 to 2002.
“The Rise and Fall of Great Powers” and subsequently “Preparing for the 21st
Century” were well received in the United States and in the West. More recently, the
non-academic analysis “The Post-American World” by Fareed Zakaria tried to trace a
path around which the United States could possibly regenerate certain dimensions of
its power a global situation, marked by the rise of new countries.

In 2001 Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs presented a new characterisation of the future,
one that linked together some of the elements raised in earlier analyses, but in a
different way. Brazil, Russia, India and China, four developing countries with positive
growth rates, large land masses and populations, were predicted to arrive at a greater
volume of combined economic activity by 2050 than the six most important
developed economic powers (G6) at the time the report was written. As a result, these
countries would possess large consumer markets that the developed countries would
be foolish to ignore. Since the original concept was floated the average relative
economic growth rates in the four countries has been higher than originally projected,
the world financial crisis occurred profoundly affecting the developed economies and
the concept was revised accordingly. Importantly, in the BRIC economies themselves
there was recognition many complementarities existed. Very recently the concept has
become an ideology that expresses the emergence of these countries together on the
world scene, as this is reflected in the organisation of the second summit meeting of
the BRIC heads of state that is to take place on April 16th 2010 in Brasilia.

As our countries come to play an increasing role on the world stage in cultural,
economic and political terms, new tensions will occur between each of our countries
and Europe and the United States, also tensions will inevitably emerge between our
own countries. Such tensions, whatever their empirical manifestations, may be subject
to coverage in the media, result in diplomatic initiatives and influence public opinion,
as they do so both their gestation and their solution will provide questions for
sociological analysis.

For Brazilian sociologists the rise of India, Russia and China as economic powers has
been associated with very slow changes in perception as to what is relevant for the
internationalization of Brazilian sociology and the social sciences more generally. Our
international focus has traditionally been on North America and Europe (especially
France, England and Germany), and Latin America. Asia (except for Japan), Africa
and Oceania were considered irrelevant. Since 2005 the Brazilian Sociological
Society, has invited Indian and Chinese keynote speakers to its bi-annual conferences,
we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Sociological
Society and even promoted a round-table exchange on the BRICs and sociology in
our 2007 conference with Chinese and Russian colleagues (as well as a South African
scholar).

It is worthwhile noting that many colleagues are uncomfortable with the

notion that the world is changing. All Brazilian sociologists are schooled in Western
traditions, and we now must deal parts of the world for which we absolutely have no
preparation. To even recognise the rise of new forces is to devalue one’s own cultural
capital which was acquired only through great efforts. One strategy, resorted to by
some colleagues as they seek to recoup their threatened (linguistic) capital, is to urge
the inclusion of South Africa (BRICS) and/or Mexico among the BRICs (BRIMCS or
BRIMC). However, I have come to the view that the acceptance of such demands
impoverishes the conceptual base of the definition of the BRICs, our Chinese
colleagues would wish to include Vietnam, Indonesia and maybe Thailand and the
Phillipines, and our Indian colleagues to include at least Pakistan and perhaps
Bangladesh. In other words there would be a slippery slope into a conceptual fog and
we would quickly end up with something like the G20 3, with so many criss-crossing
dialogues and so little consistency that it would be impossible for us to hear each
other. Also we see the very notion of BRICs being challenged by those who see
economic growth as a fundamental requirement, this a period of slow growth led
some Brazilian economic commentators to talk of the ‘RICs’, similarly Russia’s
recent economic difficulties have led to moot the ‘BICs’. From an analytical
viewpoint, one attraction is that the dimensions of ‘large land size’, ‘large
populations’ and ‘economic growth’ permit some variables to be reflected upon using
conceptual matrixes that have been specifically developed to theorise and research
such questions. Another attraction is that the notion imposes limits, one must account
for ‘only’ four countries, this means that bi-lateral comparisons for each country are
carried out with a maximum of three partners, in other words only six possible sets of
bi-lateral comparative analyses can be conducted within the group. This disciplines
3 The version that came into existence as a result of the 2008 world financial crisis.
sociological eye.

For the purposes of today’s discussion I have embraced the hypothesis of the BRICs
as a challenge to my own sociological imagination. I assume that sociology has a
privileged position in understanding the complex processes in globalization. The
acceptance of Europe as a hypothesis (which has now become a political and
economic reality) has led to the building of a ‘European sociology’ and institutions to
match. Perhaps in a similar light we can anticipate the invention of a ‘BRIC
sociology’ as an imperative in this particular phase of globalization.

Both the novelty and the enormity of such a task is humbling to any wise person.
However, it does seem to be a perfectly reasonable and manageable proposition: in
Brazil we shall need to form specialists in each of our three partner countries: Russia,
China and India. Their role will be the observation and discussion of the different bi-
lateral conflicts and initiatives taken. The development of a BRIC sociology must
indeed be seen as the price to be paid should the discipline wish to make a relevant
contribution to understanding the challenges of globalization.

The notion forces us to reexamine history, and to reexamine Brazil’s position in the
world, and sociology’s role in attempting to understand the world where our country’s
role seems likely to be vastly changed from that which it has occupied at any stage in
its relatively short history.

I shall divide this paper into four parts. I shall begin by briefly examining, from a
Brazilian perspective, some elements of our fragile historical relationships with India,
China and Russia. I start with this point in an attempt to counterbalance what most
analyses relating to the BRICs that we see in Brazil and which emphasise the
enormous differences between our countries, but ignore that history points to past
interchange and points of approximation. Secondly, I shall use a relatively simple
view of globalisation to permit the development of an analytical framework that will
permit some progress, in so doing I hope to be able to clarify thinking around some
relevant themes for research and for our efforts to understand the processes in course.
Third, a question raised from the previous discussion is communication. We exchange
information at an increasingly fast rate, everything appears to be transparent, however
this does not mean that we communicate better, it may even mean the reverse. Finally,
I shall build on this point by looking at what it seems necessary, at this very
preliminary point, to do so that sociologists in our four countries can make an
adequate contribution.

