Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Affirmative action for blacks has been implemented in recent years mainly as racial quota system at public universities in Brazil. The topic became nationally debated when the racial quota system of the University of Brasilia was adopted. Racial quotas were questioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court with the argument that they were unconstitutional. At the same time, the previous governments has been favorable of inclusive policies and extended the scope of affirmative action adoption. However, why the conservative reaction to racial quotas continued to socially and institutionally expand in spite of their implementation in many universities? The focus of this thesis was to frame these reactions in an institutional perspective by hypothesizing in this research that institutional racism could be addressed as non-recognition of black Brazilians as full subjects of rights considering their identity fragmentation due to the processes of racial formation that undermined racial solidarity, identification, and political participation through miscegenation. In order to investigate the identity framing of institutional racism, the racial quotas system at the University of Brasilia was chosen for policy process analysis. The Advocacy Coalition Framework was the choice of analysis because it permits to observe the policy process since the discussions that aimed to insert the problem of black exclusion in the higher education subsystem to the evaluation of policy implementation based on the approved documents to the broad implications considering the scope of actions from those who shared the beliefs by which coalitions are motivated to act. The results point to the maintenance of racial democracy in the coalition actors’ beliefs that affirm the non-existence of race, the impossibility of black identity, and advocate for the no-racist character of Brazilian identity due to its population racial mixing. Therefore, the hypothesis presented indications of being politically relevant since this research found indications that institutional racism can be framed as non-recognition of black identity by those responsible for its implementation, consciously or not led by individuals through the institutional gaps that do not present any mechanism of coercion or reward for managers to be interested in the full development of affirmative action. / text

This dissertation examines the politics of local social policy making following Brazil's re-democratization. Decentralization in Brazil granted municipalities responsibility to design and tailor social policies to meet local demands. Yet instead of developing their own programs many governments chose to adopt those made famous elsewhere. What accounts for the diffusion of innovations across Brazil? This dissertation tests three approaches for understanding policy makers' emulation decisions: political incentives, ideology, and socialized norms. Each of these three motivations reflects a different paradigmatic response to the question, what drives political behavior? A conventional political incentives approach follows a rational choice framework that incorporates neoclassical behavioral assumptions and posits people will behave strategically to further their own self-interest. The classic assumption in this vein is that politicians will seek to win re-election. On the other hand, scholars who adopt an ideational approach examine the way people make choices because of their ideological convictions. Rather than seek their own political self-interest, actors can make decisions in spite of themselves or others because of deeply held beliefs about what is right and how to enact social change. Lastly, a sociological approach examines how individuals conform to shared norms and seek legitimacy in the eyes of their colleagues. To test these motivational approaches I examine the diffusion of Bolsa Escola, an education program, and Programa Saúde da Família, a family health program. Evidence for my argument is based on statistical event history analysis and qualitative case study research from four exemplary cities. The electoral incentives approach offers a surprisingly weak explanation for the diffusion of innovative social policies. Rather, diffusion occurs when elected executives feel ideologically compelled to replicate programs and when policy professionals engaged in relevant networks seek to demonstrate their adherence to professional norms. Both ideology and social networks can work together in mutually reinforcing ways to promote diffusion. / text

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Almost all the domestic water in Brazil is heated with an electrical heater directly by the end consumer. A typical heater has an effect of 5 400 W and when the whole population takes a shower in the evening it causes big peaks in the electrical grid. This consumption peaks could be reduced by simple and cheap solar collector system. Different system technologies and the most important parts of a solar collector system are described in the technical background. In Lajeado almost every system is a self-circulated system because of the simplicity and the lower costs. Solar cooling as an alternative to the vapor compressor chillers has been studied. The cooling demand is biggest when the sun shines; this makes the sun perfect as a source to cooling. The ab- and adsorption chillers as a method in the future have been discussed in this paper; however it has only been studied briefly because small scale chillers using the technology can not be found on the market yet. A number of different systems have been dimensioned after the existing conditions of Lajeado, the town where the project has been carried out in. Prizes and costs for both installation and materials come from the local solar collector supplier. With this as a background; several systems for various hot water demands has been dimensioned and costs and repayment time been calculated. A study of all the systems shows that, if the hot water demand increases and the systems get bigger, the profitability grows and the repayment time becomes shorter, down to three years. In almost every case the repayment time was under eight years, which makes solar heating attractive and the profit is good for the southern Brazil.

The effect of planting date on yield was studied in Parana State, Brazil where five tropical hybrids of maize were planted at 14 planting dates over three growing seasons at five locations. Soil water holding characteristics and meteorological variables were measured at each location. The water release curve for each soil was determined, using a power function. Corn heat units were calculated and used to measure the phenological development of each hybrid. This information, along with meteorological data, was used in a mathematical model to simulate plant growth over each growing period. Meteorological data from 1976 to 1986 were employed to simulate yield data for 14 planting dates during each growing season at four locations for each hybrid. The average production curve for the 10 growing seasons was compared to the curve observed for the 1986/87 growing season for three of the five hybrids. Thermal requirements appeared as an efficient tool to predict corn developmental stages, and the power function fit satisfactorily the observed soil data. The predicted curve, representing a 10-year average, showed that the designed model accounted for the major cultural and environmental factors that affect yield at each location, being sensitive enough to detect differences among genotypes. Comparisons between predicted and observed curves showed that they had the same shape.

