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Going to the people popular culture and the intellectuals in Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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A new and curious species of public figure emerged on the international scene after the Second World War, gaining in prominence and conspicuousness in the years that followed. His daily experience is often a trying one, marked by recurrent tension between conflicting commitments. Enjoying from bhth the comforts of the advanced industrial world, he seeks to speak onbehalf of the hungry and impoverished. Educated in the best universities, he lives among countrymen who are predominantly illiterate. He is regarded as an impertinent upstart by the diplomats of wealthier and more powerful nations. At the same time, he is suspected by his own people of compromising himself with the reigning powers of the international arena. He is well-versed and highly articulate in the political vocabulary of the West. Yet he is acutely sensitive to perceived slights against the political traditions of his native land. He is bitter about what the Western presence did to his native society. But the very categories in which he couches his criticisms of that presence—the rights to sovereignty, distributive justice, and national self-determination —are themselves the inheritance of the West. He follows with enthusiasm the latest currents of intellectual life in Europe and America. Yet he is deeply committed, simultaneously, to defending the dignity of his own people's cultural achievements. As a result of his modern education, he cannot help but feel somewhat estranged from the traditional beliefs and practices of his fellow citizens. Yet neither can he feel very comfortable as the mere bearer to them of the colonizer's culture, a culture he rarely regards entirely as his own. Such is the predicament of that loquacious and troublesome child of the post-colonial age, the Third World intellectual.

Type
Tending the Roots: Nationalism and Populism
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1984

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References

(1) This tension, its origins and ramifications have been the object of some penetrating reflection by those who experience it. See, especially, the writings of Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York 1961)Google Scholar; also Laroui, Abdallah, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual (Berkeley 1976)Google Scholar; Mannoni, O., Prospero and Caliban (New York 1956)Google Scholar; Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston 1965)Google Scholar; and Patterson, Orlando, Ethnic Chauvinism (New York 1978)Google Scholar; the experience of the Third World intellectual sometimes been studied by way of its impact onliterature. Important work in this tradition includes Coulthard, C. R., Race and Color in Caribbean Literature (London 1962)Google Scholar; Brookshaw, David, Raça e Cor na Literatura Brasileira (Porto Alegre 1983)Google Scholar; Jackson, Richard, The Black Image in Latin American Literature (Albuquerque 1977)Google Scholar; Obichina, Emmanuel, Culture, Tradition, and Society in the West African Novel (London 1978)Google Scholar; Retamar, Roberto Fernandez, Caliban, Casade Las Americas, LXVIII (0910 1971)Google Scholar; several writers from the developed world have shown interest in the dilemmas of their counterparts in the less developed countries. See Sartre, Jean-Paul, Black Orpheus (New York 1955)Google Scholar; and Shils, Edward, The Intellectuals and the Powers (Chicago 1962)Google Scholar. It is possible to view the tension in question, and the conflicting commithas ments that giverise to it, as an example of ‘sociological ambivalence’. See Merton, Robert, Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York 1976)Google Scholar.

(2) This research tradition begins in the work of Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, III. 1959)Google Scholar; it culminates in Inkeles, AlexBecoming Modem (Cambridge, Mass. 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(3) Among the revisionist versions of modernization theory the most important figures are Reinhard Bendix, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Samuel Huntington, and Edward Shils.

(4) Shils, p. 370.

(5) Ibid. p. 350–1.

