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
The politics of violence and political violence
The article introduces the dossier dedicated to the relationships between violence, police, and politics in Brazil. It is grounded in the interpretation that violence constitutes a structuring element of Brazilian social history and of the production of public order. The text discusses transformations that have taken place since the country’s redemocratization, such as the growing centrality of police institutions in the management of crime and the increasing participation of members of the security forces in institutional politics. It also examines the connections between police corporations, the security market, and the representative system, as well as the resurgence of political violence. Finally, the article presents and contextualizes the papers and interviews that compose the dossier, highlighting their contributions to the debate on democracy, violence, and punishment.
Dossier - State methods of containing violence, punitivism, and elections
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucas Batista Pilau, Roberta Heleno Novello, Sérgio Adorno, Marcos César Alvarez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The trajectory of an activist police chief: an interview with Orlando Zaccone
The interview with Orlando Zaccone addresses his trajectory as a Civil Police chief in Rio de Janeiro, as well as his work as a researcher and activist. The interviewee critically reflects on the role of the police chief within the Brazilian criminal justice system, arguing that this position often confers legal legitimacy to police actions, including in contexts involving the use of lethal force. Drawing on his professional and academic trajectory, Zaccone discusses issues such as police violence, drug policy, and penal selectivity. The interview also examines topics such as the disappearance of Amarildo Dias de Souza, the movement Policiais Antifascismo, aimed at articulating progressive police officers, the participation of police officers in politics and in debates on democracy and public security.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fernanda Novaes Cruz, Carlos Henrique Aguiar Serra, Marcos César Alvarez, Leonardo José Ostronoff https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Three decades of research on the Brazilian justice system and public security: an interview with Fiona Macaulay
Interview with Fiona Macaulay, professor at the University of Bradford, whose academic trajectory is marked by field research in Latin America, especially in Brazil. The interview addresses her academic background, her work in institutions such as Amnesty International, and her main research agendas, which include studies on human rights, prisons, gender, Brazilian politics, and the participation of members of the security forces in politics. The interview was conducted on November 27, 2024, at the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo (NEV-USP), with the participation of researchers from the center, while the interviewee participated remotely.
Copyright (c) 2026 Roberta Heleno Novello, Lucas Batsita Pilau, Fernanda Novaes Cruz, Marcos César Alvarez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Policialism and Brazil’s 2024 local elections
This article compares government programs of elected mayors from security forces with those of non-elected opponents in Brazil’s 2024 municipal elections. Analysis of 74 candidacies, combining topic modeling (Bertopic) and qualitative validation, identifies systematic Discursive patterns. Results show that both groups Address the same thematic categories but establish distinct hierarchies: elected candidates concentrate Discourse on Municipal Guard and police structure; non-elected emphasize rights protection. Ideology modulates discourse only among non-elected. The electoral success of policialism stems from converting institutional credentials into political capital.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fábia Berlatto, Nilton Sainz, Gabriela Spanghero Lotta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The participation of police officers in the political-electoral process: a bibliographic review
This article aims to present an overview of the existing social science literature on the participation of police officers in the Brazilian political-electoral process. Since the country’s redemocratization, numerous police officers have occupied prominent elected positions in both the Executive and Legislative branches, with a notable increase in police candidates emerging from the 2018 elections onward. As this phenomenon gained visibility in public debate, various studies were produced and published. It is therefore pertinent to ask: What scholarly works on this topic exist within the social sciences, what are their characteristics, and in what ways do they engage with one another? To provide a consistent response to this inquiry, a range of publication repositories (such as Google Scholar and SciELO), as well as additional sources, were consulted to identify and analyze the studies addressing this subject. At this stage of the research, forty-two works were found, published between 1998 and 2025, originating primarily from the fields of Political Science and Sociology, and most commonly in the form of theses, dissertations, and journal articles. Ultimately, the article argues that this body of literature may be organized into four thematic axes: “Political-electoral elements,” “Representations of crime, violence, and punishment,” “The ‘Bancada da Bala,’” and “Political movements.”
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucas Batista Pilau, Sérgio Adorno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Punitive trends in perspective: police officers in the São Paulo legislature
This article analyzes the role of “police-deputies” in the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo (2015-2018), examining how broader trends observed in the field of crime control and reflections on the “punitive turn” are expressed at the state level. Guided by a Foucauldian perspective on discourse, the documentary research – which included legislative bills, plenary session records, and parliamentary front proceedings – investigated the construction of public problems related to public security, urban space management, and punishment. The findings show how these practices expand the presence of the Military Police within public administration and redefine the boundaries between prevention and repression through the category of “urban disorder” and securitarian strategies. The article argues that the case reveals less a punitive turn than the incorporation of contemporary trends through the updating of historically rooted authoritarian practices of order production and inequality management.
Copyright (c) 2026 Roberta Heleno Novello https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
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
A comprehensive view of the life and work of the great sociologist. The discussion of his historical and pragmatic method, focused on action. The sociological reduction as a method that allows us to critically adapt foreign knowledge. Her participation in Iseb and his early departure from the institution when she became ideological. Its developmentalist nationalism. His comprehensive analysis of Brazilian society, its national revolution and its dependence expressed in the colonial complex of inferiority,
Copyright (c) 2026 Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Victor Collard, Pierre Bourdieu: genèse d’un sociologue. Paris, Éditions CNRS, 2024
Review of the book Pierre Bourdieu: genèse d’un sociologue. Paris, Éditions CNRS, 2024, by Victor Collard.
