The sociology journal Tempo Social, published continuously since 1989 by the Department of Sociology of the University of São Paulo and with its fully available collection to free access in the Scielo and the Portal de Periódicos da USP, from its first issue to the last one, prioritizes the sociological production of the major contemporary currents of the discipline, by national and international authors, and emphasizes the themes, the theoretical guidelines and the methodologies used by the different groups of scholars and researchers within the Brazilian social sciences, while at the same time seeks to pay attention to trends less known in the Brazilian context. The journal publishes continuously special thematic & special issues, always with the collaboration of national and foreign scholars, enhancing exchanges with the sociology and the other social sciences in Latin America and worldwide. Tempo Social is indexed in: ISI: www.isiknowledge.com Scopus/Elsevier: www.scopus.com International Bibliography of the Social Science – www.lse.ac.uk Institut de Information Scientifique et Technique – www.inist.fr Sociological Abstracts – www.csa.com University Libraries - University of Florida: www.uflib.ufl.edu International Political Science Abstracts: www.sciences-po.fr Science Electronic Library On Line: www.scielo.br
Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
A Crise do Cuidado do Capitalismo. Conversando com Nancy Fraser
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Crises, desigualdades e cuidados: singularidades e desafios em perspectiva internacional
A presença crescente do cuidado como um objeto relevante no debate sobre as sociedades contemporâneas, e a legitimidade intelectual e política que o campo tem adquirido se mostram especialmente visíveis quando em conjunção com duas outras noções, as de “crise” e de “desigualdades”. Múltiplas crises e variados padrões de desigualdade desafiam os estudiosos do cuidado a entender as singularidades das tramas do cuidado, as quais são tanto mais visíveis quanto mais nos adentramos no campo dos estudos comparados. A isso tem se dedicado crescentemente a academia, como se ilustra neste texto.
Crises, inequalities and care. Exploring national experiences
Cuidados; Crises; Desigualdades; Comparações internacionais
Copyright (c) 2025 Nadya Araujo Guimarães, Helena Hirata https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Dossiê : A pandemia e o social: perspectivas sociologicas sobre os efeitos da crise Covid-19
Resenha do número especial da Revue Française de Sociologie n° 65-4 outubro-dezembro de 2024. Dossiê: A pandemia e o social: perspectivas sociologicas sobre os efeitos da crise Covid-19. Coordenaçao : Nathalie BAJOS, Michel DUBOIS, Patrick PERETTI-WATEL
Copyright (c) 2025 Helena Hirata https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Care and pandemic: A transnational perspective
A resenha analisa a obra Guimarães, Nadya Araujo; Gottfried, Heidi; Hirata, Helena & Pineda D., Javier A. (Eds). (2025), Care and Pandemic: A Transnational Perspective. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. 291 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adriana Pinheiro Carvalho https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
How exceptional is the USA? Carework and inequality
Countering the popular claim that what differentiates the USA for other wealthy countries in regard to the labor market dynamics of paid domestic labor is its relatively large immigrant population, this article argues that the critical factors are instead the USA’s minimal system of social provision and its extreme level of economic inequality (including inequality among women) which drives up both the supply of and the demand for paid domestic workers. In addition, in the USA paid domestic work is highly stratified, with extensive variation in pay and working conditions. In many respects the USA more closely resembles countries in the global South than its counterparts in the wealthy world.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ruth Milkman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Conceptualizing care inequalities and modalities ofresistance
This paper reflects on new conceptualizations of care work in the expansive care economy. New conceptualizations of care demarcate heterogeneity and hierarchies of care labor, identifying multiple and complex inequalities among home care workers and between care workers across the care economy. Caring practices are theorized not only as work but also as resistance. In different ways, this research outlines relational understandings of care and caring and the array of activities and social relationships involved in maintaining people, both on a daily basis and intergenerationally. Conceptualizing and mapping the care economy is consequential for determining gaps in protections, addressing conditions of employment and inequalities, revaluing care, and realizing potentials for organizing and forging political alliances.