(6) For the purposes of this article—an analysis of the historical conditioning of a debate—we will remain agnostic concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the various sides to the argument. The disagreements extend to the terms themselves. There are significant differences of opinion concerning all three of the words in our title: intellectuals, popular culture, and the people. As to intellectuals, this article refers directly to a rather narrowgroup, the roughly two dozen Brazilian scholars in the social sciences and humanities who have written extensively on the subjects discussed here. In a somewhat looser and more indirect way, it also refers to the dissemination of their ideas to a considerably wider group: the university community at large, priests, nuns, pastoral agents, bishops, and militants in the Partido dot Trabalhadores. It is among the clergy and the militants that the idealization of popular culture reaches its apogee. The preferred newspaper of the liberal intelligentsia, the Folha de São Paulo, has also shown a strong receptivity to the intellectual currents discussed here. Having clarified the groups to which I am referring, there will be no need here to enter into theoretical disputes over definitions of ‘the intellectual’. With respect to ‘popular culture’, I employ this term to describe the religious and recreational practices of the poor, and the values embodied in such practices, insofar as these differfrom those of other social strata. This definition has the distinct advantage of leaving open for empirical investigation the question of whether there actually exists such an entity as ‘popular culture’. (The quotation marks will be excluded in the text only for stylistic reasons). This definition of popular culture also leaves open for inquiry the issue of what these values, allegedly unique to the poor, might consist of, and whether such values are equally present in all expressions of poor people's culture. A persuasive argument that there exists no such unitary scheme of values, distinctive to the poor, may be found in Fernandes, Ruben Cesar, Os Cavaleiros do Bom Jesus (Rio de Janeiro 1982), pp. 137–40Google Scholar. Lastly, ‘the people’. I have translated for this term the Portuguese word povo. Although this is the nearest English equivalent, the Portuguese refers more specifically to what would normally be considered the working classes and marginal poor, both urban and rural. In a less developed country, where the majority of the people are poor by any standard, the conflation of these terms is understandable. It nevertheless creates ambiguities over who is included and who excluded by invocation of the povo. There has been little interest in clarifying these ambiguities. They have been useful to populist politicians desirous of appealing to members of many social classes. They have also been useful to Marxists, aware of the infinitesimal size of the industrial proletariat as conceived by Marx.

(7) For a recent American discussion related matters, see Gans, Herbert, Popular Culture and High Culture (New York 1974)Google Scholar; on earlier arguments over Culpopular culture, see Lowenthal, Leo, Literature, Popular Culture and Society (New York 1961)Google Scholar; for a brief comparison of the Brazilian and American debates Subover popular culture, see Osiel, Mark, Popular culture in Latin America, Dissent, XXXI (1984), 109–15Google Scholar.

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(18) Chaui, Marilena, Seminários (Rio de Janeiro 1983), p. 97Google Scholar.

(19) See Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Seabury, New York 1970)Google Scholar; and Education for Critical Consciousness (Seabury, New York 1973)Google Scholar.

(20) Freire, Paulo, Cultural freedom in Latin America, in Colonnese, Louis (ed.), Human Rights and the Liberation of Man in the Americas (Notre Dame 1970), p. 169Google Scholar. For a helpful summary of Freire's views on culture, see Artur de Lima, Venicio, Comunicação e Cultura (Rio de Janeiro 1981)Google Scholar.

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(22) Martins, , A Questão… (Rio de Janeiro 1963)Google Scholar.

(23) For studies of cultural ferment on left, see Manoel Tosta Berlinck, Um projeto para a cultura brasileira nos anos 60, Conference of the Associação Nacional de Pos-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociâis (ANPOCS), 1979; de Holanda, Heloisa B. e Goncalves, Marcos, Cultura e Participação nos anos 60 (Sao Paulo 1982)Google Scholar; and Mostaco, EdelcioTeatro e Político (Rio de Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar.

(24) Ibid, note 9.

(25) Cava, Ralph Delia, Miracle at Joazeiro (New York 1970)Google Scholar.

(26) Personal communication with several bishops. On the repercussions of Vatican II within the Brazilian episcopate, see Bruneau, Thomas, The Political Trans formation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge, England, 1974)Google Scholar.

(27) Due to limits of time and space, the present article will sketch only the general outlines of the change in intellectual climate. The differences in the way popular culture isrecovered by each of these various fields cannot be examined Antohere.

(28) See particularly Ribeiro, Jorge Jr, A Festa do Povo (Petropolis 1982)Google Scholar.

(29) Hoornaert, Eduardo, Formação do Catolicismo Brasileiro (Petropolis 1978), p. 99Google Scholar.

(30) Boff, Leonardo, Igreja: Caristna e Poder (Petropolis 1981), p. 160Google Scholar.

(31) Febreiba de Camargo, Candido Procopio, Muniz de Souza, Beatriz, Flavio de Oliveira Pierucci, Antonio, Comunidades Eclesiais de Base, in Singer, Paulo and Brant, Vinicius (eds), São Paulo: o povo em movimento (Petropolis 1982)Google Scholar.

