885470

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CUS0010.1177/1749975519885470Cultural SociologyLima Neto

Regional Spotlight Article

Cultural Sociology
2020, Vol. 14(1) 3­–21
Power and Culture: The © The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1749975519885470
https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975519885470
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Fernando Lima Neto

Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil

Abstract
In this article, I analyse how Brazilian sociology articulates the relationship between culture and
power, which is one of the central problems of cultural sociology. I analyse two theoretical
traditions, culturalism and institutionalism, which traverse different areas of Brazilian sociology.
Broadly speaking, the approach of culturalism takes culture as a dimension that structures power
relations (culture over power), while institutionalism considers that the structure lies in the
institutionalised power relations that produce the cultural codes of political culture (power over
culture). I conceive of political culture as an expression of an Ethos, and show how it is considered
either as a cause or an effect of the historical nation building process. In Brazilian sociology, the
notions of culture and power pose a permanent interpretational challenge for both classical and
contemporary scholars. This makes the discussion about the relationship between culture and
power a key element in understanding past and present historical processes in Brazil. I seek to
understand the variations of meaning regarding these notions and their implications for Brazilian
sociology. In this sense, this article is a cultural sociology of cultural sociology in Brazil, or, in
other words, an analysis of the cultural foundations of Brazilian sociology.

Keywords
Brazil, culturalism, cultural sociology, institutionalism, political culture

Introduction
Over the last few decades, sociologists have increasingly focused on the notion of culture
as a way of reframing sociological thought. This has been done in order to deal with the
new analytical challenges faced by sociology. The debate on cultural sociology aims to

Corresponding author:
Fernando Lima Neto, Assistant Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), R.
Marquês de São Vicente, 225, casa XVIII - Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, 22451-900, Brazil.
Email: fercaline@gmail.com
4 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

revive culture’s place in sociology, particularly in the North American and British con-
texts, where the notion of culture used to be relegated to the condition of a secondary and
residual subject. The main task facing cultural sociology is to incorporate the central role
of meaning-making into the analysis of social phenomena. In this sense, cultural sociolo-
gists are involved in theorising culture as a central dimension of the sociological approach
(Alexander, 2003; Madsen et al., 2001; Robertson, 1978). Nonetheless, there are pro-
foundly different ways for them to proceed towards this analytical revival. On the theo-
retical level, by refusing to consider culture as an epiphenomenal effect of ‘non-cultural
factors’, cultural sociologists investigate the dynamic interactions between the cultural
and the social. However, on the methodological level linking theory to empirical pro-
cesses, the strategies for relating cultural and social structures entail two different ways
of grasping culture as foundational for sociology, two different manners of addressing
the interplay between culture and power. At this point, either cultural sociologists ana-
lyse cultural codes in the light of power relationships or they do precisely the opposite,
which is to analyse power relationships in the light of their cultural codifications (Lima
Neto, 2014).
Thus, on the one hand, cultural sociology is presented as an approach that places cul-
ture as an independent variable of sociological analysis. Often, the authors supporting
this approach argue for the analytical separation of culture and social structure. This
trend is mainly sustained by the Yale approach, which stands against the sociology of
culture and its focus on culture as a dependent variable (Alexander, 2003). On the other
hand, there is also another conception of cultural sociology, which is thought of as a
synonym of the sociology of culture lato sensu. In this case, cultural sociology is under-
stood as a broad field encompassing all sociological approaches to culture. Thus, its
boundaries are set by non-sociological approaches, such as cultural studies. The main
concern of the authors in this approach is to explore the amalgamations between culture
and social structure. This trend is particularly strong in British sociology (Inglis et al.,
2007). Both conceptions of cultural sociology are intended to place the notion of culture
as foundational for sociology insofar as they seek to explore the interplay between cul-
ture and power (Lima Neto, 2014).
In countries such as France and Brazil, the discussion about cultural sociology is
practically non-existent (Cefaï, 2009; Lichterman, 2007; Lima Neto, 2014). This is
because in both traditions, the notion of culture has never been seen as irrelevant. On the
contrary, culture has been a main concern of sociology since its beginnings. Brazilian
and French sociology emerged as a field of knowledge aimed at understanding the rela-
tionship between culture and power because of very different historical reasons and cir-
cumstances. In France, the pioneer contribution of authors such as de Tocqueville and
Durkheim consolidated culture as a starting point for understanding the new power rela-
tions that were emerging in the modern world. Not by chance, French sociology was
institutionalised in a close dialogue with anthropology, where the concept of culture is
inescapable. In turn, in Brazil, since the beginning of the last century, the notions of cul-
ture and power were also at the core of the approaches dedicated to critically analyse the
development of modernity in the periphery of capitalism.
Thus, whether in France or Brazil, sociology has always considered culture in its
analysis, particularly in the way it analyses power relations. In this article, I intend to
Lima Neto 5