Copyright (c) 2025 Heidi Gottfried https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
From care crisis to care as exploitation: who cares about domestic workers?
If the pandemic has renewed the debate on the ‘care crisis’, in practice, little has changed for paid care workers. Considered essential during the lockdown, domestic workers have suffered increased working hours, imprisonment at the house of their employers, harassment and violence. In the post-pandemic period, their living and working conditions remain precarious, and the gender, racial and class inequalities that make them more vulnerable are still present. This article proposes a reflection on the exploitation of domestic workers, analyzing the continuities between the pandemic and the current period. It identifies three dimensions that characterize the continuum of exploitation: employment conditions and social protection, abuse of power and coercion, and health and safety at work, and shows how the daily lives of domestic workers are crossed by this continuum, ranging from violations of decent work to more serious cases of modern slavery.
Copyright (c) 2025 Louisa Acciari https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Institutionalized elderly care in pre and post-pandemic Bogotá
The care crisis has been especially expressed in Latin America in the care of elderly. This article analyzes institutionalized care for older people before and after the covid-19 pandemic in Bogotá. This care is seen in the context of the dynamics of social organization of care, especially the fewer possibilities of families, the little presence of State and the growing commercialization of care. It is evident how, over the course of a decade, before and after the pandemic, the conditions of care, the social and gender inequalities reproduced by the market, and abandonment as an alternative, have persisted. The article is based on mixed methodology in two projects where the same survey was applied and interviews conducted with caregivers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Javier A Pineda, Aranzxa Borda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Care work policies in FranceThe pitfalls of austerity and fragmentation1
This article questions French public policies and regulations of (paid and unpaid, formal and informal) care work in the wake of the pandemic. It first examines the “care crisis” already in place prior to the pandemic. Then, it identifies the main features of French (segmented) care policies and examines care employment through the lenses of labour market segmentation theories, with a focus on childcare and long-term care. Finally, the article analyses public policy responses to the pandemic. It concludes that the segmentation of the care economy and the fragmentation of the care labour market, combined with pervasive austerity, tend to hamper the implementation of ambitious policies beyond patchy progressive measures.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anne Eydoux https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Care and inequalities in Brazil. A regressive path?
Care offers a revealing lens on the multiple inequalities that shape contemporary societies. This article examines the nexus between care and inequality through the Brazilian experience — a case whose complexity poses particular analytical challenges. The first section explores how rapid population ageing intersects with the lost opportunities of Brazil’s demographic dividend, creating mounting pressure on the country’s care regime. The second section investigates how Brazil’s familistic and highly unequal organisation of care perpetuates and deepens intersecting inequalities of gender, class, race, and territory. The article concludes by outlining the minimum institutional conditions needed to transform care from an invisible burden into a strategic asset for well-being, decent employment, and social cohesion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nadya Araújo Guimarães, Simone Wajnman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The introduction to the Dossier "Non-Salaried Work and Rights" presents a brief discussion of the concept of labor decommodification, emphasizing that its definition, restricted only to salaried employment relationships, is insufficient when applied to highly heterogeneous labor markets such as Brazil’s, where wage employment is not the universal form of work relations. The four articles that make up the dossier are summarized, and their main ideas are used as part of the discussion on the limitations of social security policies in Brazil and possible ways to overcome them.
