Primitive art as it relates to contemporary design

For the most part, my project has been of an individually rewarding nature due to an extensive amount of reading and studio work. My paper functions as the major means of communication of my own experiences and findings. It is an attempt to share with others the ideas which I have found particularly stimulating and worthwhile during the course of the year. In other words, the written portion does not intend to summarize all of the phases of primitive art which I have studied during the past year; rather, it is indicative of the type of pursuit with which I became involved. It is neither a historical survey nor a specific and thorough study of one area of primitive art. Instead, my paper is a series of essays focusing upon primitive art in general, and upon some of the aspects of primitive art with which I became concerned in particular.

The Brazilian social security program:diagnosis and proposal for reform

The Brazilian pay-as-you-go social security program is analyzed in a historical perspective. Its contribution to income inequality, and the role played by the inflation as a balancing variable are discussed. It is shown that budgetary constraints due to the increasing informalization of the labor force can no longer be reconciled with protligate eligibility criteria. A tailor-made proposal for reform is presented as well as a plan for financing the transition from today's system to the proposed one.

William Gaddis's aesthetics of recognitions

William Gaddis’s The Recognitions (1955) is a selfreflexive novel that portrays Wyatt Gwyon’s trajectory from childhood to maturity, as he rejects and searches for originality. The present work bestows an analysis of William Gaddis’s The Recognitions focusing on the problematization of originality and authorship proposed by the novel by means of the central issues of forgery and plagiarism, which bring with them two larger and more important sister-notions: authorship and originality. The novel questions the prevailing demand for originality and discusses the possibility of being original. It formulates an aesthetics of recognitions defended in the novel and used by the author in the making of this text. In order to do that, this work provides a view on the different concepts associated with the terms originality and original, as well as some of the main infringements related to them in contemporary society. It also offers an account of the development of the concepts of originality and authorship in Western society, showing the growing importance of the figure of the author and the parallel development of the concepts of plagiarism and copyright. The next three chapters are dedicated to attempt to provide an account of William Gaddis’s The Recognitions focusing on the main artist characters and an analysis of the novel in the light of the theoretical and historical background provided. The first of these chapters focuses on Wyatt’s trajectory and his visions of art. The second identifies and analyses Wyatt’s mirrors in the narrative, which reinforce the self-reflective structure of the novel. And the third chapter exemplifies and analyses Wyatt’s aesthetics of recognitions, which turns out to be Gaddis’s own aesthetics in the making of his fiction.

Organização governamental e trabalho: auto-realização, prazer e eficácia - o caso da Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage

o objetivo do presente estudo é verificar em que contexto se insere a motivação para o trabalho - através da relação entre auto-realização, prazer e eficácia - em uma organização governamental voltada para a Arte, a Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage. Desde a sua criação, em 1975, a EAV sempre esteve à frente dos mais importantes acontecimentos da Arte Contemporânea Brasileira, e se viu envolvida em polêmicas de diversas origens não só como loeus agregador na luta pela liberdade de expressão da sociedade em tempos outrora politicamente conturbados por regimes de exceção, como também por sua sobrevivência enquanto organização que adotou uma postura corajosa na defesa de ideais genuinamente democráticos para sua trajetória. Inicialmente, foi realizada pesquisa documental nos registros e material existentes na Escola, onde houve a oportunidade de se colher informações valiosas dos últimos vinte anos utilizadas no trabalho. Em seguida, foi realizada pesquisa bibliográfica na Biblioteca Nacional, e na biblioteca Mário Henrique Simonsen - da Fundação Getulio Vargas - 8 fontes dos subsídios e aprendizado necessários à elaboração do referencial teórico e ao levantamento de dados referentes à cidade do Rio de Janeiro, notadamente da região onde se localiza a Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage. Por último, foram realizadas as entrevistas - decisivas para o estudo em questão - com os membros da organização, aplicando-se o roteiro de entrevista. Assim sendo, o Capítulo I contempla o referencial teórico utilizado no presente estudo de caso, com uma série de considerações sobre trabalho - profissional e de subsistência - e as colocações dos diversos autores escolhidos que tratam de motivação. o Capítulo 11 faz um relato histórico da região onde se situa a Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, bem como dos principais aspectos que dizem respeito à organização em questão, desde os seus primórdios. 9 o Capítulo 111 aborda a organização no que diz respeito ao foco do estudo - a motivação no trabalho. Nas Conclusões, onde são comparadas as principais características motivacionais encontradas na Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage com as colocações teóricas dos autores escolhidos que tratam do tema, constatam-se as singularidades da organização estudada que, apesar das dificuldades que tem enfrentado em sua trajetória, soube deixar sua marca definitiva na história da Arte Contemporânea Brasileira.