investigate how Brazilian sociology interprets the relationships between culture and
power, which is one of the central tasks for a cultural sociology. I focus on two areas of
sociology in Brazil, which in addition to being highly influential, are also the most inter-
disciplinary. At the interface between sociology and political science, I concentrate on
political sociology. At the interface between sociology and anthropology, I concentrate
on Brazilian social thought. The main reason for examining political sociology and
Brazilian social thought is that these are the areas that most discuss the relationship
between power and culture in the historical processes of Brazilian society. I propose no
exegesis of two such broad and heterogeneous fields. For that, it would be necessary to
explore the crossovers of Brazilian cultural thought with the cultural anthropology of
Franz Boas (1940) or the influence of authors such as Bendix (1977) and Barrington
Moore Jr (1973) on political sociology.
I focus instead on a limited number of classical and contemporary studies and present
the way they explore the relationships between the notions of culture and power in their
approaches about political culture in Brazil. In this article, the notions of “culture” and
“power” are set from a Weberian standpoint. Culture is considered as an Ethos, that is, as
ways of being, thinking and acting that articulate both ideal and material interests (Weber
1999a [1905]). In turn, the conception of power refers to forms of domination and legiti-
mation of the exercise of authority. In this sense, power implies politics because it deals
with interests that structure social relations vertically, that is, it defines positions that are
dominant or subordinate within a hierarchical system of references both material and
symbolic. Taken in this broad sense, the notions of culture and power refer to horizontal
or vertical forms that structure social relations. Thus, in line with the Weberian tradition,
I maintain that culture may be considered a synonym of social values (Weber, 1949: 76,
78) just like power may be considered a synonym of politics in a broad sense (Guess and
Skinner, 1994: xi; Weber, 1999b: 188).
If cultural sociology offers two general perspectives from which to address the rela-
tionship between culture and power, the notion of political culture serves the purpose of
helping us consider the way these perspectives shed light on classical Brazilian sociol-
ogy. The notion of political culture is taken here as a reference that may contemplate
different perspectives. From Rousseau (1992 [1762]) through de Tocqueville (1986
[1835]), to Almond and Verba (1989 [1963]), classical literature on political culture
reflects on the relationship between the values of modernity, such as individualism and
freedom, and the institutions of democracy, such as the public sphere and the State.
Taking the concept of political culture as the expression of an Ethos, I analyse how
Brazilian scholars have defined it either as a cause or an effect of the historical nation
building process.
I identify two central traditions that are at the core of both political sociology and
Brazilian social thought, while holding opposing views on political culture: culturalism
and institutionalism. Both approaches converge on associating political culture with
patriarchal, authoritarian and discriminatory practices and values, in contrast with the
liberal and republican ideals of modern democracy as they appear in classical literature.
Since the 18th century, the ideas and values that are associated with the formation of the
modern world arose as a consequence of civil society conquests against State excesses in
countries such as England, France, and the USA. In Brazil, authoritarian forms of the
6 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

state followed the arrival of the Portuguese into the 20th century. Given this, Brazilian
scholars have always been challenged to analyse the way modern ideas and values have
been associated with traditional and authoritarian forms of domination.
Culturalism and institutionalism therefore denounce the permanent contradiction
between ideas and historical process (Schwarz, 2017; Villas Bôas, 2004). However, the
manner of explaining this contradiction is different in each tradition. On the one hand,
culturalism explains the singularities of political culture from the point of view of cultural
structure, that is, institutions only reproduce cultural codes that guide ways of being,
thinking and acting. On the other hand, institutionalism explains how institutions and their
respective power relations produce this same Ethos, which appears as ideology.
The theoretical task of defining the notions of culture and power addresses the way
social values and institutions affect historical processes. In turn, the methodological task
of linking culture and power consists of examining the way social values and institutions
are articulated into cause and effect relationships. In this sense, at both the theoretical
and methodological levels, the present contribution shifts the discussion of cultural soci-
ology from the mainstream western cases to a particular theoretical tradition within the
so-called Global South. Taking into account that cultural sociology is the analysis of the
social construction of meanings that are associated with historical phenomena, I seek to
understand the variations of meaning regarding the notions of culture and power and
their implications for Brazilian sociology. In this sense, this article is a cultural sociology
of cultural sociology in Brazil, or, in other words, an analysis of the cultural foundations
of Brazilian sociology.

Culture and Power in Classical Sociology: The Culturalism

Approach
Up until the First Republic1 (1889–1930), apart from a few notable exceptions such as
Manoel Bonfim (Botelho, 2009), early modern interpretations of Brazil were supported
by scientific arguments inspired by biology and including broadly discriminatory racial
implications, both in literature and in incipient sociology. Geographic and racial deter-
minisms were taken as starting points for explaining culture (Cunha, 1902; Rodrigues,
1988; Romero, 1968). It was only in the mid-1930s that a cultural critique supported by
historical analysis consolidated itself. Authors like the anthropologist Gilberto Freyre
and the sociologist Sérgio Buarque de Holanda were among the most important scholars
of this generation, taking the notion of culture as a starting point for understanding
Brazilian society. The beginnings of political sociology and Brazilian social thought
were then marked by a cultural critique that analysed the emergence of a national politi-
cal culture as well as its later autonomisation. In this sense, these authors were attentive
to the influence of the colonial context in the formation of cultural codes such as person-
alism (Holanda) and miscegenation (Freyre), which grew independent from their origi-
nal context and directed the entire subsequent process of Brazilian society’s formation
post-Independence. These authors formulated a concept of national culture that is at the
heart of what is now called political culture in Brazil.
The structuring dimension of culture in the analysis of power (the culture over power
approach) is evident in the way Holanda portrays the influence of Iberian culture on the
Lima Neto 7