Dossier - Non-wage labor and social rights
Copyright (c) 2025 Alvaro Comin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Matteo Pasquinelli. The eye of the master: a social history of artificial intelligence
The review presents and discusses the central points of Matteo Pasquinelli’s book, The eye of the master: A social history of artificial intelligence. Londres/Nova York, Verso, 2023. The interpretation of automation as a result of the development of the division of labor and its metrics, along with the primacy of the mental components of all labor, leads the author to reinterpret the history of theoretical efforts that anticipated the advent of Artificial Intelligence. His political epistemology seeks to do justice to the contribution of social forms and forces to the key stages in the development of artificial neural networks and machine learning, as well as to strengthen the ties between labor supervision and automation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diego dos Santos Moura Gonçalves, Antônio Olegário Ferreira Neto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Intersectoral social policies and territories: the experience of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) in Santa Maria-RS
This article aims to emphasize aspects of intersectorality and territoriality of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), by sharing the preliminary results of a research project in public rural schools. This is a qualitative investigation, which seeks to promote understanding of the object of study in the context of recent PNAE guidelines. It is concluded that the intersectorality underlying the PNAE has promoted social gains in multiple areas and territorialities, however the operationalization of the program raises many challenges, as it requires the participation of several social actors, requiring coordinated actions in its execution. Field schools have been expanding actions to align with PNAE guidelines that highlight, in addition to healthy eating, food and nutritional education as a central aspect of the policy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marcelo Vaz Pupo, Rita Inês Paetzhold Pauli, Sibele Vasconcelos de Oliveira, Marcia Regina Dias Santos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The red years of a sociologist: interview with Fernando Henrique Cardoso
This paper explores a neglected aspect of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s trajectory: his rapprochement with the Communist Party of Brazil during the 1950s. Following an introductory discussion of the topic, the paper presents an interview with the sociologist that captures the intellectual, artistic, and political atmosphere of São Paulo during that period. Cardoso revisits his relationship with the communists and his involvement in initiatives such as the magazine Brasiliense and the Marx seminar, as well as the subsequent development of the dependency theory that would grant him international recognition. The interview sheds light especially on his wide-ranging network of sociability — encompassing professional, political, familial, educational, and neighborhood ties — offering a rich portrait of the influences that shaped his intellectual formation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marcelo Ridenti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A resenha analisa criticamente o livro Slavery and the Dutch Art Invention (2025), de Caroline Fowler, que propõe uma releitura da arte holandesa do século XVII à luz do capitalismo racial e da escravidão atlântica. Para Fowler, a substituição da arte religiosa por gêneros seculares, como naturezas-mortas e cenas domésticas, reflete a transubstanciação dos corpos escravizados em mercadorias — uma operação simbólica e econômica que sustentaria a visualidade holandesa.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Armando Bagolin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Back to polarization: an epistemological review from social network analysis
The concept of political polarization increasingly appears in academic and media vocabulary. However, there is not a single definition of this term that allows us a structured and coherent production of knowledge in relation to its nature, determinants, and consequences. In this article, we make a proposal to define a variant of political polarization that occurs in spaces of digital public debate. We intend to offer one more resource to improve our capacity to analyze polarized social and media contexts. To meet this objective, we analyze set of bibliometric techniques (network extraction and community detection mechanisms) that have allowed us to establish the terms that structure the academic debate on political polarization in digital debate (co-occurrence of terms analysis), the co-citation analysis of cited references that group the most relevant works in this field, as well as its content. We have identified a series of common trends both in the term communities and in those defined from cited-references. We have verified that there are backbone elements of the academic debate on this topic. These elements have been used as the basis for our proposed definition that remarks the procedural character of political polarization in digital communication. This article may therefore be useful not only for social scientists, but also for communications experts and professional politicians interested in better understanding what political polarization is and its limits and spheres of influence.
Political polarization in digital debate
Copyright (c) 2025 Belen Casas-Mas, Ana Fernandez Zubieta, Jose Manuel Robles https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Crítica como-vida: objetividade, repertórios e variações
Resenha de BOTELHO, André e TRESOLDI, Caroline. Helô Teixeira: crítica como vida. Rio de Janeiro: Bazar do Tempo, 2024.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucas van Hombeeck https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Matar, converter, incluir: a trama da violência urbana no Rio de Janeiro.
