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Summary: The present paper considers a sometimes contentious process of land reform presently occurring in Brazil. This process, referred to in the paper as Direct Action Land Reform (DALR), involves organizations such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) and more spontaneous actions of individuals desiring a piece of land for their own. Results of a survey covering 751 households engaged in such land reform actions in the Brazilian Amazon are presented, in order to describe participants and land reform processes. Evidently, social movement organizations provide for a modest degree of wealth accumulation, a welfare improvement that must be set against potential environmental costs. The paper concludes by calling attention to the challenge DALR may ultimately pose to the Brazilian state. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) is widely acknowledged as one of the most organized, dynamic, and influential social movements in Latin America. The MST has increasingly inserted the struggle for land within larger political contestations for broad social change, leading conservatives and leftists alike to describe it as a “first class actor” in Brazilian politics. What explains the move from corporatist struggles for land to broader counter-hegemonic contestations; put differently, how did the MST come to acquire ‘global ambition’? Much of the literature on the MST analyzes its external actions but without explaining what drives these actions. This paper utilizes a Gramscian political ecology approach to comprehend the MST’s political actions and its rise and transformation into a counter-hegemonic political actor. Specifically, I evaluate the development of the MST’s organizational praxis from corporatist struggles for land in the late 1970s to ‘global ambition’ and changing nature–society relations by the early 2000’s. Such an approach brings to light the role of organization building, political education, alliance building, and subaltern agency in propelling the MST’s political mobilizations. In so doing, this paper contributes to the literature on the MST and collective action. This paper also engages with a ‘politics of scale’ since the conquest of geographic scale is critical to understanding the MST’s national growth and political actions. This paper concludes by arguing that the rise and transformation of the MST into a vibrant counter-hegemonic actor in Brazilian politics was a gradual process that matured as it territorialized into a national movement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the major strategies used to prevent extinction of forest species is restoration of previously depleted areas. In this paper, we investigate the ability of forest restoration to produce tree populations with high genetic diversity in previously deforested areas. We used nine SSR markers to genotype populations of two forest restorations and two areas of natural remnants. There were no significant differences between natural forest remnants and restored forests with respect to inbreeding levels ( f  = 0.20) or genetic diversity, as assessed by levels of heterozygosity (H S  ∼ 0.31–0.43) and allelic richness (2.41–2.94). Instead, we found evidence of gene flow from neighbouring woods to restored forests. Although some populations may show a lower number of private alleles, this would be an expected result of a bottleneck effect in reduced populations such as those in forest restorations. Although the loss of these low frequency alleles has no major consequences for genetic diversity, the impact on population fitness in a scenario of environmental change is unpredictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper explores the importance of processes in institutional change and the relationship between processes and patterns of change. Using an ongoing case of police reform in Rio de Janeiro, the police pacification units (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora) as an illustration, we develop two claims. First, the concept of reflective planning, developed by urban planning scholars, may help development scholars understand processes of institutional change. Second, some patterns, such as the institutional bypass, when combined with particular processes, such as reflective planning, may reinforce each other and further the objectives of reform processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sales of electrical and electronic equipment are increasing dramatically in developing countries. Usually, there are no reliable data about quantities of the waste generated. A new law for solid waste management was enacted in Brazil in 2010, and the infrastructure to treat this waste must be planned, considering the volumes of the different types of electrical and electronic equipment generated. This paper reviews the literature regarding estimation of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), focusing on developing countries, particularly in Latin America. It briefly describes the current WEEE system in Brazil and presents an updated estimate of generation of WEEE. Considering the limited available data in Brazil, a model for WEEE generation estimation is proposed in which different methods are used for mature and non-mature market products. The results showed that the most important variable is the equipment lifetime, which requires a thorough understanding of consumer behavior to estimate. Since Brazil is a rapidly expanding market, the “boom” in waste generation is still to come. In the near future, better data will provide more reliable estimation of waste generation and a clearer interpretation of the lifetime variable throughout the years. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Sino-Latin American space cooperation has grown in the past several years, contributing to debates over China’s rising influence in the region. Much of what has been written about this phenomenon is overly simplistic and denotes a lack of understanding of the interplay between the domestic and the international when decisions of international cooperation are taken. This paper argues that calculations of both domestic and international interest are important in Sino-Latin space relationships, with the former of particular importance to Latin American countries. It explores these interests as demonstrated in the cooperative programs of four Latin American countries. It concludes that, while the US relationship is not a major factor in their decisions to cooperate or not with China, the USA could benefit from a greater understanding of this phenomenon to expand its relationships with the emerging space nations of the region to its benefit. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The academic literature on Brazilian cities focuses overwhelmingly upon the metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. While fruitful in its own right, this research confronts scholars of Latin American cities elsewhere with two ongoing limitations: (1) Despite estimates that nearly one quarter of Brazil’s urban population inhabits the conurbation of Rio and São Paulo, at least 75% of urban space in Brazil, an area populated by roughly 120 million people, is consistently overlooked; and (2) the findings from these two megacities are often (and unfairly) extrapolated across other urban contexts in Brazil, perpetuating lingering misgivings about the overall ‘nature’ of Brazilian cities. In this paper, I consider the Northeast of Brazil, drawing upon my own research from the favela (slum) community of Pirambu, located in the city of Fortaleza, to help understand urban development outside of the Rio/São Paulo corridor. By considering historical circumstances, geographic specificity, theoretical implications, and the course of Brazilian development, I highlight informal urban growth in an oft-overlooked region of Latin America while, at the same time, revealing many of the geographic attributes that give Rio and São Paulo their truly exceptional character. My goal in this work is not to refute the work of others, but rather to underscore the importance of geographic context to socio-spatial processes of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper addresses the dynamics of real processes of inclusive environmental governance by looking at the decision-maker/expert/lay person interplay. Specifically, we present a comparative ethnographic study that leads to a critical examination of Marteen Hajer’s concept of technological citizenship and its role in normative models of so-called inclusive environmental governance. First, we present the Bionatur project of MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People’s Movement), the largest rural movement in Latin America. The project explicitly attempts to include lay/traditional knowledge into the processes of defining and protecting a regulatory space for “Creole seeds”. Second, we describe the formally open and inclusive environmental management of polluted sediments during harbour dredging in Norway. In both cases the actors are confronted with difficult problems bound by contradictory constraints of the institutional and cultural contexts. In complex relationships, trust, dependency, responsibility and opposition, encompass the decision-maker/expert/lay interplay. Embedded in these contexts, it is not always clear that non-experts want full autonomy and responsibility. In complex relationships, trust, dependency, responsibility and opposition, encompass the decision-maker/expert/lay person interplay. The results suggest that ideals, if instantiated, are reshaped within concrete contexts of action. Participatory ideals such as “technological citizenship”, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability need not be relativised, but they would better be expressed as regulative norms for practice rather than ideals from which an acontextual model or structure may be deduced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the relationship between the employment of children and their mothers, with the aim of informing discussion on efforts to reduce child labor in Brazil. The analysis builds on the largely separate literatures on children’s time use and mothers’ work in two ways—by examining characteristics of employment which are often not available in survey data, and by modeling both children’s work and mothers’ employment. The results suggest that the relationship between children’s and mothers’ work is complex, with substantial evidence of positive correlation. The findings are consistent with the argument that anti-poverty programs that target women’s employment could result in increased child labor. This possibility warrants further analysis in order to better inform policy regarding child labor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]