Thinking from the South: brazilian social thought and the case of Euclides da Cunha

The article presents the main ideas of Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909), a famous Brazilian intellectual from the beginning of the twentieth-century. Da Cunha was one of the first writers to provide a proto-sociological account of subaltern people in Brazil. The aim of the article is to review his contributions in the light of contemporary discussions concerning postcolonialism and decolonisation.

The effects of trust in Brazilian PNPs: interpersonal and interorganizational trust in the cultural sector social organizations in São Paulo, Brazil

This study seeks to evaluate how enterorganizational and interpersonal trust affects the degree of State interference in the operations of public-nonprofit partnerships (PNPs). We conducted a qualitative case study in two Brazilian PNPs, Projeto Guri and Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, through documental analysis and semi-structured interviews. Content analysis of the data yielded a trust framework that begins to explain how a variety of factors, including the protective qualities of the management contract and the strength of the board, moderate the relationship between interpersonal and interorganizational trust in PNPs. The study reveals that unlike Zaheer et al (1998), interpersonal trust had a unique and prominent effect on State interference and types of collaboration in PNPs. Parting from the suggestions by previous authors to contextualize PNP literature findings, the framework takes into account the highly personalistic qualities of Brazilian culture as well as historical and institutional context while highlighting the crucial role of interpersonal trust in Brazilian PNPs.

A monthly indicator of Brazilian GDP. The Brazilian business cycle and growth cycle

This paper constructs an indicator of Brazilian GDP at the monthly ftequency. The peculiar instability and abrupt changes of regimes in the dynamic behavior of the Brazilian business cycle were explicitly modeled within nonlinear ftameworks. In particular, a Markov switching dynarnic factor model was used to combine several macroeconomic variables that display simultaneous comovements with aggregate economic activity. The model generates as output a monthly indicator of the Brazilian GDP and real time probabilities of the current phase of the Brazilian business cycle. The monthly indicator shows a remarkable historical conformity with cyclical movements of GDP. In addition, the estimated filtered probabilities predict ali recessions in sample and out-of-sample. The ability of the indicator in linear forecasting growth rates of GDP is also examined. The estimated indicator displays a better in-sample and out-of-sample predictive performance in forecasting growth rates of real GDP, compared to a linear autoregressive model for GDP. These results suggest that the estimated monthly indicator can be used to forecast GDP and to monitor the state of the Brazilian economy in real time.

Perspectivas sobre o teletrabalho no contexto da administração pública brasileira: um anteprojeto

The job market today, undergoes transformations necessary for employees and employers. Coupled with technological progress, a large degree of connectivity and a new profile of workers opened up many opportunities and relevant aspects that have changed the way of working and their relations in several countries, including Brazil. This technological progress has provided contemporary workers to pursue alternative working outside of the workplace, the office and outside your residence without physical boundaries. Also provided the change in culture of both organizations, as employees, without compromising the Brazilian formal contractual character played by CLT or the Unified Contracting Regime. The emergence of this new type of worker needs to be inserted in the labor market respecting their peculiarities, either by private or public companies. Through a historical review of labor relations and their transformations over time, this research makes a brief reflection and analysis about telework in the Brazilian public administration, implementation, acceptance, advantages, disadvantages, difficulties, external and internal reflections, cultural impact, among others, that this "new" way of working brings to Brazilian society and the various levels of government.