formation of Brazilian society: intimacy and cordiality are presented as dominant cul-
tural traits that are actualised daily in social life. The Iberian “culture of adventure” –
which comprises Portugal and Spain as part of the Iberian Peninsula, and represents
particular models of culture and political organisation within Europe – includes an aver-
sion to hierarchy, and is presented as antipodal to rational and bureaucratised modern
culture (de Tocqueville, 1986 [1835]; Weber, 1999a [1905]). Holanda argues that
Portugal prematurely developed its national State and economy because of the great voy-
ages which began at the end of the 15th century. However, in spite of the advances in its
modern political order and economic system, the habits of traditional life were never
transformed. Portugal’s entry into modernity did not come about through a radical revo-
lution against the Old Regime. Unlike what happened in countries where feudalism had
taken root, the bourgeoisie did not enter into conflict with the old aristocratic classes.
The bourgeoisie did not fight for a new vision of the world, for new values, as it did in
other parts of the modern West, such as in France, England and America.
The culture of personality is presented as the main characteristic of Brazilian culture,
as inherited from the traditional Portuguese world. It consists of a particular form of
individualism, in which people see themselves as independent of one another. The value
of a person is rooted in their ability to be self-sufficient and to not require associations
with other people in order to achieve their goals (Holanda, 1995 [1936]: 32). It is, there-
fore, what the author calls an “ethic of adventure” characterised by an ideal that empha-
sises ends rather than means, and is contrary to an “ethic of work” founded on an ideal
that emphasises means rather than ends. The culture of personality ends up compromis-
ing the legitimacy of hierarchies and social solidarity. In a land where all are barons,
there can be no durable collective agreements except those imposed by a feared and
outward force, one which generally assumes the form of an authoritarian State (Holanda,
1995: 37–38). Thus, Holanda emphasises an Ethos inherited in the process of colonisa-
tion that conditions both the formation of institutions and everyday social relations. The
predominance of personal relations within the supposedly impersonal public sphere, the
intimate relationship between the Catholic faithful and saints, and the use of nicknames
and diminutives in colloquial language are presented as expressions of this culture of
personality in politics, religion, and language (Holanda, 1995 [1963]: 145–149).
Another canonical author of the Brazilian culturalist tradition, the anthropologist
Gilberto Freyre analysed the ambivalent dimension of the patrimonial culture which
developed within the colonial-era slave-owning society. His most influential work, Casa
Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), presents a historical interpretation of the
practices and values of daily life in colonial Brazil. The book was published in the 1930s,
a time when analysing architecture, cooking and sexuality was still highly unusual
(Cardoso, 2013: 82). His literary style of writing and his adoption of an interdisciplinary
perspective anchored in anthropology, psychology, history and sociology are contribu-
tions that differentiate Freyre from his contemporary peers.
From an interdisciplinary perspective, Freyre works on a concept of culture that
embraces the meanings of history, race and the environment (Cardoso, 2013; Costa
Lima, 1989). This new cultural perspective towards race relations made it possible to
reinterpret a subject that until then had negative associations: miscegenation. Rather than
signifying the degeneration of pure races, miscegenation is presented by Freyre as a
8 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

historical product of the relations of power and solidarity among the three main cultural
matrices that interacted on Brazilian soil during colonisation. The author argues that
Brazilian culture is marked by a tendency to balance antagonisms without necessarily
producing new syntheses, as in the case of racial conflicts (oppositions between European
and indigenous cultures or European and African cultures), economic interests (opposi-
tion between the agrarian economy and the pastoral economy), political positions (oppo-
sition between Jesuits and farmers) and the greatest opposition of all, the one that took
place within the patriarchal family, the opposition between the masters and the slaves
(Araújo, 1994; Freyre, 1963 [1933]: 116). The title of his masterpiece makes a direct
allusion to these antagonisms. The masters’ house is presented as a sociocultural com-
plex, whose internal arrangement of rooms shapes a family type, an economic regime
and hierarchal relations (Villas-Bôas, 2004: 32).
Some authors criticise Freyre’s approach for being ideological, suggesting that it
implies a notion of racial democracy that eschews inequalities between races (Fernandes,
1978 [1964]; Mota, 1994). Freyre had a very successful academic career and was often
both attacked and defended by Brazilian social scientists. In spite of this, the most
accepted interpretation is that his work deals with syncretisms that do not produce syn-
theses, that is, it analyses permanent oppositions of antagonistic pairs (Araújo, 1994;
Pallares-Burke, 2005). Similar to Holanda’s position, Freyre stimulates a critical re-read-
ing of the modern world-view within the Brazilian historical process. In Brazil, the insti-
tutions of modernity emerged in the midst of a markedly traditional social context.
Authors such as Freyre and Holanda analyse the cultural consequences of Portuguese
expansion in America. In this sense, they present the colonial relations between Portugal
and Brazil as a background that allowed for the emergence and crystallisation of a
national political culture that would structure the entire process of modernisation in
Brazil. Although they recognise the influence of power relations in the context of colo-
nisation, these authors concede a level of autonomy to the national culture so that it
ultimately prevails over any relation of power. They identify power relations that are
guided by cultural codes founded on affections and passions rather than on discipline and
rationality. Therefore, the culturalist tradition of political sociology and Brazilian social
thought recognises the formation of national culture as a product of colonial relations
between Portugal and Brazil, but maintains that this product has become autonomous
and has become a structuring dimension of social relations. The notion of culture then
appears as an independent variable while power relations are taken as a dependent vari-
able in this analysis. In other words, the culturalist tradition analyses culture over power.

Culture and Power in Classical Sociology: Institutionalism

The genesis of institutionalism in Brazil began with the pioneering contribution of
Oliveira Viana from the 1920s, who viewed the State as an object of sociological analysis
(Viana, 1922). However, his work was still strongly influenced by the naturalistic para-
digm against which culturalism emerged. It was not until the 1950s that the deepening of
historical studies on State formation in Brazil established a new tradition within Brazilian
political sociology and social thought. The institutionalist tradition consolidated itself as
a historical approach that criticised culturalism. It sought to explain how power relations
Lima Neto 9