A obra "Matar, converter, incluir" de Cesar Pinheiro Teixeira oferece uma análise crítica sobre a violência urbana nas periferias cariocas. O autor examina três estratégias sociais fundamentais que emergem como respostas concorrentes e complementares ao crime: o extermínio policial ("matar"), a conversão religiosa pentecostal ("converter") e as políticas de inclusão social ("incluir"). Teixeira interpreta a violência não apenas como falha institucional, mas como uma forma social sustentada por gramáticas morais específicas, responsáveis por definir identidades e destinos possíveis para indivíduos criminalizados. Fundamentado em extensa pesquisa empírica, o autor desloca o debate tradicional sobre criminalidade para uma reflexão pragmática sobre subjetivação e essencialização prática, mostrando como sujeitos como o "bandido", o "ex-bandido" ou o "matável" são produzidos socialmente através de discursos e práticas cotidianas. Ao analisar detalhadamente cada um dos dispositivos – matar, converter e incluir –, Teixeira evidencia as normas morais, os discursos legitimadores e os conflitos implícitos na disputa por definir quem deve morrer, quem pode ser redimido, e quem merece inclusão social. Ao fim, o livro problematiza figuras ambivalentes que desafiam classificações rígidas, como o criminoso convertido ou o policial evangélico, revelando as zonas de tensão e negociação identitária existentes entre diferentes regimes morais. Teixeira conclui com uma crítica ética, mostrando como as gramáticas morais mobilizadas nesses processos refletem escolhas sobre valor e dignidade da vida humana. Com isso, sua análise contribui para sociologia da violência urbana e à compreensão das complexas dinâmicas sociais que regem as periferias brasileiras contemporâneas.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diogo Silva Corrêa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
From the Department of Linguistics to the Institute of Language Studies: Fausto Castilho and Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza in Times of Structuralism
This article analyzes the formation of the Institute of Language Studies (IEL) at Unicamp, focusing on the roles of Fausto Castilho and Antonio Candido amid institutional and theoretical disputes in the humanities. It examines the creation of the Department of Linguistics (DL) and its transformation into the IEL, reflecting the tension between a structuralist project of disciplinary integration and later fragmentation. The study highlights the academic struggles that shaped the institute and reveals the historical dynamics of the humanities within Brazilian universities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luccas Eduardo Maldonado https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Painters by profession: conditions of artistic production in Brazil in the 1980s
This article addresses the social conditions of artistic production within the Brazilian art field in the early 1980s, analyzing both the genesis of the controversial category “Geração 80” and the state of the field at that time. First, we reconstruct the emergence of this category in relation to the newcomers it classified, establishing contrasts between the positions-takings by the young artists associated with it and the modes of operation of those who had entered the field earlier. To avoid restricting ourselves to the national space, we also reconstruct the international circulation of the artistic trend of the period in Brazil, known a “return to painting”, which, in turn, took different forms due to the specificities of the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo art fields. We argue that the genesis and meaning of the “Geração 80” are products of this international circulation, which conditioned the positions-takings by artists and critics within the national space. Next, we analyze one of the structural changes in the field that made possible the beginning of the careers of the so-called Geração 80 artists, namely, the emergence of other new agents: contemporary art gallerists. These newcomers to the field contributed to the early insertion and success of the young artists who began their trajectories during the initial phase of the political and economic opening that would consolidate in the country over the course of the decade.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gabriel Cardoso Gonzaga, German Alfonso Nunez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
What’s new in the new forms of work? An analysis based on feminist political economy
This article contributes to studies on recent transformations in the Brazilian labor market, guided by feminist political economy, to discuss dimensions of gender, race and class. Based on an analysis of PNADC/IBGE microdata for the years 2016, 2019 and 2022, we examined the evolution of the main variables that reflect the situation of exploitation, discrimination and exclusion of women in the labor market. The article discusses the complex interactions between the spheres of production and reproduction, the deepening of precariousness and informality in work and the emergence of new forms of occupation. These new modalities of work, although they may offer alternatives for emancipation, also reinforce liberal discourses of "entrepreneurship" as solutions to social exclusion, perpetuating historical patterns of inequality.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lygia Sabbag Fares, Margarita Olivera, Beatriz Schwenck, Giovanna Angeloti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Book review: A força do sentido, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2022, by Sergio Miceli.
Copyright (c) 2025 Arthur Bueno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Class trajectories and future expectations of the young in Brazil
The article examines the middleization of Brazil’s young generation, analyzing their rise to the middle classes in the 21st century and the impacts of Covid-19 on their future expectations. Using PNAD and Datafolha data, multiple correspondence analysis, and clustering, we found that the 2014 economic crisis halted this ascent. We identified three clusters that elucidates how, during the pandemic, there was greater pessimism among low-capital youth and optimism among higher-capital strata, which also differ according to capital composition. The results highlight the relationship between temporal dispositions and the structural positions of agents.