Intergovernmental transfers and public spending in Brazilian municipalities

We estimate the effects of unconditional (full fiscal decentralization) versus conditional (partial fiscal decentralization) block grants on local public spending in Brazilian municipalities. Our results suggest that the effect of unconditional and conditional transfers do not differ statistically. Their combination promotes a full crowding-in effect on aggregate public spending — i.e., for $1 of unconditional and conditional grant receipts; we find $1 of additional local public expenditures, greater than the corresponding effect of local income, providing further evidence for the flypaper effect. Moreover, the effect of unconditional transfers on education (health) spending is smaller than the effect of conditional education (health) transfers but greater than the corresponding effect of local income. We consider four strategies to identify causal effects of federal grants and the local income on fiscal responses regarding Brazilian local governments: (i) a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, (ii) Redistributive rules of education funds, (iii) Oil and Gas production, and (iv) Rainfall deviations from the historical mean.

O impulso renovador: a atuação da Missão Indígena na Escola Militar do Realengo (1919-1922)

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo realizar uma análise da atuação de um grupo de instrutores na Escola Militar do Realengo no período compreendido entre os anos de 1919 e 1922, tomando por objeto as representações feitas por esses sujeitos, do que foi por eles atribuída como Missão Indígena. Os efeitos de sua atuação foram marcantes e se fizeram sentir por toda uma geração de oficiais do Exército Brasileiro, que ficou conhecida como a “geração do Realengo”. Embora constantemente lembrada pela historiografia militar, a Missão Indígena ainda foi muito pouco explorada em trabalhos acadêmicos, no que tange ao seu surgimento, à sua atuação na Escola Militar e ao envolvimento de alguns de seus membros no movimento tenentista. Dessa forma, o foco da pesquisa se concentrou na maneira como esse grupo de instrutores atuou e nas mudanças provocadas e percebidas pelos alunos em função dessa atuação, tanto na instrução como no regime militar diário da Escola Militar, estabelecimento de ensino que pretendia formar oficias “apolíticos” e que serviu de laboratório do Exército para experiências acerca de qual educação militar seria a ideal para a formação de seus quadros. A escolha do tema repousa no fato de a Missão ter sido constituída por um grupo de jovens oficiais subalternos e intermediários do Exército, dotados de elevada capacidade técnico-profissional e cujo perfil psicológico lhes conduziam a atuar em consonância com o ensino prático de caráter militar, inteiramente de acordo com as normas e regulamentos do Exército, sob a influência do rígido modelo alemão de instrução. Como instrumentos metodológicos foram utilizados os trabalhos de Michael Pollak, no que se refere à construção da memória e à institucionalização de determinadas narrativas, e de Maurice Halbwachs, no tocante à relação existente entre memória coletiva e espaço. Uma pesquisa realizada nos acervos documentais da Escola Militar do Realengo, pertencentes ao Arquivo Histórico do Exército, e nos arquivos pessoais e acervos de história oral do Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação História Contemporânea do Brasil, da Fundação Getúlio Vargas, possibilitou o acesso às fontes. Conclui-se que o esforço da Missão Indígena, voltado para a formação profissional da oficialidade do Exército Brasileiro, não esteve dissociado das inclinações para agir politicamente da geração que passou pela Escola do Realengo na década de 1920.