(32) Boff, Leonardo, Teología a Escuta Demodo Povo (Petropolis 1982)Google Scholar; and Libanio, J. B., O Problema de Salvação no Catolicistno do Povo (Petropolis 1977)Google Scholar.

(33) For a bibliography of the debate, see Magnani, Jose Guilherme, Cultura popular: controversias e perspectivas, Boletim Informativo [Rio de Janeiro], VI (1981), 439Google Scholar; on the issue of popular religiosity, see the special bibliography in Religião e Sodedade, I (1977), 181–94Google Scholar.

(34) Chaui, Marilena, Cultura e Democracia (São Paulo 1982), p. 79Google Scholar.

(35) Araujo, Ari, As Escolas de Samba (Rio de Janeiro 1978)Google Scholar; Goldwasser, Maria Julia, O Palácio de Samba (Rio de Janeiro 1975)Google Scholar; Leoppoldi, Jose Savio, Escola de Samba, Ritual e Sociedade (Petropolis 1978)Google Scholar; Matta, Roberto da, Carnavais, Malandros, e Hérois (Rio de Janeiro 1978)Google Scholar; Ortiz, Renato, chapters 1 and 2 in A Consciência Fragmentada (Rio de Janeiro 1980)Google Scholar.

(36) Ibid., da Matta, p. 32.

(37) Borges, Beatriz, Samba-Canção (Rio de Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar.

(38) Oliven, Ruben George, A Malan-dragem na Musica Popular Brasileira, in Violéncia e Cultura no Brasil (Petropolis 1982)Google Scholar.

(39) Guimaraes, Alba Zaluar, book review in Religião e Sociedade, no. 4 (1979) [Rio de Janeiro], p. 253Google Scholar.

(40) Isaura de Queiroz, Maria, O Messiaismo no Brasil e no Mundo (São Paulo 1965)Google Scholar.

(41) Cascudo, Camara, Tradição: Ciência do Povo (Sao Paulo 1971)Google Scholar.

(42) See, for instance, Chaui, , Cultura…, p. 82Google Scholar; Hoornaert, pp. 113–116, and Libanio, pp. 24–5.

(43) Cardoso, Ruth, Culture Brasileira: uma nocao ambigua, Cadernos, no. 17 (1982)Google Scholar; also the pieces by Marcos, Mariano, Ogawa, Felicia Megumi, and Rattner, Henrique in Cadernos, no. 16 (1981)Google Scholar.

(44) A work devoted entirely to this single idea is Mota, Carlos Guilherme, Ideologia da Cultura Brasileira (São Paulo 1980)Google Scholar; see also Chaui, Seminarios.

(45) The French have exercised great influence over the organization and ideology of the Brazilian university since its inception. Several of France's major intellectual lights have taught for extended periods in Brazil, from Claude Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel to Claude Lefort. The attraction of France for Brazilian intelletuals in earlier periods is the subject of an article by Needel, Jeffrey, Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the century: modernization and the Parisian ideal, Journal of Inter american and World Affairs, XXV (1983), 89126Google Scholar; on the politics of the Brazilian University, see Cardoso, Irene, A Universidade da Comunhão Paulista (São Paulo 1982)Google Scholar; and Cunha, Luiz Antonio, A Universidade Critica (Rio de Janeiro 1983)Google Scholar.

(46) Personal communication.

(47) Boff, , Teologia…, p. 60Google Scholar. Boff has recently been summoned to a formal investigation at the Vatican to answer charges of doctrinal error. Although inspired by Boff's support of social activism, the inquiry is sure to scrutinize his fondness for syncretic and non-Catholic elements of popular faith.

(48) For differing interpretations of the '64 coup see Skidmore, Thomas, Politics in Brazil, 1930–64 (London 1967)Google Scholar; and Dreifuss, Rene, 1964: A Conquista do Estado (Petropolis 1981)Google Scholar.

(49) Particularly influential in disseminating this hypothesis was Prado, Caio Junior, whose widely read book A Revolução Brasileira (São Paulo 1966)Google Scholar criticized the strategy of the Brazilian Communist Party, in which Prado remained a member; induson the CP, see Chilcote, Ronald, The Brazilian Communist Party (London 1974)Google Scholar; Dulles, John, Anarchists and Communists in Brazil (Austin 1974)Google Scholar; Carone, Edgard, O Partido Comunista Brasileira, I–III (São Paulo, 1982)Google Scholar.