Copyright (c) 2026 Antonio Carlos Dias Júnior, Vinicius Wohnrath 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
Intellectuals, culture, and politics put to the test by sociology: an interview with Gisèle Sapiro
Interview with the French sociologist Gisèle Sapiro, which began in February 2025 in Paris and concluded in August of the same year in Campinas. In the conversation, the sociologist addresses central aspects of her career, such as her relationship with Pierre Bourdieu, as well as her intellectual production. Sapiro discusses decisive moments in the French intellectual scene, such as the role of the ehess and journals in the intellectual disputes of the European country, or the specificities of Bourdieu’s engagement against neoliberalism in the 1990s. She also addresses the relationships between autonomy and politicization, between the form of positions taken and the content of intellectuals’ ideas, and, even more so, the transformations in the links between fields, particularly between the fields of cultural production, the field of power, and the dominant economic logic – themes she has analyzed in some of her works. Furthermore, the (unpublished) speech by Pierre Bourdieu at the ceremony awarding the CNRS bronze medal to Gisèle Sapiro in 2000 is published as an appendix.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fabio Mascaro Querido 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
What do uniformed politicians say about civilian armament?
This article analyzes speeches on civilian armament by federal deputies from security forces in the Chamber of Deputies (1991-2025). A total of 1,740 speeches were collected and classified by position and arguments. The results show that although they represent 3% of deputies, uniformed politicians account for 15% of speeches on firearms. From the 55th legislature (2015-2019) onward, a pro-armament shift was observed, coinciding with the increase of these parliamentarians, who were responsible for 61% of speeches favorable to liberalization. The main arguments emphasize self-defense, the dichotomy of “good citizens versus criminals,” and state failure. The study concludes that these deputies were central to transforming the debate, advocating individual responsibility for security to the detriment of state public security.
Copyright (c) 2026 Pedro Benetti, Terine Husek, Iris Rosa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Structural and temporal determinants of political-electoral violence in Mexico
This article analyzes the structural and temporal determinants of political-electoral violence in México during the 2018, 2021, and 2024 federal elections. Using negative binomial regression models and electoral risk window analysis on a dataset of 1,051 violent events, the study identifies three significant structural factors. Municipal per capita income shows a positive association with violence, while partisan misalignment between municipal and state governments doubles the risk of violent events. Conversely, the prior homicide rate exhibits a negative association, suggesting dynamics of criminal consolidation or violence displacement. The findings reveal opposing temporal patterns by crime type: threats concentrate in the pre-electoral period and dissipate after election day, while homicides peak on election day and remain elevated during the following month. This differentiation points to distinct strategic logics operating within contexts of institutional fragmentation and local criminal governance.
Copyright (c) 2026 Arturo Alvarado Mendoza, Carolina Jasso González https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Yanilda María González, Authoritarian police indemocracy: Contested security in Latin America. Cambridge University Press, 2021
Review of the book Authoritarian Police in Democracy (2021), Cambridge University Press, 2021, by Yanilda Maria González.
Copyright (c) 2026 Frederico Castelo Branco, Viviane Cubas, Fernanda Novaes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Militarization as expertise: the military and the construction of authority in Brazilian public security
The article advances an analytical shift in debates on the militarization of public security in Brazil by treating it as a process of constructing and circulating expertise, rather than merely as institutional expansion or democratic backsliding. Drawing on sociology of expertise, it argues that the authority to name problems, define standards of evidence, and prescribe interventions is relational and contingent, and is produced through devices that stabilize languages and routines. Empirically, the article combines (i) a description of the historical series of Law-and-Order Guarantee operations (GLO), emphasizing their intermittent recurrence as a reactivable state repertoire, and (ii) analysis of doctrinal documents that transform episodic experience into portable and teachable competence. It shows how key manuals issued by the Ministry of Defense (2014) and by the Army (2018) codify operational categories, delimit exceptionality, establish inter-agency coordination arrangements, and provide templates for planning, communication, and accountability. In doing so, the article offers a complementary perspective to the established literature on the militarization of public security by specifying the mechanisms through which exceptional interventions become governable and defensible as management. Finally, it outlines research agendas on the genealogies and micropolitics of doctrinal production, translations between peacekeeping repertoires and domestic repertoires, and ecologies of credentials through which military experience is converted into public authority.
Copyright (c) 2026 Felipe Ramos Garcia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Society and psychic suffering: the dominant sociological discourse and Alain Ehrenberg’s sociology of mental health
This article analyses the relationship between society and psychic suffering in the dominant sociological discourse and examines Alain Ehrenberg’s position within this debate. First, I trace the contemporary rise of mental health as a social issue and explore the question of the relationship between society and psychic suffering from the classical authors of sociology to more recent perspectives. I then examine Ehrenberg’s most recent sociological work in order to show how he seeks to dissociate himself from the dominant approach and from the idea that psychic suffering is caused by society, even as his sociology continues to be mobilised to substantiate precisely this argument. In this way, the article clarifies the author’s position within this specific field of study and indicates the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the debate for sociology.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elton Corbanezi 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