Trabalho escravo contemporâneo e Estado capaz no Brasil

This thesis demonstrates the exercise of slave labor in the context of free or decent work, in contemporary times, supported by the federal constitution 1988 Brazil than places like fundamentals "the dignity of the human person" and "the social values of work and free enterprise" , and is as fundamental objectives of the Federative Republic of Brazil "build a free, just and united society," "guarantee national development", "eradicate poverty and marginalization and reduce social and regional inequalities", "promote the well all without prejudice of origin, race, sex, color, age and any other forms of discrimination. " It is considered that the analytical work category interacts both conceptually as an integral part of the capitalist development model as a driving force to the definition of State Capable. The panorama of acquired rights and rights infringed upon evidences the presence, or not, of the Brazilian state. Highlights, however, as state functions are being performed under the auspices of the Democratic State of Rights. So the original question that motivated this work is: To what extent the Brazilian government is structured to implement measures that can eradicate modern-day slavery? This question led to questions as: The Brazilian state has never failed in implementing the policy of "eradication to work analogous to slavery"? The answer the research questions were outlined using the dialectical materialist historical method under a sociological perspective in order to draw relationships and interrelationships between the current situation of the concept contemporary slavery and its historical roots. In the theoretical framework considers the conceptual approach regarding the capable state in order to answer the question regarding the eradication policy to contemporary forced labor and the Brazilian nation-state's ability to put it into action. In this sense, it employed concepts such as state, nation-state and capable state, from the interpretations of Bresser-Pereira, including the discussion regarding the formation of the arrangements and conservative and progressive political alliances. The research subject was analyzed from the reports published in 2013 by the Ministry of Labour after the Special Group of the inspection actions for Mobile Inspection (GEFM) to Combat Labour Analogous to Slave. The study of public policies related to the eradication program to work analogous to slavery takes up the discussion regarding the conditionality of free labor, or decent, in contemporary Brazil, and reveals that in Brazil the effectiveness or efficacy of government actions comply with governing the Federal Constitution-88, namely, to preserve "the dignity of the human person" and "the social values of work and free enterprise" is an ongoing process. There are advances, but these are conditioned to Brazil stage in the formation of the nation state and the national society.

The BRICS: some historical experiences, growth challenges and opportunities

The acronym BRICS was a fad among the media and global investors. Now, the acronym sounds passé. However, the group of countries remains important, from both political and economic reasons. They have a large aggregate size, 28% of the global GDP and 42% of the world’s population, high growth potential due to the current significant misallocation of resources and relatively low stock of human capital, structural transformation is in progress and one of them, China, is taking steps to become a global power and a challenger to the US dominance. This paper provides a brief overview of the five economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. We focus on some aspects of their history, the Chinese initiatives in international finance and geopolitical strategic moves, their growth experience and structural transformation over the last 35 years, trade and investment integration into the global economy and among themselves, the growth challenges faced by their economies and the potential gains to the Brazilian economy from a stronger integration with the other BRICS. In association with its efforts to be a global power, China aims to become a major player in global finance and to achieve the status of global currency for the renminbi, which would be the first currency of an emerging economy to attain such position. Despite the similarities, the BRICS encompass very diverse economies. In the recent decades, China and India showed stellar growth rates. On the other hand, Brazil, Russia and South Africa have expanded just in line with global output growth with the Russian economy exhibiting high volatility. China is by far the largest economy, and South Africa the smallest, the only BRICS economy with a GDP lower than US$ 1 trillion. Russia abandoned communism almost 25 years ago, but reversed many of the privatizations of 90’s. China is still ruled by communism, but has a vibrant private sector and recently has officially declared market forces to play a dominant role in its economy. Brazil, Russia and South Africa are global natural resources powerhouses and commodity exporters while China and India are large commodity importers. Brazil is relatively closed to international trade of goods and services, in marked contrast to the other four economies. Brazil, India and South Africa are dependent on external capital flows whereas China and Russia are capital exporters. India and South Africa have younger populations and a large portion living below the poverty line. Despite its extraordinary growth experience that lifted many millions from poverty, China still has 28% of its population classified as poor. Russia and China have much older populations and one of their challenges is to deal with the effects of a declining labor force in the near future. India, China and South Africa face a long way to urbanization, while Brazil and Russia are already urbanized countries. China is an industrial economy but its primary sector still absorbs a large pool of workers. India is not, but the primary sector employs also a large share of the labor force. China’s aggregate demand structure is biased towards investment that has been driving its expansion. Brazil and South Africa have an aggregate demand structure similar to the developed economies, with private consumption accounting for approximately 70%. The same similarity applies to the supply side, as in both economies the share of services nears 70%. The development problem is a productivity problem, so microeconomic reforms are badly needed to foster long-term growth of the BRICS economies since they have lost steam due a variety of factors, but fundamentally due to slower total factor productivity growth. China and India are implementing ambitious reform programs, while Brazil is dealing with macroeconomic disequilibria. Russia and South Africa remain mute about structural reforms. There are some potential benefits to Brazil to be extracted from a greater economic integration with the BRICS, particularly in natural resources intensive industries and services. Necessary conditions to the materialization of those gains are the removal of the several sources of resource misallocation and strong investment in human capital.