between State and society in Portugal had structured an authoritarian State profile that
had hampered the autonomous organisation of emerging social interests in Brazil. In this
sense, the purpose was still to understand the historical context of Brazilian society’s
formation, but under a new perspective that emphasised the weight of institutions and
power relations in the formation of national cultural codes. In this section, I briefly pre-
sent the contributions of sociologist Raymundo Faoro (2001 [1958]) and jurist and politi-
cal scientist Vitor Nunes Leal (1986 [1949]), two of the greatest proponents of
institutionalism, in order to provide an overview of how their approaches relate to power
and culture.
The book Os Donos do Poder (The Owners of Power) is a landmark in the literature
on State-building in Brazil and presents the patrimonialist ideology as a reflection of the
role of the State in the formation of Brazilian society. Similarly to Holanda, Faoro exam-
ined the consequences that the absence of feudalism had on the modernisation of
Portugal, but he focused on the State. The Portuguese Empire was administered by a
group of officials of the King, who watched over his property. There were, for example,
no autonomous jurisdictions in the system of hereditary captaincies (the first administra-
tive divisions of the Brazilian territory). Modernisation was a top-down process pro-
moted by the State rather than society. Capitalist rationalisation emerged through
monarchical-bureaucratic tutelage. Thus, Faoro used the Weberian conceptual apparatus
to present a patrimonial form of state (characteristic of traditional forms of domination)
as the main agent of modernisation. In other words, Faoro analysed a state capitalism that
regulated politics and economy from the top down (Faoro, 2001 [1958]).
In this scenario, the bourgeoisie arose through an umbilical bond with the Crown. The
State, as the Prince’s enterprise, controlled all trade relations. Thus, in Portugal and
Brazil, what emerged was a bourgeoisie associated with the State and unrelated to the
land. Portuguese patrimonialism created favorable conditions for the formation of a
“bureaucratic stratum” (estamento burocrático), whose main objective was to watch
over the interests of the Crown and which ultimately obstructed the formation of autono-
mous interests within society. In a context where there were no solidly organised, contes-
tation powers, the bureaucratic stratum ended up becoming autonomous. As an instrument
necessary for maintaining the autonomy of the patrimonialist political system, the
bureaucratic stratum itself became an independent power structure (Cardoso, 2013: 230;
Faoro, 2001 [1958]: 736–738). Faoro maintains that the great engine of modernisation in
Brazil was the bureaucratic stratum and not the bourgeoisie. The bureaucratic stratum
was not a class, because it was not based on economic grounds, but rather political ones.
This ultimately established it as the only possible way to legitimise (from top to bottom)
the interests of society. Thus, Faoro describes a historical process in which the val-
ues   associated with democracy and liberalism are mitigated by the oppressive opposi-
tion of the bureaucratic stratum. Faced with this complex political structure, there is
therefore no possibility of a modern and republican political culture emerging.
Another important reference of the institutionalist tradition, Vitor Nunes Leal’s
Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto (Colonelism, Hoe and Vote) was first published in 1949.
Leal presents the phenomenon of “colonelism”2 as the result of the superposition of
forms of the modern representative regime – the electoral system – to an economic and
social structure that had not yet modernised (1986 [1949]: 43–44). The author refers to
10 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

colonelism as the system of mutual dependencies between the progressively strength-

ened central power and the economically decadent elite of the landlords during the First
Republic (1889–1930). Leal describes a complex web of social relations that links local
chiefs (the colonels) with executive and legislative representatives, as well as civil serv-
ants. Each of these actors gained some advantage from the formation of colonelism: a
local power that legitimised and was legitimised by the central power (Leal, 1986
[1949]: 67–68).
The colonels were powerful local landowners who ended up appropriating a consider-
able number of services that were within the State’s competence: security, access to
health, employment, and such like. They carried out these responsibilities in a self-inter-
ested and personalistic way, often illicitly, using their influence with the local population
as a bargaining chip to receive support from politicians. The colonels enlisted voters to
support their candidates by offering small favors or simply by coercing them. In return,
they received rewards from State and national politicians for access to resources for
public works, such as paving the streets or building schools and hospitals. In this sense,
a grand system of reciprocities emerged based on non-republican personal exchanges.
Public works in these municipalities, for example, were not seen as rights of the popula-
tion, but rather gifts from those in power. The clientelist code of personal exchange that
would spread beyond politics in other circles of social life was therefore the result of a
particular balance of forces between local power and national power in the First Republic.
All in all, the institutionalist perspective criticises culturalism by arguing that political
culture is produced by institutions rather than the other way around. The specific condi-
tions of the formation and functioning of modern institutions in Brazil are viewed as the
mechanisms of power that produce and perpetuate cultural codes. The bureaucratic stra-
tum and colonelism are historical phenomena that refer to State power structures and
which reproduce cultural codes such as personalism, as well as racism (Fernandes, 1978
[1964]) and clientelism (Nunes, 1997). In this sense, the causal emphasis on the relation
between culture and power is clearly placed in terms of power relations, which are stud-
ied from their respective cultural codes (patrimonialism and clientelism). In other words,
the institutionalist tradition of political sociology and Brazilian social thought analyses
power over culture.

Culturalism and Institutionalism as Variations of

Structuralism
Both culturalism and institutionalism operate within a structuralist perspective, in that
they analyse structures that emerged in the past and have sealed the destiny of Brazil.
However, these structures that have become independent from their original historical
context are seen as having a different nature in each tradition. For Holanda, for example,
the structure has a cultural nature (personalism), while Faoro conceives of a structure with
an institutional nature (the bureaucratic stratum). Both Faoro and Holanda emphasise the
specific context of the bourgeois revolution in Portugal and its ambivalent consequences
in Brazil. However, they analyse different dimensions of this process, culture and institu-
tions, although they also recognise, respectively, the influence of culture on institutions
and of institutions on culture. In turn, Freyre and Leal analyse the connections of local
Lima Neto 11