Copyright (c) 2025 Miguel Brunet, Celi Scalon, André Salata https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Ethnographing the norm. On struggles for rights in contexts of violence
This essay seeks to shed light on the ethnographic confrontation of the norm. To this end, it begins with the empirical universe of the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil. I first describe the trajectory of the legal conflict surrounding the mills São João, São Francisco, and Felicidade, located in the Pernambuco’s Zona da Mata region. Then, I outline the intense disputes over the application of judicial decisions (and therefore of the norms engendered therein) in the case of the sugar mills. The explication of these disputes then allows me to: a) analytically divide the instabilities, malleability, and transformations of the norms that operate in our research fields and are differently handled and incited by the agents amid the conflicts we experience; and b) scrutinize the limits and times of the norm, considering the threat of disobedience in an atmosphere of violence.
Copyright (c) 2025 Roberto Efrem Filho https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
International institutionalization of the social and solidarity economy and the Paul Singer Law in Brazil: contributions to strengthening the solidarity entrepreneurial ecosystem
The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has been gaining ground in Brazilian society, especially through public policies. Thus, the aim of this work is to present a Paul Singer Law and the United Nations Resolution on SSE in Brazil, in order to understand their contribution to strengthening the solidarity entrepreneurial ecosystem. It must be emphasized that the Paul Singer Law was an important reference point for the institutionalization of SSE, by determining the economic function of these enterprises beyond their non-profit nature, their function as a mechanism for social inclusion, under the control of the State, creating the National System of Solidarity Economy and the National Policy of Solidarity Economy in Brazil.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ednalva Felix das Neves, Leandro Pereira Morais, Marco Antônio Baleeiro Alves https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani. Outside the bubble: social media and political participation in Western democracies
Book review: Outside the bubble: social media and political participation in Western democracies. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, by Cristian Vaccari e Augusto Valeriani.
Copyright (c) 2025 João Carlos Sousa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Goethe was a common presence in the intellectual context of Weber’s work. A presence that was not limited to providing metaphors with a secondary role. Here we draw on a regularity: at the end of his texts and lectures, Weber quotes Goethe, allowing himself value judgments that are soon dismissed, leaving the poetic image as the last word – enunciation that remains after retreat. This strategy crystallizes concepts and can bring new ideas regarding the wider scope of Weber’s work. Taking The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Science as a vocation and An intermediate consideration, we intend to bring new contributions by means of analyzing Faust through a thorough review of the work in the light of an approach to Weber’s thought.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucas Cid Gigante https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Sueli Carneiro. Lélia Gonzalez: um retrato
Book review: Lélia Gonzalez: um retrato, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 2024, by Sueli Carmeiro.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diego dos Santos Reis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Pierre Bourdieu. Retorno à reflexividade
Book review: Retorno à reflexividade. Edited and with an introduction by Jérôme Bourdieu and Johan Heilbron. São Paulo, Unesp, 2024 by Pierre Bourdieu.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gabriel Peters https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Ideological devices of colonialism in Antonio Candido’s interpretation of Brazil (1965-1966)
Between 1965 and 1966, Antonio Candido wrote “Nature, élements et trajectoire de la culture brésilienne” (1965) and “Literatura de dois gumes” (1966), texts in which he presented reflections on the colonial dimension of Brazilian formation, focusing on national cultural and literary manifestations. In these essays, the critic identified, in an original way, that some notions crystallized by Brazilian historiography, such as the ideas of “racial democracy” and “cordiality”, were developments, in the intellectual field, of colonialism, that is, of the mental plundering historically operated by the center of capitalism in the Americas and Africa throughout modernity. As a result, the critic developed an anti-colonial reading of national reality, aimed at destabilizing the hegemonic readings of our formation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cairo de Souza Barbosa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0