Alasdair Gray`s 1982 Janine (1984): a postmodernist scottish novel

Alasdair Gray is now an established figure in the Scottish literary scene and has numerous claims to be considered an important voice writing in English. First Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) and then 1982 Janine (1984) contributed to the recognition of Gray as one of the founding fathers of the new Scottish writing and as a figure of importance in international contemporary fiction due to his innovative, experimental and postmodernist novels. As the title of this dissertation - “Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine (1984): A Postmodernist Scottish Novel” - suggests, it aims at analysing the author’s second novel, 1982 Janine (1984), in a thematic and formal perspective, in order to justify the choice of the terms - Postmodernist and Scottish - to classify this novel. 1982 Janine projects a world through Jock McLeish’s mind and is a powerful stream-of-consciousness narrative. Jock is an alcoholic who lives a personal crisis and, therefore, tries to escape from his depressing reality through sexual fantasies and political diatribes. During a single night in a Scottish hotel room, he drinks and dreams, and spends the whole night alone with his fantasies and fears, his memories and hopes. In Chapter 11, the most daring experimental section of the novel, Jock attempts to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tablets with alcohol but fails. Following this, he decides to review his life and make for a new beginning; the novel thus closing with an optimistic note. Also, the narrative is based on a constant interweaving of sex fantasy with political satire, that is, it is through his protagonist that Gray manages to convey the state of Scotland as well as the concerns and aspirations of the Scottish people and then, proceed to a political and social critique. This dissertation appears structured in three chapters. In Chapter I - “Alasdair Gray: A Postmodernist Scottish Writer” - I present Gray as a powerful postmodernist writer who also sees himself as a Scottish author, and more particularly as a Glaswegian, who concentrates on Scottish subject matter in his literary work. In a first section, I offer a brief survey of the Scottish literary scene from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, in order to understand Gray’s choice of setting and themes and to check his influence or indebtedness to previous Scottish authors. As 1982 Janine is also a good example of selfconscious experimental writing, in a second section, I present various seminal fictional works that introduced and developed experimentalism in British fiction, in order to evaluate the influence of modernist developments in form and technique on recent experimental writing. The third section consists of an introduction to Gray’s work for he is not only a novelist, but also an artist, a playwright, a poet, an activist and a scholar. Chapter II - “Postmodernist Features in 1982 Janine” - aims at listing and examining the postmodernist devices that the novel includes, in what content and form are concerned. On the one hand, the use of a developed type of the modernist stream of consciousness, the presence of a protagonist who feels entrapped in a specific system, the quest for freedom, the incoherence and fragmentation of time, the nonchronological order of the narrative, the blending of fantasy and “reality”, as well as the importance of the Scottish material are definitely current aspects within postmodernist literature that can be found in Gray’s novel. On the other hand, the handling of literary self-conscious devices, such as typographical experimentation, presence of metafiction and intertextuality, and inclusion of an Epilogue, are likewise among recurrent postmodernist features. As the title - “A Narratological Analysis of 1982 Janine” - evidences, Chapter III offers a description of the mechanics of the narrative and its functioning in order to better understand the narrative technique of postmodernist fiction. This study is based primarily on Gérard Genette’s theoretical framework and terminology, presented in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, an analytical tool that allows me to provide a more objective and scientific analysis. Hence, I follow the Genettian division of narrative discourse in Time, Mood and Voice while examining the novel. Finally, I proceed to a description of the intertextual relationships 1982 Janine establishes with other texts.