powers with broader power structures, that is, the relations between masters and slaves in
Portuguese colonisation and the relations between colonels, rural populations and politi-
cians in the First Republic. However, each author takes a different approach to analysing
the formation of bonds of solidarity that coexist with asymetrical power structures. In
Freyre, this solidarity is associated with the logic of miscegenation that refers to the inter-
action of distinct cultural matrices within the process of formation of the national culture.
In Leal, the logic of the exchange of favors refers to the interaction between political posi-
tions that are articulated within the process of centralising political power.
In other words, culturalism takes the notion of culture as a dimension which structures
historical processes, while institutionalism considers that the structure lies in the institu-
tionalised power relations and results in cultural codes of political culture. Thus, each
tradition establishes a different meaning for the notion of culture. In the case of cultural-
ism, it is an Ethos, in Weber’s sense, a world-view that informs agency (Weber, 1999a
[1905]). In the case of institutionalism, it is an ideology, in Mannheim’s sense, a belief
system produced by historical groups or times (Mannheim, 1968 [1929]). An ideology is
also a world-view, just as an Ethos is also a belief system produced in history. Thus,
culture (either understood as Ethos or ideology) is always linked to history and its rela-
tions of power. What changes, however, is the emphasis on one concept or the other.
The approaches of both culturalism and institutionalism have contributed robustly to
the development of sociology and, even today, influence many authors and much research
on Brazil. It is necessary to emphasise the reflexive way in which both currents of thought
seek to respond to the challenges of their own historical time, adjusting the sociological
theory to an empirical context perpetually marked by singularities and contradictions.
Over the course of the 20th century, sociology in Brazil sought to articulate the generalis-
ing dimension of theories about the modern world – which were fundamental to the very
institutionalisation of sociology in the main western centers – with a historical context
that demanded a critical revisionism of the theory itself. The Marxist notion of class and
the Weberian typology of power legitimacy, for example, could not be applied indis-
criminately in a historical context markedly different from those influenced by more
radical bourgeois revolutions. Thus, whether in the past or the present, the main chal-
lenge to the sociological imagination in Brazil lies in adjusting theories and methods of
classical and contemporary sociology in order to understand the unique conditions of
general processes; or rather, sociology in Brazil analyses the formation of the national
State, democracy, globalisation and other general phenomena in the light of the singular
conditions that developed in the course of its own history.

Ideas out of Place?

One of the most important and influential recent debates in the discussion of the relation-
ship between culture and power in Brazil originated in a book written by Roberto
Schwarz, in 1977, entitled To the Victor, the Potatoes (Ao vencedor, as batatas). In this
book, Schwarz builds on the sociology of literature to analyse the varied forms of incor-
porating the modern narrative of the novel in Brazil (Schwarz, 2017 [1977]). The contri-
butions of José de Alencar (1829–1877) and Machado de Assis (1839–1908), two major
figures in Brazilian literature, are taken as paradigmatic examples. While the work of
12 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

Alencar demonstrated the insurmountable dualisms and contradictions between European

ideas and Brazilian reality, Assis was able to fuse these oppositions by adjusting the nar-
rative of the novel to the specificities of the Brazilian historical process. Assis’ work
cohesively reconciles opposing notions, such as capitalism and slavery, or liberalism and
favors (Waizbort, 2009). The first chapter of the book is entitled “Out of place ideas”
(Ideias fora do lugar) and addresses the inadequacy of modern ideas (such as freedom,
individualism and public space) in a society marked by slavery, patrimonialism and
favors. The growth of values like individualism and freedom was thwarted by a slave-
based society. These contradictions were later actualised throughout various fields, such
as literature, the fine arts, music, economics and politics. In all these domains, there is a
re-creation of a modern aesthetic language in a different context, revealing a structural
contradiction between representation and reality that appears in customs, national sym-
bols and theory (Schwarz, 2017 [1977]: 21, 23).
In the realm of political sociology and Brazilian social thought, the debate about out-
of-place ideas remained alive until at least the late 1980s, as portrayed in the controversy
between Richard Morse and Simon Schwartzman. One of the most influential and
renowned American scholars in Brazil, Morse published, in 1988, Prosper’s Mirror (O
espelho de Próspero), a book that reinterprets the antagonisms between foreign ideas and
national realities in Latin America, and presents Latin American civilization as a promis-
ing alternative to the moral and existential crisis of the modern Anglo-American world.
Latin America, marked by the cultural heritage of Iberian civilisation, reveals a concep-
tion of social order based on ethics and religion, as opposed to the individualist and
subjectivist order of the modern West. Thus, for Morse, the Latin American historical
process reveals a cultural option for an alternative model of civilisation rather than a case
of frustrated development (Morse, 1988: 14), which, in the terms considered in this arti-
cle, refers to a prominence of culture over power relations.
Simon Schwartzman harshly criticises Morse’s supposed cultural reductionism,
which was later rebuffed by Morse himself (Morse, 1989). Schwartzman argues that
Morse’s thesis promotes a kind of backward ethnocentrism by seeking the origins of a
supposedly superior civilisation in an Iberian past. Anglo-American societies, he argues,
still preserve a repertoire of creativity, pluralism and a capacity for moral and ethical
commitment incomparable with the provincialism and corporatism of Latin America
(Schwartzman, 1989). He states that liberalism and representative democracy must also
be pursued within Latin American cultural traditions. For Schwartzman, this has not yet
been possible because of the authoritarian way in which State and society are related in
Brazil (Schwartzman, 1988), demonstrating how his approach can be associated with the
institutionalist tradition.
Morse and Schwartzman present opposing answers to the question posed by Schwartz.
Each author elaborates a different perspective in explaining the problem of the relevance
of ideas of modernity in Brazil. For Morse, ideas of modernity have no “place” in Latin
America because of the influences of an alternative western model of civilisation. For
Schwartzman, these ideas have not yet taken place due to the lack of development in the
region, but should be sought after. In this sense, while the civilisational component may
be associated with the idea of culture as values and world-views, the developmental
component is concerned with the formation of rational and bureaucratised institutions.
Lima Neto 13

Thus, for Morse, Latin American culture makes it impossible to achieve the project of
western modernity in Brazil, while for Schwartzman, patrimonialist power relations
reproduce an authoritarian State that contaminates all cultural relations. Later, other
authors joined this debate which soon became crystallised in two opposing positions: the
Iberians, who defended the preservation of a non-individualistic modern ethic, and the
Americanists, who conceived of the Iberian world as obscure and authoritarian (Oliveira,
2000; Vianna, 1991).