Historical contacts between Brazil and the BRIC countries

In an historical sense one the closest historical relationships of Brazil with a BRIC
country was with Goa in India. Governors of some Brazilian provinces were
promoted to govern the Portuguese colony of Goa. Amaral Lapa’s (1968) pioneering
book, ‘Bahia and Portugal’s Indian Maritime Route’ is much more than a history of
what the author calls “the most complex and enduring navigation route of modern
times”. The route linked Portugal and Asia, and passed by Bahia, Brazil for some two
hundred years, between the middle of the 17th and the 19th centuries. Lapa discusses
the Oriental products that were most appreciated by Brazilian consumers, he
examines the traces this maritime contact with India imprinted on Brazilian culture
and examines its human dimensions.

Gilberto Freyre (2003), one of the founding fathers of Brazilian social sciences, wrote
a series of essays that were recently republished as a book, where the title in
Portuguese (easily understandable in English) ‘China Tropical’ reflects his view of
Brazil. The occupation of the empty spaces of Brazil led to an orientation towards
governance and state formation associated with what Freyre saw an Asian component
in the formation of the Brazilian identity. He documented some aspects of China’s
(and indeed the Orient’s) historical influence on Brazil, which flowed from
Portuguese administered Macao via Goa and served to shape the country, including
our customs, architecture, and lifestyles.

Leite’s book ‘China in Brazil’ has built on Freyre’s and Lapa’s work to make a well
documented contribution. He examines specific Chinese influences on Brazilian
customs (among which kite flying, fireworks, the ‘cheiro’ a kiss where one smells the
other, cock fights and the male fashion of having long fingernails), on trade,
commerce and agriculture (eg. tea growing, silk, debates around Chinese
immigration), architecture and landscape gardening (eg. Rooftops, churches, Chinese
gardens) and the arts (sculpture, painting, porcelain, textiles). He introduces his book
pointing out what we said earlier about the lack of knowledge of common points of
historical contact between BRIC partners, he reminds that at the end of the 20th
Century the notion of China represents very little to 99.99% of Brazilians,
accustomed to associate it with a country hidden behind mists, so little known and
almost as remote as Mars or the Moon! However, over its 500 years of history with
Portuguese, Amerindian and African influences was also “Chinese in numerous uses
and customs, in certain refinements in its material civilization, in details of
architecture and art, finally Chinese in many forms of thinking, living, acting and
feeling.” (Leite, 199, 11)

From the 1850s onwards, complex changes resulted in a decline in this influence,
when new maritime technologies (Clippers) contributed to the altering of trading
patterns and to the United States long rise to a hegemonic position in the region. A
century later Freyre saw another type of approximation between our two countries as,
in the mid-twentieth century, Brazilian and Chinese both developed xenophobia in
relation to dominant countries, and especially the USA.

In 1821 the Russian Consul in Rio de Janeiro, with the aid of a large subsidy (over
300 thousand roubles) from the Czar Alexander I, organised a ‘multinational’
expedition to the interior of Brazil and which took eight years to complete its travels
of over 11 thousand kilometres. Baron Langsdorff’s expedition, which travelled from
Rio de Janeiro city to Pará state, drew maps, documented the flora, fauna, native
peoples and scenery scientifically. They travelled to areas of Brazil that were, in many
aspects, still unknown to European science. The expedition’s collections are today
housed in the following institutions in St. Petersbourg: the Russian State Naval
Archives Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstcamera), the Botanical
Institute and the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences. This year an
exhibition is being held in Brazil (it will travel from São Paulo to the cities of Brasília
and Rio de Janeiro) which permits a contact with a cosmopolitan Russian-financed
view of early 19th Century Brazil.

So a first field of relevant research appears to be for historians to work more

intensively on the history of bi-lateral relations, and cultural exchanges between our
countries and peoples. As such this research may serve as an antidote to the
widespread notion that Brazil has nothing in common with its BRIC partners. Brazil,
these four books indicate, may indeed share more with its partners than most have
ever thought! Of course India and China and Russia and China, not only share
frontiers, but have influenced each others history in many ways. The point I am
making here is that it may be necessary to develop a different understanding of
history through new research, this could be done so as to permit scholars, elites and
citizens in our countries to evaluate past conflicts and mutual influences, and build
new appreciations of each other.

The dominant social science paradigm that prevails in Brazil is portrayed in Darcy
Ribeiro’s (1995) “The Brazilian People”. This is one of the most important Brazilian
Social Science books of the past 20 years. The author sees Brazil’s uniqueness as a
product of its capacity to forge a nation out of three distinct peoples: Amerindians,
Europeans colonizers and enslaved Africans. However, different to Freyre, Leite and
Lapa, the author’s account of the construction of national identity and character, does
not see any real importance in Russian, Indian or Chinese influences. Today there is
no such thing as a ‘BRIC oriented history’ in contemporary Brazil.4 Tomorrow
renewed historical scholarship may inform renovated perspectives and permit a more
complex understanding of our past.

Contemporary Globalisation Processes

I find Michel Wieviorka’s (2009) characterisation of globalisation into three relatively

autonomous processes allies both simplicity and utility, he talks of dimensions that
englobe economic and cultural exchanges and supra-national organisations. This
perspective at the same time as it is simple appears allows a degree of clarity that is to
be found in the confusing field of globalisation research (where over 50 meanings of
the term have been documented).