A narratological analysis of D. M. Thoma`s: the white hotel (1981)

“A Narratological Analysis of D. M. Thomas’s The White Hotel (1981)” originated within a seminar on British Postmodernist Literature during the first Master’s Degree in “British and North-American Culture and Literature” (2001-04) at the Universidade da Madeira set up by the Department of English and German Studies. This dissertation seeks to present a narratological analysis of Thomas’s novel. The White Hotel stands as a paradigmatic example of the kind of literature that has dominated the British literary scene in the past three decades, commonly referred to as postmodernist fiction, owing to its formal craftsmanship (multiplicity of narrative voices and perspectives, mixing of differing genres and text types, inclusion of embedded narratives) alongside the handling of what are deemed as postmodernist topoi (the distinction between truth and lies, history and fantasy, fact and fiction, the questioning of the nature of aesthetic representation, the role the author and the reader hold in the narrative process, the instability of the linguistic sign, the notion of originality and the moral responsibility the author has towards his/her work), The narratological approach carried out in this research reveals that Thomas’s text constitutes an aesthetic endeavour to challenge the teleological drive that is inherent in any narrative, i. e., the inevitable progression towards a reassuring end. Hence, the subversion of narrative telling, which is a recurrent feature in Thomas’s remaining literary output, mirrors the contemporary distrust in totalising, hierarchised and allencompassing narratives. In its handling of historical events, namely of the Holocaust, The White Hotel invites us to reassess the most profound beliefs we were taught to take for granted: progress, reality and truth. In their place the novel proposes a more flexible conception of both the world and art, especially of literary fiction. In other terms, the world appears as a brutal chaotic place the subject is forced to adjust to. Accordingly, the literary work is deemed hybrid, fragmented and open. So as to put forth the above-mentioned issues, this research work is structured in three main chapters. The initial chapter – “What is Postmodernism?” – advances a scrutiny not only of the seminal but also of more recent studies on postmodernist literary criticism. Following this, in Chapter II – “Postmodernist British Fiction” – a brief overview of postmodernist British fiction is carried out, focusing on the fictional works that, in my opinion, are fundamental for the periodising of British postmodernism. In addition, I felt the need to include a section – “D. M. Thomas as a Postmodernist Novelist” – in which the author’s remaining literary output is briefly examined. Finally, Chapter III – “A Narratological Analysis of The White Hotel” – proposes a narratological analysis of the novel according to the particular Genettian analytical model. To conclude, my dissertation constitutes an approach to D. M. Thomas’s The White Hotel as a text whose very existence is substantiated in the foregrounding of the contingency of all discourses, meeting the postmodernist precepts of openness and subversion of any narrative that claims to be true, globalising and all-inclusive.

A noção de acontecimento na experiência do DOCTV RN IV Sangue do Barro

This dissertation presents a reflection upon the notion of event, inspired by the contributions of Edgar Morin to the thinking of the present. The research analysis this notion particularly from the experience of the documentary titled Sangue do Barro, which was the winner of the 4th edition of DOCTV, in the federal state of Rio Grande do Norte in 2008. The study focuses on how facts from daily life can be approached by the documentary making process, and how in this process the questioning of facts leads to the questioning of social realities. In this perspective, through the illustrative case of Sangue do Barro, the research develops the hypothesis of how in the documentary process, which aims at revealing a particular history, is the revealing of the particular able to reflect the universal. The dissertation thus assumes this situation as precisely the configuration of the sociology of present, proposed by Edgar Morin. Furthermore, along with the theoretical premises of the sociology of the present, the research performs a brief historical analysis of documentary practices, Brazilian audiovisual public policies, and it also discusses the technical contributions of several contemporary film makers and contemporary thinkers, such as Jean Rouch, Bill Nichols, Ismail Xavier, Consuelo Lins, Gilles Lipovetsky, Jean Serroy, Michel Foucault, Alfredo Pena-Vega, Nicole Lapierre, etc