Culture and Power in Contemporary Brazilian Sociology:

Institutionalism
Contemporary sociological theory has been particularly concerned with surmounting
dichotomies that were fundamental to the formation of the discipline itself. In this sense,
sociology follows a general movement that also implies other disciplines such as anthro-
pology, philosophy, and literature, among others. Many authors propose overcoming
dichotomies, such as action and structure, society and individual, subject and object, self
and other. The very emergence of cultural sociology is part of this general tendency to
reconcile old antagonisms. The relation between culture and power, the central object of
the many possible meanings of cultural sociology, is also at the center of the contempo-
rary debates in Brazilian sociology.
The dualism between institutions and culture that, for much of the 20th century, con-
ditioned the sociological imagination “on” and “in” Brazil is today subject to many
forms of revisionism, beyond political sociology and Brazilian social thought, which
have established themselves as important fields of knowledge and have been institution-
alised in national research associations. It is possible to identify the growing interest in
the relationship between culture and power in other areas of Brazilian sociology. In this
section and the next, I briefly present several examples of contemporary authors who
analyse the relationship between culture and power.
In the institutionalist tradition, at the end of the 20th century, political sociologists like
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Werneck Vianna, Simon Schwartzman and Elisa Reis
began to review the historical approach to the relations between Portugal and Brazil. For
these authors, in spite of the original ties with Portuguese colonisation, the history of
Brazil has developed along its own lines and does not constitute simply some appendix
in Portugal’s development. Reis argues that the state-building process in Brazil preceded
that of nation-building. The persistence of the domination of agrarian elites at the macro-
political level and the inheritance of traditional domination based on personal loyalties at
the micro-political level were important elements both for the definition of an authoritar-
ian conception of the state and for the corporatist model of citizenship that was dominant
in the country (Reis, 1998).
Simon Schwartzman also explores the unique conditions of modern processes in
Brazil, in particular the fact that liberalism emerged as a movement that originated from
elites rather than from the people. In line with Faoro’s approach, Schwartzman argues
that Brazil inherited a self-sufficient political system without the need to be bound by the
interests of particular groups or classes. The difference is that, for Schwartzman, the
structural weight of patrimonialism began to be exerted by emerging capitalist sectors
14 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

concentrated in the city of São Paulo (Schwartzman, 1988). Luis Werneck Vianna, in
turn, analyses how, during the 1930s, the disputes between internal fractions of the bour-
geoisie in its relations with the State ended up propitiating a bourgeois revolution from
above. The incipient industrial bourgeoisie turned against the agro-export bourgeoisie,
allied with the State bureaucracy, pressing for the expansion of a still very restricted
liberalism (Vianna, 1978). These three authors analyse the asymmetrical relationship
between State and nation, or rather, politics and culture. Strongly in tune with institution-
alism, they understand that political clashes and power balances between sectors and
social classes end up conditioning forms of solidarity and a sense of belonging to a
national political culture that is far removed from the models proclaimed by democratic
and liberal regimes.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso is another important contemporary reference of institu-
tionalism. His work is generally associated with the so-called dependency theory. There
is certainly a diverse set of theoretical positions, disciplines and perspectives within this
field. Nevertheless, variations aside, the field is unified by a widespread criticism of
theories of modernisation, especially those inspired by Talcott Parsons. The work
Dependence and Development (Dependência e desenvolvimento na América Latina) is
considered a central reference in this discussion (Cardoso and Faletto, 1970). The authors
reject the thesis that developing countries will necessarily repeat the history of developed
countries. They analyse Latin American historical processes in which capitalist develop-
ment occurred without bourgeois revolutions. In Brazil, they analyse how populist
democracy has become the main path to achieve economic development and industriali-
sation (1970).
Coming from a theoretical field aimed especially at politics and development in Latin
America, the authors of the dependency theory cultivated a rich dialogue with influential
theories in international debates over the last quarter of the 20th century. On the one
hand, this brought the Brazilian historical process closer to the debates then in vogue in
the areas of international relations and political economy, such as the discussion about
the role of foreign capital in the development of peripheral economies. Gunnar Myrdal’s
thesis on the inevitability of dependency relations in a system of capital accumulation is
a well-known example (Myrdal quoted in Machado, 1999). On the other hand, the works
of this field introduce methodological conceptions of political sociology that permit
analyses of the various combinations of capitalism, economic development, democracy
and authoritarianism in a long-term and comparative perspective. In this sense, they
point to questions quite similar to those worked on by authors such as Bendix (1977) and
Barrington Moore Jr (1973), who explore the different paths of the formation of the
modern State outside the West.

Culture and Power in Contemporary Brazilian Sociology:

Culturalism
One of the most internationally influential Brazilian anthropologists, Roberto DaMatta is
a key reference in contemporary Brazilian social thought. His pioneering work attempts
to understand Brazil not only as a historical product of power relationships, but rather as
a drama, that is, as social values and ideologies that purport to exist beyond time. For
Lima Neto 15