4 One 20th Century chapter could be written about Brazilian political parties and social movements
that were inspired in Russian (Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism) and Chinese (Maoism) Communism.
I have a superficial awareness that similar process occurred in India. Indeed, historians of communism
would appear to have a fertile field of reflection involving the sociology of knowledge, and
international and comparative politics.
Economic Exchanges

Last year, India’s rising demand for sugar sent Brazilian sugar and ethanol prices
soaring. This year, China’s demand for iron ore has doubled prices on the domestic
market. Subsequent to the world financial crisis China became Brazil’s most
important trading partner, passing out the United States, Argentina and Germany.
These and other changes have been documented by economists, they lead to a
reduction in the presence of familiar economic actors and practices, and introduce
both economic actors and horizons that were totally absent from Brazil even a few
short years ago.

Table 1 reveals a great deal about the rising trade between Brazil and each of its
BRIC partners, in all cases this trade has increased far faster than has Brazilian trade
with the rest of the world. In the very short space of eight years the BRICs have gone
from occupying 3.42% in 2000 to 13.34% in 2008 of total Brazilian trade with the
world. Of special relevance, as we have just stated, is increasing trade with China.
Table 1

Total Commercial Exchange of Brazil with BRIC countries and World

(imports + exports) in US$ millions (F.O.B)5

Country 1990 2000 2008 (2009)6 % increase

(1990-2008)
Brazil (with 52,075 110,969 370,927 280,642 612%
World)
Russia 4347 994 7,985 4,281 1,740%8
Russia as % n/a 0.9% 2.25% 1.5% -
of Brazil’s
trade
India 184 489 4,667 5,606 2,436%
India as % 0.35% 0.44% 1.26% 2.0% -
of Brazil’s
trade
China 213 2,307 36,447 36,101 16,849%
China as % 0.49% 2.08% 9.83% 12.86% -
of Brazil’s
trade
BRICs as n/a 3.42% 13.34% (15.36% -
% of all )
Brazilian
trade

5 Source: Ministério de Desenvolvimento, Indústria e Comércio Exterior, SECEX – Intercâmbio

Comercial Brasileiro.
6 Figures for 2009 are included only for reference, due to the World Financial Crisis these can be
considered atypical. Although they do not contradict the overall trend observed.
7 1993 figures – After the break-up of the USSR, 1993 was the first year for which new Russian trade
figures were available.
8 1993-2008.
I do not wish to concentrate too much effort on discussing the economic dimension of
globalisation, as this is the most studied of the three dimensions to be treated here. As
the concept of BRICs has been redefined the complementarity and comparative
advantages of each of our four economies has become a discussion point. Brazil has
about 20% of the world’s fresh water supply, it is the only country in the world that
still is able to increase its agricultural frontier and research has played a large role in
productivity increases. Therefore, the argument goes, Brazil has comparative
advantages in growing and exporting food, especially when this requires use of large
amounts of arable land and/or water, these two factors are either poorly distributed or
lacking in China and India. Dupas (n.d.) points out that “1,650 litres of water are
necessary to produce 1 Kg of soya beans, 1,900 litres for a kilo of rice, 3,500 litres for
a kilo of fowl and 15,000 for a kilo of beef”. The production of certain industrial
goods also implies heavy demands for water. In other words, when Brazil exports
such items it is also exporting the water needed to make them. As relations intensify,
so classical economic theory teaches, actors in each country should be better able to
define where their country is economically the most competitive, and in such a way
the BRIC economies will increasingly complement each other in some areas
(however, considerations of food security are recognised as constituting a limit to
growth), as they continue to compete in others.

India’s Tata and Acelor-Mittal groups have made recent investments in Brazil. In
1999 a bi-lateral seminar was held in Rio de Janeiro that discussed Brazilian
cooperation with China including in areas such as information technology,
petrochemicals and electrical energy (Guimarães, 2003). Brazil’s Marco Polo group
manufactures buses in India and China and recently shut down its Russian operations.
Embraer, the world’s fourth biggest aeroplane manufacturer has a factory in Harbin,
China. The movements of global companies are intense and these are supported by
Chambers of Commerce for each of the three BRIC partners in Brazil.

Research is currently being undertaken, and this emanates principally from Business
schools and economics faculties, into growing trade, investment and the implantation
of joint ventures with Brazil’s BRIC partners. Not surprisingly, a key focus is once
again China. In spite of such recent moves, I must point out that we know far too little
 12

about trade, joint ventures and the role of social interactions in their evolution.9 This
appears to be so especially when we compare ourselves with some developed
countries, it seems that in these a very clear idea of national interests exist and the
university is seen as having a role in producing knowledge permitting the promotion
of these interests, as a result substantial amounts are invested in producing relevant
knowledge.

However, we can see the signs of trade disputes almost everywhere. The protection of
Brazilian manufacturing jobs, when faced with foreign (and today there is talk
especially of Chinese) competition is a case in point. The demands of the associations
that represent the interests of manufacturing capitalists are reflected in such conflicts,
and also appears at election time in the campaigns of some political candidates eager
to project local jobs. While such tensions can be seen as a natural result of conflicting
economic interests, a question is how are they dealt with? As we note in the public
discussions about the value of the yuan or the rupee, or in China’s recognition by the
World Trade Organisation as a ‘market economy’ the conflicts can be long-lasting,
arouse passions and spill into the domestic political sphere. A question that follows is
how are conflicts managed, in ways that serve to increase or to decrease tensions?

A quick look on the bookshelves of major US bookstores turns up titles on how to do

business with the Chinese, the Indians and with Brazilians. The very publication of
such books suggests that there is no ‘universal’ way of doing business, in most cases
such an action is marked by national characteristics and customs. This first
observation leads to the idea that business people from each of our countries, as they
engage with each other, must learn to ‘do business’ in a new way.