Urbanization in 20th century Brazil has been characterized by a large rural-urban migration. The reinforcement, throughout the national territory, of an urban life-style brought about by this growing urbanization has somehow decreased the cultural distance between the country's urban and rural environments. In spite of that, cultural differences between the two environments do exist, and it is not wrong to assume that a cultural change occurs along the rural-urban migration process. The present research deals with the issue of urbanization and cultural change in Brazil. It focuses specifically on informal urban housing, built by rural immigrants to the city. This was done through a case study of an unplanned settlement, in Natal RN, Northeast Brazil. The study points out the dwellings' physical references to both tradition, that is, to the rural world from where the dwellers have come, and to change due to the urban environment, where they now live. The study also analyzes the socio-cultural causes for tradition and change of the dwellings. Its main finding is that this whole process leads to the formation of a hybrid type of urban house.

Brazil instituted a crawling peg (mini-devaluation) exchange rate system in 1968 as a long-term device to put into operation an "export oriented growth-cum-debt" model of economic development. The crawling peg was expected to serve diverse objectives by decreasing the variability in the exchange rate. In this study we have analyzed the degree to which this strategy succeeded in realizing the desired goals during the period from 1968 to 1980. / Our findings verified that the implementation of the crawl was an important tool that protected and enhanced Brazil's competitive position in world markets. The demand for Brazilian products became more responsive both to changes in relative prices and to changes in world income. We further established the significance of the crawl in stabilizing import prices and flows in addition to its impact on foreign financing decisions.

This doctoral dissertation is an experimental ethnographic investigation of the political consciousness and radical modes of livelihoods of marginalized "street" populations in a postconial Latin-American city, and of their connections with the transnational flows of capital, goods, peoples, and symbols of Global Capitalism. / Beginning in the streets of Salvador da Bahia in this place I call "Global Brazil", this inquiry presents a focal lens through which to examine how the structural and cultural forces of Late-Capitalism (Jameson, 1994) in a globalized world and the legacy of colonialism play out at the level of local and transnational actors' lived experiences (that is, for example, how these forces define, 'value', shape, hurt, confine, and displace bodies; but also how bodies dodge these forces, use these forces, reinvent themselves, or strategically perform their colonizer/colonized identities in a search for agency) and focuses, among other salient aspects, on the connections, dependencies, exploitation, violence, and desire between "street children", subaltern women, transnational prostitutes, (sex)tourists, sexpatriates (Seabrook, 1996) and other foreign men and women constructed as "gringo/as" in the context of Global Brazil. / Written as a collage between contemporary social, cultural, and political theory and an experimental ethnographic novel (Hecht, 2006), this project explores, or at best poses certain questions about contemporary forms of domination, survival, and resistance while hoping to shed light on undertheorized aspects of our globalized late-capitalist era by investigating the perspectives of local social actors on the structural, cultural and transnational forces in which their radical livelihoods are embedded. / Finally, as a work of political pedagogy, this investigation is also fundamentally preoccupied with the role of grassroots politics, research, ethnography, and global social actors---such as the author and other 'academics'--- who occupy positions of social, economic, political, and symbolic power, in collaborating with other segments of civil societies to work toward equitable alternatives to contemporary social suffering. / Intertwined with the many faces, voices and stories of this ethnography, thus, readers will encounter the voice, eyes, body, experience, reflections, interrogations, doubts, pains, fears, desire, violence, hopes, defeats, desperations, and resistance of the author, who, as an individual 'articulated' (Nelson, 1999) as white, male, gringo, intellectual, transcultural, geopolitically mobile, ethnographer, and flaneur in the context of this story, constitutes a character deeply implicated in the global flows and forces that are the object of this study.

The objective of this thesis is to complement the wealth of scholarly works which examine the "transitions from authoritarian rule" that occured in Spain and Brazil. This thesis distinguishes itself from these earlier works by bracketing discussion concerning the elite-level political transitions that occured in order to concentrate on the democratization and socialization of the Spanish and Brazilian societies. / The work focuses on a number of collective organizations that emerge during these transitions, and will postulate an argument as to why they should be referred to as "transformation movements". Two important questions that the thesis addresses while examining these cases are: "why do these movements emerge under authoritarian regimes," and "what is it about transformation movements that merits some type of differentiation from other types of collective action?". / The significance of these questions to the understanding of "transformation movements", and the role of these movements in the transitions that occured in Spain and Brazil, unfolds in the work that follows.