DaMatta, unlike sociology, politics, and economics, anthropology should deal with the
aspects of social reality that are more stable, permanent, and situated beyond chronologi-
cal time. The object of anthropology should thus concern myths and ritual processes
whose social significance refers to deep social crystallisations. Following this approach,
DaMatta analyses carnival and football as two “perpetual institutions” which allow one
to feel (rather than abstractly conceive of) the cohesion of Brazilian society (DaMatta,
1982, 1997 [1979]: 29,).
In Brazilian society, unlike modern western societies, the notion of the individual is
associated with a “rejection of the world,” that is, a rejection of the cultural structures
that precede power relations, such as the universes of family, friendship and kinship. In
short, this means a system of personal relationships that coexists in tension with a legal,
modern and individualistic system. DaMatta explores the ambivalences that result from
the permanent confrontation between, on the one hand, a set of traditional structured
social relations and, on the other hand, a bureaucratised and rationalised system inspired
by liberal bourgeois ideology (DaMatta, 1997 [1979]).
Major Brazilian social scientists have often denounced the absence or weakness of
certain social values that were supposed to be central to modernisation, such as freedom,
equality and individualism. DaMatta’s pioneering contribution consists of a critique of
institutionalism and its thesis that these social values could not be established, or were
only partially established, in a historical context marked by authoritarian and patriarchal
power relations. DaMatta’s analysis shows the ambivalent achievements of these social
values within secular rituals such as, for example, carnival, when the ordinary elements
of social life are re-signified into a social drama that exists beyond time and space.
DaMatta’s anthropological perspective presents cultural phenomena that confer meaning
upon social values such as freedom and individualism outside the conventional arenas of
politics. Therefore, the analysis is directed towards ritual processes, not only carnival,
but also military parades and religious processions (DaMatta, 1997 [1979]).
It is only recently that the culturalist approach has been taken back up in the field of
political sociology, although it has never fully disappeared from the field of Brazilian
social thought. In an earlier work, analysing the formation of NGOs in Brazil, I identified
the main social values that give meaning to these institutions, analysing their variations
of meaning over the course of history. From Christian charity to ecology, through social
justice and philanthropy, the history of private non-profit institutions is replete with
meanings that have changed through disputes and balances of power between the State,
society and the Vatican since the colonial era. I identified three major transformations
that occurred during the 20th century and established the symbolic boundaries of what
came to be called NGOs in Brazil (Lima Neto, 2016).
Another contemporary author of culturalism linked to both political sociology and
Brazilian social thought is Adrián Gurza Lavalle, who argues that the long historical
experience of patrimonialism in Brazil has led to the crystallisation of relatively autono-
mous cultural codes (Gurza Lavalle, 2004: 127–128). Although the consolidation of
these cultural codes helped to remove the naturalistic and racial assumptions that sup-
ported Brazilian interpretations, it also allowed for the formation of a new form of essen-
tialism, a cultural one. Gurza Lavalle crticises the supposed congenital inadequacy of
ideas and reality in Brazil. With this type of approach, he argues, the anomalies of public
16 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

life are naturalised by affirming that the dissonance between the discourses of the insti-
tutional forms of politics are indicators of a social reality tied to historical anachronisms.
Gurza Lavalle warns that rejecting culturalism does not imply disregarding the cultural
dimension. On the contrary, a non-naturalistic understanding of culture allows one to
take the notion of Ethos as an explanatory reference of public space in Brazil (Gurza
Lavalle, 2004: 156–162).

Conclusion
In this article, I have presented two theoretical traditions, culturalism and institutional-
ism, that cross through different areas of Brazilian sociology and analyzed how each
of them approaches the relationship between culture and power. Both traditions
acknowledge that a social structure inherited from the colonial era has survived over
the course of the following centuries. For institutionalism, this structure consists of
systems of power relations that produce the values and cultural codes of Brazilian
political culture. For culturalism, these cultural values and codes precede and deter-
mine the power relations. Broadly speaking, the approach of institutionalism analyses
power over culture, while culturalism analyses culture over power. The classical
authors of Brazilian sociology addressed general questions that defined a broad spec-
trum of issues related to the opposition between culture and power. Contemporary
authors, on the other hand, give more weight to mutual implications rather than making
general determinations of one being dominant over the other. Even when the emphasis
of their works ends up falling more on culture or more on institutions, they seek to
explore dialogical articulations between both.
Traditionally, Brazilian sociology has faced the challenge of adjusting theoretical
debates on modernity and democracy to its own historical context. The task of mobilis-
ing these theories required sociologists to adjust and assimilate theoretical debates into
historical processes that are different from those originally explained. A striking example
is the way Faoro mobilises Weberian sociology to approach the formation of modern
society in Brazil. In Weber, the notions of traditional domination and the patrimonial
State are associated with traditional societies, while rational domination and the bureau-
cratic rule of law take precedence in modern societies. Faoro uses Weberian theory to
develop a patrimonial conception of the State that has become the main arena and agent
in the modernisation of society. The debate over out-of-place ideas also demonstrates the
pressing need to adjust the conceptual discussion of sociology to a highly particular his-
torical context.
The case of cultural sociology is no different. Unlike the original Anglo-American
context, where the notion of culture was covered by a conceptual revival that gave it
unprecedented importance at the end of the last century, the relationship between culture
and power has always been an object of sociological analysis in Brazil. Whether in the
past or the present, the authors of Brazilian social thought and political sociology seek to
explain the relationships between State and nation in Brazil from a historical perspective.
Considering the State as a bundle of political relations and the nation as a set of values and
worldviews, each author develops an image of Brazil that associates politics and culture,
State and nation in diverse ways. On the one hand, in the culturalist tradition, culture is
Lima Neto 17