We see books on how to do it and how to understand each other- there is an American
way of doing business, there is a Chinese way of doing business and an Indian one.
How do we do business in Brazil? What is our way? And how to we explain this to
others? Have we become submitted to a North American model, after so many years
of economic relations in which the USA has been our major partner? In raising these
questions we arrive at political and cultural elements that are a component of
commercial activity.
9 An important exception is the book on India and Brazil edited by Loundo e Misse (2003)
Cultural and other non-commercial exchanges

While cultural products such as cinema, television, live television, tourism and
translation rights enter into the trade figures as products that have a market value, I
shall treat them here as elements of cultural exchange. They are products through
which those people who receive information are exposed to others. For such
information to teach them about the world it must be transformed into
communication, thereby putting one in contact with the other.

Other cultural products have a ‘economic value’ that has been modified by illegalities
such as counterfeited DVDs or books. Also today the internet makes many cultural
products available to users at prices that are close to free, these can go from on-line
communities to e-mail exchanges, and in many cases involve free access to products
that were previously paid for, such as access to newspapers, for file exchanges for
music, you tube, television programming etc. Many other social interrelationships
today involve cultural exchange without it being necessary to either leave wither
one’s country or to engage in economic relations in market: examples of the former
include learning a foreign language, eating in an immigrant community restaurant,
going to a theme bar, whereas examples of the latter include seeing government or
company sponsored cultural or sporting events, scientific cooperation and other forms
of exchange.

Circulation of cultural information and symbols The afro-Brazilian martial art and
dance capoeira arrived in Beijing in 2008 in a visit which countered on the
sponsorship of the Brazilian Emabassy, capoeira lessons can now be had in both
Russia and India. ‘Running spit Brazilian barbeque restaurants’ seems to have spread
in both Beijing and Shanghai, I have been told there was a direct influence as
Brazilian migrants and companies founded early restaurants in both cities, but now
the concept is spreading because it combines an exotic concept with food presented in
small servings with many different tastes and textures (which of course is compatible
with Chinese eating customs). Indeed, Cantonese and Indian cuisine are to be found in
major Brazilian cities, the former was established by immigrants, either by members
of India’s tiny migrant community through return migration of Brazilians who had
 14

experienced Indian cuisine elsewhere. The Haré Krishna religious movement arrived
in Brazil via non-Indian hands, whereas Buddhism came here through immigrants
from Taiwan, Japan and Mainland China. Vodka, so strongly associated with Russia
often subsitutes Brazilian rum (cachaça) to make a version of caipirinha the national
cocktail. Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan academies, which seem to have had a strong
influence of a first generation of Chinese immigrants, sprouted up in our major cities
and then spread to the interior through Brazilian-trained pupils. Some decades ago the
Brazilian soap opera “Slave Isaura” was seen by hundreds of millions in China, and
its main star Lucélia Santos is a better known representative of Brazil for many in
China than is the soccer legend Pelé. Young Brazilians tattoo Chinese characters on
their bodies, a few inscribe expressions in Hindi or Cyrillic scripts. Clothing worn by
a specific segment of ‘alternative’ youth is distinctly Indian influenced (and quite
often imported). In 2009 a Brazilian soap opera “Path to India”, which went so far as
to fuse Carnival and Bollywood, was watched by about 40% of the national TV
audience. The soap opera explored differences between Indian and Brazilian cultures,
in a romance cum suspense that criss-crossed cultures and continents from Rio de
Janeiro to Rajasthan. One key theme was the huge gaps in customs and values
between the two peoples, and the misunderstandings, tensions and deceptions
produced by such cultural differences. The Beijing Olympics exposed Brazilians to
far more than just the world’s largest sporting event in China, national television
crews visited the interior of China, revealing natural beauties and man’s assault on
them, as well as many extraordinary triumphs of Chinese civilisation, both past and
present, and social and economic problems that in some cases seemed to have been
chosen because they paralleled similar problems found in Brazil.

Of course, communication flows between countries are not all positive. News about
terrorism, crime and ethnic unrest often arrives in our homes from distant lands, it
does not matter by what means: internet, television, radio or newspapers. As receivers
try to decode the information received, problems that relate not only to the nature of
social reality in other parts of world, but also to the state of communication about
such realities become evident. Frequently we have no means of understanding the
images, stories and sounds we see and hear, in part because we do not have any
reason to trust in the official versions presented of such events. It is here that the
journalism profession exert its noble role to navigate between the various versions
held of the same facts and to permit these to be presented with balance and so as they
become intelligible to receivers in their own culture. One problem, however, is that in
today’s world we are bombarded with new information all of the time, and it becomes
difficult for receivers to make sense of the world around them, this produces a chronic
condition of contemporary civilisation, what Dominique Wolton (2009) calls
‘incommunication’ lack of communication.

The above are just some examples of processes of contemporary cultural exchanges
where specific elements of the culture of our BRIC partners become better known and
get re-read in Brazil (and vice versa in Russia, India and China). There appears to be
so much going on, information as to how others live in the world has become more
accessible and paradoxically it becomes more difficult to understand the world! We
can hypothesise that some of these processes of exchange have profound effects on
the formation of identities, but which ones precisely, and who is affect by them?
There is appears to be need to build a more precise understanding of how so many
diverse elements are received, mapped onto and contribute to remaking individuals,
and through them, our Brazilian culture. We cannot discard the hypothesis that many
symbols that appear to be firmly embraced simply fall into the trough of collective
amnesia of a regime of hyper-consumption, to be seen in hindsight as having been a
fashion replaced by a subsequent fashion. As such they have produced little
communication, little new understanding nor transformation of identities.

Many of these new influences and ideas seem to have their biggest impact on young
people. In order to understand their shifting significance, sociologists would need to
draw on audience, market and values research, as well as revisit the crucial question
of identities, both individual and collective. To engage in such an ambitious exercise
at the level of the BRICs would probably require extensive comparative research.