“larger” than politics and, thus, larger than the State. On the other hand, in the institution-
alist tradition, power is “larger” than culture and encapsulates national and political
cultures.
Colonisation and slavery are central historical references in the debates about the rela-
tions between culture and power in Brazil. For the authors of the culturalist tradition,
these phenomena implied the formation of an original Ethos that accommodates princi-
ples of the liberal and modern order in a historical reality marked by flagrant contradic-
tions with these concepts. Thus, the ideas of individualism and freedom are introduced
into an underdeveloped and slave-based society. Roberto DaMatta and Roberto Schwarz
offer recent and influential contributions to this explanatory key. In turn, the institution-
alist approach highlights the impact of colonisation and slavery on class relations, insti-
tutions, mode of production and Brazil’s relations with capitalism. The works of Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, Elisa Reis and Luiz Werneck Vianna are the most influential contem-
porary contributions to this perspective.
Beyond political sociology and Brazilian social thought, other areas of contemporary
sociology also accommodate the discussion about the relationship between culture and
power and propose to mitigate – without necessarily overcoming – this opposition. Thus,
for example, in political theory, the dualism between culture and institutions has been
dissolved in recent approaches, such as that of José Álvaro Moisés, for whom neither can
fully explain the other. Culture and institutions are mutually referential. Similar to what
Robert Dahl (2000) called the “paradox of democracy,” Moisés seeks to understand the
paradoxical idea revealed by opinion polls in Brazil: widespread adherence to democ-
racy concomitant with widespread criticism of the functioning of its institutions. The
influence of a traditionally authoritarian political culture as well as the strength of a State
that is positioned above society are explanations that must be combined in order to
understand the paradox of democracy in Brazil (Moisés, 2010). In the anthropology and
sociology of culture, studies of carnival reflect the relationship between culture and
power to deal with the most varied aspects of this celebration, such as its ritualistic
dimension (DaMatta, 1997 [1979]), its transnational circulation of symbols (Argier,
2000; Moura, 2002), and its intersections with the economy (Farias, 2008). Ortiz’s pio-
neering studies of the cultural industry and mass culture are also an important reference
in the debate on the symbolic goods markets in Brazil (Ortiz, 1988), opening space for a
fertile and still incipient field of creative economy (Maia, 2012).
In Brazilian sociology, therefore, culture and power constitute a permanent interpre-
tational challenge for both classical and contemporary studies. This makes the discussion
about the relationship between culture and power a key element for understanding past
and present historical processes in Brazil. It is not possible, and nor is it necessary, to find
a synthesis that dissolves this opposition. Culture and power are complementary per-
spectives that can be articulated in various ways in order to interpret different dimensions
of the historical process. Recognising the mutual conditioning between these notions
does not imply any intention to overcome their opposition, but instead reinterprets it in
the light of historical phenomena that challenge the modern understanding of the world.
Phenomena such as the end of the Cold War, globalisation and the development of com-
munications, for example, have an immediate effect on the foundational cognitive struc-
tures of modernity, such as the distinctions between self and other, notions of time and
18 Cultural Sociology 14(1)

space, or the relation between representation and participation. The challenges of the
historical present therefore require a critical reflection on central concerns in the tradi-
tion of sociology and other sciences. In the case analysed here, the debate on culture and
power creates a fertile laboratory that contributes to further the understanding of current
sociological challenges.
The discussion of culture and institutions implies different possibilities for position-
ing each of them within the scope of structure and agency. Classical culturalism places
culture within the framework of structure and institutions within the scope of action,
while classical institutionalism proceeds inversely. In more recent approaches, however,
the authors seek to relate culture and institutions to both the scope of action and structure.
Since there is no pretense of overcoming the opposition between culture and power, in
all approaches one of the two categories always ends up predominating.
This article has aimed to provide a new way of looking at the relations between cul-
ture and power in social theory through the example of Brazilian sociology. This was
achieved by taking several of its classical authors as elements in a longstanding debate
that traverses theory, politics and the history of Brazil’s State formation process. By
doing this, one may consider that this analysis takes a “post-colonial” stance, in the
sense that Brazilian sociology presents a path to revisiting far-reaching and highly uni-
versalised concepts. Nevertheless, the main difference with the post-colonial approach
is that colonialism here is not the end point, but rather a starting point for analysis. In
other words, a post-colonialist approach implies a power reductionism that “denounces”
the center-periphery dynamics that are “imposed” from colonialist empires to the non-
western world (Grosfoguel, 2003; Mignolo, 2005; Randeria, 2007). Most of Brazilian
political sociology and social theory seek rather to adjust (and not properly to deny)
modernisation theory – with the exception of several contemporary authors of cultural-
ism. In this sense, generally speaking, Brazilian sociology is closer to the mainstream
of political sociology (Bendix, 1977; Moore Jr, 1966; and Skocpol, 1979) than to post-
colonial theory.
Ultimately, this analysis serves as a case study for the way in which concepts that are
valuable to social theory are intertwined with histories of modernity outside of Europe,
whence these very concepts came. As an enterprise in cultural sociology, this analysis
provides a way to frame ideas as cultural scripts that themselves deal with a conception
of culture. In other words, culture is not only the background of scripts that are available,
negotiated and constantly performed, but also an object of these scripts. In this way, one
may speak of an intellectual repertoire in Brazilian history that regards culture as the
bedrock of political institutions and social values, but also one that understands culture
as a byproduct of power relations amassed through time.

Funding
The author acknowledges the support of the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for the Support of
Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ).

ORCID iD
Fernando Lima Neto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8373-5541
Lima Neto 19

Notes
1. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony between the 16th and the 18th centuries. In 1822, it
became independent from Portugal, assuming the form of an empire and, in 1889, became a
republic through a coup d’etat carried out by military elites. The First Republic lasted until
1930, when a new coup initiated the first Getúlio Vargas government (1930–1945). Brazil had
a brief democratic-populist interregnum between 1945 and 1964, before entering the period
known as the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985) and instating democracy in the late
1980s.
2. During the Imperial Era, the lack of human and material resources necessary for maintain-
ing an extensive territory led the Brazilian government to create an armed militia called the
National Guard. The wealthy landowners who supported this initiative received the title of
“colonel.” Even with the extinction of the National Guard in 1922, these rural bosses pre-
served their prestige and influence over the local population.

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Author biography
Fernando Lima Neto is Assistant Professor of Political Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic
University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and Fellow Researcher at the Carlos Chagas Filho
Foundation for the Support of Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ). His main research
interests concern civil society, political theory and sociological theory. His recent publications
include L’invention des ONG au Brésil: la sociogènese des acteurs et ideaux fondateurs (Éditions
Recherches, 2016) and Cultural Sociology in Perspective: Linking Culture and Power (Current
Sociology, 2014).