I now intend to focus on just a few more tangible dimensions of exchanges in the
cultural field: immigration, scientific cooperation and language study, before drawing
some more general conclusions about the operation of this cultural sphere for BRIC
sociology.

Immigration During the 20th Century Brazil received a considerable number

 16

of immigrants from Russia. A significant flow followed the 1917 revolution, and
subsequent to the Second World War there was another wave of migration. Although
there are some doubts about the validity of the classifications adopted, official
statistics reveal that over 120,000 Russians immigrated to Brazil between 1919 and
1947. After the Chinese revolution in 1949, a further 25,000 Russians migrated to
Brazil from China. (www.news-of-russia.info/russia/russos.htm)

The appropriateness of encouraging the immigration of Chinese people to serve as

coolies in Brazil, was debated during the 19th Century and, in spite of the prejudice
revealed, some immigrants were brought to the country (under terrible conditions) to
grow tea. There are published visual registers of Chinese immigrants in the city of Rio
de Janeiro in the 19th Century, but no accurate statistics relating to their numbers.
(Leite, 1999) The Chinese revolution provoked a first contemporary wave of
immigration, and recently as commercial exchanges between the two countries have
grown there has been an upsurge. Today it is estimated that there are some 200,000
Chinese immigrants or descendents in Brazil, of which over half live in the State of
São Paulo. There has been no appreciable Indian immigration whatsoever.

Besides injecting variety into the culture and lifestyles in the host country, the role of
immigrants is to live at the intersection of their cultures of origin and their host
culture, in this sense immigrants can play an important role as cultural intermediaries,
and help produce understanding. A recent doctoral thesis on Chinese migration to São
Paulo illustrates this last point. Interviews with Chinese migrants show that for many
of them Brazil is a country characterised by tolerance and racial and cultural mixture.
Compared with China our country has an uncertain identity and an instable social
system. The immigrants tried to explain this difference referring to the fact that China
is 5,000 years old and that Brazil is, in comparative terms, only a child, it has been
500 years since colonisation began and less than 200 years since independence. An
industrialist, aged in his fifties puts it another way, in his life span he has experienced
10% of Brazil’s history. (Véras, 2008, 194-204)

However, as we know from Mexico in the 1930s, Indonesia in the 1990s or

contemporary Spain and Australia, that immigrants, from China in the former three
cases and from India in the last case, can also be a focus of conflict.
Scientific Cooperation Especially since the end of the Military Regime there
has been growing Brazilian bi-lateral scientific cooperation with Russia and China.
Scientific cooperation with Russia is governed by a joint declaration of Foreign
Ministers, signed in 1997, this concentrates on the peaceful use of space, energy,
military technology and an umbrella area which is both technological and scientific.
Today bi-lateral cooperation with China is conducted around bio-fuels and
agriculture, and agreements have been signed in a number of areas including: forestry,
hydro-electricity, health, new materials, biological engineering and nuclear energy.
The most important and enduring cooperation with China has been in the aerospace
programme which began in the 1980s and which resulted in the launching of the first
‘China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite’ in 1999. The Indian Ministry of Science and
Technology established an agreement in 2003 with the Brazilian National Council of
Scientific and Technological Research (CNPq) to cooperate principally in
Biotechnology, Ocean Science & Technology, Building Materials and Technologies
and Metrology. In 2008 the Brazilian CNPq launched funding for research proposals
that involve India and South Africa.10

There is a research agenda that could be taken up by the sociology of science and this
would involve the reconstruction of the history of these agreements, to compare them
to agreements made with developed countries, to evaluate their success, and also the
conflicts that have emerged in such cooperation. Given that the scientific activity is
not dominated, in theory, by commercial interests the study of barriers to
communication among natural scientists engaged in cooperation are of special interest
to learning about the conditions and circumstances under which relations of trust are
to be built. Such research would contribute to future generations, in science, business
and government, because it would help people to learn from the successes, mistakes
and limits imposed in the past.

However, we all know that science is a field governed by power relations. When we
step back and examine the agenda of scientific cooperation between the BRIC
10 The IBAS programme is a tri-lateral one which involves three of the worlds largest developing
countries which have in common their choice of democratic political regimes: India, Brazil and South
Africa. See: www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/74666.html#vazio
 18

countries we see that there is no research into topics identified with the social
sciences. Given that globalisation is a cultural process, where scientific and
technological development is intertwined with the culture, values and social change,
this appears to be an extraordinary silence. I shall return to this point, which affects us
deeply in our attempt to envision a BRIC sociology.

Language study and translation The most learnt foreign languages in Brazil are
English, Spanish and French in that order. Russian is the only one of our three BRIC
partners’ major languages that has been taught on a longer-term basis in (a small
number of) universities, it is also some private language schools teach. Demand for
the Chinese language classes offered in private schools has been almost doubling
from year to year over the last few years in the city of São Paulo. Brazil’s first
Confucius Institute was recently opened in this same city and Chinese language
courses are starting up in some universities. In quite a different situation is Hindi, it is
neither taught in the Universities nor in private language schools.

In Brazil we do not have research into language learning which permits us to

understand what motives student demands for the study of different languages. We
can speculate that during the period in which Russian Communism was seen as a
positive model this would have boosted demand for Russian language study, however
a part of the demand was also commercial and related to Russia’s great literary
tradition, and this is why there was demand for courses in universities. From hearsay
evidence is that demand for Mandarin Chinese courses comes from two sources, those
with commercial interests and those with a sensitivity to Chinese culture.

In Brazil we note, in spite of the existence of immigrant communities of both Russian

and Chinese origin, there is a lack of specialist translators in these two languages.
This frequently results in information being transmitted between people in their
second (or third) language, English.

However, exchanges between scientists from the BRIC countries which occur in
Brazil are principally conducted in the English language. In those cases in the natural
sciences where concepts have a high degree of translatability across the linguistic
divide, and culture influences neither the validity of concepts used nor their
understanding, such a strategy may work. In the social sciences such conditions do
not exist and such a practice therefore risks producing misunderstanding. I will use a
simple example to illustrate, when a Brazilian uses the word ‘liberal’ in Portuguese
she means something quite different to what is understood in United States English
when one uses the word ‘liberal’, the first means conservative the second means
progressive, yet translations made are frequently literal! Another example, the
Chinese word 自由(zì yóu) is translated into English as ‘liberty’, however, when we
examine the Chinese concept it has an entirely different meaning to the Western
concept of liberty.11 Without going into lengthy and detailed arguments, these two
examples practical limits of using English as a ‘lingua franca’ in the social sciences.12

In a recent paper I have pointed out some of the difficulties that confront Brazilian
scholars as we try to internationalise our scientific production, a part of the paper
focused on the question of the use of the English language. (Dwyer, 2009) I observe
with great interest the valiant efforts of so many colleagues to learn English in the
belief that this will guarantee the status of sociology as a truly international discipline,
and that their own command of the English language will permit access to the
international stage. However, I am increasingly coming to the view that in the
medium term such a policy is condemned to failure. It seems to me that in order to
guarantee quality communication between social scientists we must resort to
appropriately trained translators and interpreters, they are the people who are
qualified to act as cultural mediators. I fully realise the unpopularity of such as a
notion, especially as it makes what seems a simple and cheap means of
communication (to get everyone to talk in English which then becomes a common
language) into something far more complex (when we communicate scientifically we
should prefer the use of qualified interpreters and translators, or learn the other’s
language). I recall that in the social sciences language is at the heart of our societies
and cultures, therefore the adequate use of language to describe and to explain lies at
the heart of our disciplines, the use of one’s own language or professional-quality
translation is, so it seems, a price that must be paid for the globalisation of our

11 The Chinese expression takes care of all conduct that is not specified by the laws, nor by rules, nor
by customs.
12 Hermès, the most important French journal of communication studies has published an issue on
translation, number 49 in 2007 and another issue shall be published this year, no. 56. My ideas reflect
many of the arguments in these jounal issues.
 20

scientific inquiries. Should we continue to pretend that we are communicating deeply

when in fact we are struggling to exchange information in our second or third
languages, the price to be paid in those cases where social science knowledge is not
formalised will inevitably be distortion on the part of emitters, and misunderstanding
on the part of receivers.

Conclusion Quite a number of issues have been covered in this section. The
research issues they raise are as follows: a) the need sociology to examine the
penetration of the symbols, norms and values of one society into another, especially
among those who are most open to change and who will live in the world that is being
formed, youth; b) the question of immigration which is both an asset as it provides the
host country with potential cultural mediators, and a possible source of tension; c) a
sociology of science to evaluate the scientific and technical agreements that exist
between our countries and their implementation; d) the question of language learning
and translation, including the necessity to pay special attention to the translatability of
concepts.

Supra-national organisations

The oldest existing supra-national organisation is the Roman Catholic Church. In the
19th Century a few were formed to deal with questions that required cooperation
between sovereign states, they can be seen as a response to a first phase of
globalisation, the ‘International Telecommunications Union’, and the ‘Universal
Postal Union’.13 Another round of organisations were founded in the first half of the
20th Century to respond to questions of global governance the League of Nations,
came into existence after the First World War, and subsequent to its failures and the
Second World War, their came the United Nations and a little later UNESCO, FAO,
WHO, BID, IMF which sought to respond to various kinds of global challenges, and
subsequently regional supra-national organisations: EEC, Asean, Mercosul. Each of
these is built around cooperation between governments.

Very recently we saw the coming together of a temporary organisation, the non-

13 The ‘International Telecommunication Union’ was founded in 1865 (under the name the
International Telegraph Union) and the ‘Universal Postal Union’ in 1874.
agricultural G20, as a reply to the limitations of the established institutions to reply to
the world financial crisis. Decisive action taken by some countries, especially the
BRICs is today being credited with having a positive influence on the world’s
economic recovery. The BRIC leaders’ meeting in Russia last year can also be seen as
pressuring for the transformation of old and potentially being an embryo of new
supra-national structures. The meeting’s final declaration, for example, provided
explicit recognition of Brazil’s and India’s wish to occupy a more relevant role in the
United Nations.

As globalisation intensifies many issues are seen as being unable to be resolved by

sovereign nation states acting in an isolated manner. The same technologies that bring
us messages in real time about events on a world scale remind us of both the positive
potential and the impotence of our governments, as they respond to crises beyond
their borders. Sometimes worldwide consciousness is accompanied by international
displays of unity of purpose, we saw this recently in the case of two humanitarian
disasters which had natural causes, as evidenced by international responses to the
Haiti and Sichuan earthquakes. However, in other cases and this was particularly so in
the man-made humanitarian crises such as Bosnia to Darfur, international paralysis
and lack of agreement become visible to a worldwide audience.

However we also become aware of problems that exist on a global scale: global
warming, protection of endangered wildlife, protection of the oceans’ fish stocks,
refugees, terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking and use, the regulation of each
of these questions depends on the building of international understanding and of
international agreements. Frequently, as in the Copenhagen meeting on climate
change divergent national interests were blamed for negotiation breakdown.

In many cases the issues we are mentioning come to be treated by non-state related
actors, who pressure for change and act where governments are unable to do so on
their own. Amnesty International, Transparency International, Médecins sans
frontières and the World Wildlife Fund are well-know examples. In some cases, we
see the development of global militancies against the established powers, as
crystallised in the World Social Forum.
 22

As the BRIC countries become more developed, extend their cultural projection (soft
power), and are respected on the world stage we shall increasingly see calls for us to
act internationally. Once again, we can expect citizens of BRICs to increasingly work
together in such situations, whether in government sponsored initiatives or in private
ones, in such differences will emerge and where they cannot be resolved they may
turn into conflicts.

Whereas the established industrialised powers, with the exception of Japan and Korea,
are all inheritors of the Western tradition, conflict resolution is circumscribed by sets
of values that, because seen as universal, help bind the West together. In the emergent
situation, and this will be so for the BRICs there do not appear to be any such
universal values system, will the bases for conflict resolution be the resort to the law
of the strongest? By raising this question, I am indicating that the era into which we
are moving may be filled with uncertainties.

There are many points of contact between individuals and representatives of our four
countries in supra-national organisations. Through working together, which always
involves cooperation and conflict, these people learn about each other, their ways of
seeing, their ethical bases, their values and also they learn how to live with the other,
on the base of experience and knowledge and not of stereotypes. It seems important to
document such interactions, because they contribute to shaping not only politics at the
level of the UN and other official international organisations, but also of international
organisations in the non-governmental sector. The BRIC partners will build some
supra-national agendas together, and will disagree on others.

Finally, we sociologists have our own supra-national organisation, the International

Sociological Association. In spite of the fact that China is not a member, most
participants in today’s session can look forward to our business meeting in
Gothenburg in July this year where we shall be able to discuss an agenda, one where
our sociological imagination is forced to treat the emergence of the BRICs seriously.

I shall now try to complete my rather lengthy presentation by making two further sets
of observations, one relates to the question of communication and the other to
sociology.
The Paradoxes of Communication

Whether we scholars, or our governments, like it or not our four countries will more
frequently exchange information, will have to communicate, to trade and to get know
each other better. In some ways it seems like we had been living since time
immemorial in a Gondwanaland, that a process analogous to the separation of the
continents is now redefining geography, helped by what Harvey calls the compression
of space and time, we are being forced by circumstances beyond our control into
closer proximity. Paradoxically, as we get to know each other better we shall become
far more aware of our differences. If the populations in our countries, and especially
those who act in the political and international spheres, do not get to know each other
better, and to learn to respect each other, this will inevitably contribute to the
aggravation of the inevitable conflicts. Such aggravation may lead to a weakening of
the BRIC ideology, for this has become an ideology of development whereby four
large, previously subordinate, nations are demanding a new role on the world stage.

Social science studies have traditionally played an important role in helping

understand both the conflicts and difficulties, as well as the promises and
opportunities that emerge in situations of inter-cultural contact. Today, in all of our
countries citizens interact at a face-to-face level with citizens from other BRIC
countries: translators, business people, scientists involved in international projects,
journalists, diplomats, tourists, language teachers and of course immigrants are at the
interface of contemporary cultural and social interchanges. Some of these people play
the role of ‘cultural mediators’ and they are responsible for promoting understanding
and ensuring that conflicts and differences in world views are recognised for what
they are. Their role is extremely important in the globalisation processes: international
business consultants, translators, language teachers and journalists.

Meaningful dialogue is a value and a necessity. It is in this context that a critical

evaluation the current state of knowledge of the history and cultures of our fellow
BRIC countries must be undertaken. In contemporary Brazil we can see that this is
currently (and understandably so) very shallow.
 24

We saw earlier that Brazil’s traditional references have been European and North
American (and to a lesser extent Japanese). Therefore, enormous challenges are posed
by the emergence of the BRICs, new cultural and linguistic capacities must be built,
new understandings of other traditions, perhaps forms of law. Indeed, some research
into the cultural mediators themselves appears necessary, not only are they privileged
observers of the processes in course, but their role is one of guaranteeing, if not the
establishment of the social link and interaction, that the differences between parties
are recognised for what they are, and that misunderstanding does not degrade into
conflict. A constant theme in this paper has been the emergence of conflicts of all
sorts. This points to the importance of building an intellectual project which reflects
upon the conditions which will permits citizen of each of our countries to live
together in the constant presence of citizens and images which come from BRIC
partners, and to be able to do this without producing open conflict. It is in this contact
that cultural mediators appear to be a thermometer of intercultural dialogue, the
production of systematic knowledge about their perceptions and the needs they
identify, would appear to be valuable tool in the hands of those actively involved in
processes of conflict management.

Possible consequences of the emergence of the BRICs for Sociology

The differences and difficulties in establishing dialogue, and this must be made clear
from the outset, extend into the heart of the field in which the discipline of sociology
is constructed. Sociology is both a product of and a carrier of Western rationalism.
From a Western viewpoint key sociological concepts are universalistic however, from
a non-Western viewpoint, many are but particularistic forms of Western thinking. To
produce meaningful comparative understandings across civilisations it is necessary to
employ other concepts and languages. A powerful critique of the sociological
paradigm is that it tends to exhibit little sensitivity to concepts other than those
developed within the framework of Western rationality. (Connell, 2007) It is certain
that the rising economic power of China and India, and the growing self-confidence
of sociologists in these two countries that will accompany this rise, will slowly edge
sociology towards incorporating new concepts. Such incorporation will contribute to
undermine certain classical foundations of the discipline and paradoxically contribute
to making the discipline more genuinely universalistic.
Towards Gothenburg The rise of common concerns and agendas among
sociologists in the BRIC countries will, and this is my bet, contribute to changing the
international face of the discipline. Long term consequences will be produced for: 1)
teaching curriculum 2) scientific publication 3) social theory 4) scientific exchanges
and research. Sociological texts from each BRIC country will be published to
illustrate how social processes, many of which are today treated predominantly with
reference to materials from the developed countries, have been researched outside of
those countries. I shall illustrate with an example that may seem obvious, I sometimes
hear young Brazilian sociology students complaining about low industrial wages
received by Indian and Chinese workers as being a factor that gives firms in those
countries unfair competitive advantage. I ask them to describe how Brazil developed,
unfortunately they frequently to not know that similar criticisms to those they make of
our BRIC partners were made in the developed countries about the process of
Brazilian development. This is just a small example of how a modified teaching
curriculum, which moves away from developed-country perspectives can contribute
to understanding between BRIC partners and university students. It is one, but is a
very long way from being the only example. Indeed the translation of important texts
from one BRIC language to another should help foster a scientific awareness of the
social processes involved in the rapid changes that have occurred in these countries,
for example, reflection on the twin dimensions of large populations and open spaces
and how these contribute to structuring state power in developing countries is a
subject that probably does not even interest the so-called ‘international sociology’.
But it is not enough to translate important texts and to change the teaching
curriculum, it is necessary to produce new knowledge!

In this paper I have identified some of the types of knowledge that it is necessary to
produce to render the integration of the BRICs as less conflictual than it might have
been without such knowledge. This agenda, while it is certainly necessary from a
political viewpoint, was conceived in a way that showed very limited theoretical
ambition. The impact and the recognition of a BRIC sociology will depend, in the
field of international academic sociology, on the theoretical ambitions of BRIC
sociology. As we get to know each other’s work better, to understand each others’
countries better, emergent agendas should permit the production of knowledge with
 26

renewed theoretical ambitions.

To produce new knowledge, and to make scientific exchanges meaningful, it is of

course necessary to have the budgets and finance. In my earlier discussion of
scientific cooperation we saw that up until now funding has only flowed to the natural
sciences and to technology. Sociologists must find the arguments to convince makers
of scientific policy that the success of the BRICs depends primarily on our capacity to
establish a way of living together that avoids destructive conflicts. This is a
precondition for healthy commercial relations, international cooperation and even for
successful cooperative research efforts in the natural sciences. In other words, I am
suggesting that the chances of BRIC sociology making a difference will rise should it
produce a strong institutional, financial and multi-lateral base. A precondition for this
would be to convince science policy makers that sociology is an essential component
of progress and development of the BRICs, which is, of course, is far easier to say
than to do!

Whether my analysis has any value, and if so how to move forward to constructing an
agenda should be something that we shall be able to better discuss in Gothenburg.

In the longer term one consequence of the development of BRIC sociology will be on
the development of expertise: it will be necessary to form a new generation of bi and
multi-lingual researchers, of translators and interpreters specialised in the social
sciences, and of people who are capable of assembling the jig-saw puzzle of a BRIC
sociology-in-construction and, on this basis, to build theory.

These and many other intellectual challenges force sociologists, wherever they may
be, to think about the moving terrain of the discipline. It is my belief that national
sociological associations have a role to play in leading the organization of agendas
that will establish comparative research projects and meaningful scientific exchange.
These will be necessary in order in order to confront the complex intellectual
challenges that the emergence of the BRICs pose.

Conclusions

I started this paper mentioning my two questions that I had originally intended to
address, and I shall conclude by returning to them. In relation to the development of
Sociology, many potential and interesting topics for research emerged as the paper
was being written, however, as resources are scarce and many of the questions our
countries face are urgent, I would suggest that we sociologists concentrate on three
topics. A key question appears to me is the mapping, documentation and theoretical
analysis of conflicts that take place between the BRIC countries and their citizens. A
second question, and this is one upon which work can begin immediately, is the
production of comparative analysis of our diverse development processes. Such
analyses should pay special attention to changes in social indicators, how the
perceptions of different social actors vary systematically and examine the
complexities of development processes which are non-linear and context bound.
Third, I would also suggest a project on youth, their changing values, perspectives,
horizons and also their views of other BRIC countries, and their capacity to absorb
signs and cultural output from these countries. It is today’s youth that shall inhabit the
economy and society of tomorrow, and they will have to pay the price of the errors we
make today. However, a fourth topic, relating to the past also exists, and I have
allocated it to the historians, and that is to rewrite history. This looks like a simple
task in the Brazilian case, but in that of relations between China, Russia and India it
looks much more complex.

Paul Kennedy (1988, 540) concluded his book “The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers” and paraphrasing Bismarck and making reference to “all of these (big)
Powers are travelling in the “stream of Time”, which they can “neither create nor
direct,” but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill and experience.” How
they emerge from the voyage depends, to a large degree, upon the wisdom of the
governments….” I would like to paraphrase this remark and to suggest that the
wisdom and capacity to construct an efficient and meaningful set of research
problems that we can call BRIC sociology will be fundamental to how the discipline
in our countries will construct its future.

My second question relates to Brazil, and here my own answer is not yet developed.
Instead of using my own words I shall use those of other analysts. For Barros e
Giambiagi the question that will dominate the next decades is how to develop the
economy in such a way as we arrive in the year 2020 with an economy and society
 28

that has few similarities to that of today, at the same time as we remain a democratic
country and preserve a stable economy. (2008, x) As we negotiate in this world we
have a feeling that our BRIC partners have an idea of their strategic interests. The
question is a simple one, as Fernando Henrique Cardoso (2008) has put it so clearly,
is what are Brazil’s interests? We have to define what we want out of this
relationship, in part this must start with the building of a capacity to deal with each
country on the basis of knowledge and the established means of communication, the
way forward with this lies in the development of linguistic skills, innovation,
understanding, and of course the formation of negotiators with a deep understanding
of the cultures they are dealing with in the commercial, diplomatic and cultural
realms. There is a time lag, and we in Brazil risk, as we prepare for the future (which
is already present), to become an actor without an identity because we lack a clear
definition of our own interests.
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