(50) The Party that emerged from the 197–80 strikes in the São Paulo auto industry. On the origins of the Party, see Kucinski, Bernardo, Abertura: historia de uma crise (São Paulo 1982), Chapter 10Google Scholar.

(51) Marilena Chaui, Cultura do Povo e Autoritarismo das Elites, in Cultura….

(52) On terrorism in Brazil, see Marighella, Carlos, For the Liberation of Brazil (London 1971)Google Scholar; Evans, R. D., Brazil, the road back from terrorism, Conflict Studies, XLVII, 07 1974Google Scholar; Portella, Fernando, Guerra e Guerrilhas no Brasil (São Paulo 1978)Google Scholar; Syrkis, Alfredo, Os Carbonários: memórias da guerrilha perdida (São Paulo 1980)Google Scholar; Betto, Frei, Batismo de Sangue (Rio de Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar.

(53) Personal communication in interviews with priests, nuns, bishops.

(54) Betto, Batismo

(55) The radical critique of the commercial media and their expansion in Brazil is extensive. A sample of the literature would include Comunicação e Politico, I, no. 1 (1983) [Rio de Janeiro]Google Scholar; Caparelli, SergioTelevisao e Capitalismo no Brasil (Porto Alegre 1982)Google Scholar; Marques de Melo, Jose (ed.), Comunicação/Incomunicação no Brasil (São Paulo 1976)Google Scholar; Milanesi, Luiz Augusto, O Paraiso via Embratel (Rio de Janeiro 1978)Google Scholar; and Miranda, Orlando, Tio Patinhas e os Mitos da Comunicação (São Paulo 1978)Google Scholar.

(56) Burke, Peter, The discovery of the people, in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York 1978)Google Scholar.

(57) Ibid., chapter 9.

(58) Fry, Peter, Para Ingles Ver (1982), p. 15Google Scholar; Cavalcanti, Lauro, Black-Breque: estudo de um grupo ‘soul’ em relação a adeptos de samba, ANPOCS Conference, 1981Google Scholar; and Riserio, Antonio, Carnaval Ijexa (Salvador, Bahia 1981)Google Scholar.

(59) See, particularly, Alves, Rubem, Protestantismo e Repressão, (São Paulo 1982)Google Scholar; and Rolim, Francis, Religião e Classes Populares (Petropolis 1980)Google Scholar.

(60) On changes in Church politics in Brazil, see Alves, Márcio Moreira, A Igreja e a Político no Brasil (São Paulo 1979)Google Scholar; Bruneau, Thomas, The Political Transformation…, Nabino de Campos, Jose, Brasil: uma igreja diferente (São Paulo 1981)Google Scholar; Romano, Roberto, Brasil: igreja contra estado (São Paulo 1979)Google Scholar; Gonzago de Souza Lima, Luiz, Evolução Politica dos Catolicos e da Igreja no Brasil (Petropolis 1979)Google Scholar; for comparisons within Latin America, see Levine, Daniel, Religion and Politics in Latin America (Princeton 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, Brian, The Church and Politics in Chile (Princeton 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(61) Personal communication with priests, nuns, bishops, and academicians in São Paulo.

(62) The journals in which the debate took place were the Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, Síntese, and Revista de Cultura Vozes.

(63) Personal communication.

(64) I accept here the interpretation of Church history offered by Bruneau.

(65) See Osiel, Mark, Church politics in Latin America, Dissent, Fall 1982Google Scholar. Examples of related discussion elsewhere in Latin America may be found in Canclini, Nestor Carcia, As Culturas Populares no Capitalismo (São Paulo 1983)Google Scholar; Galeano, Eduardo, The revolution as revelation, Socialist Review, Fall 1982Google Scholar; the entire issue of Revista de Cultura Vozes, no. 4 1979)Google Scholar, especially the articles of Josep Barnadas and Juan Villegas; also the entire issue of Cristianismo y Sociedad, no. 47 (1976) [Buenos Aires]Google Scholar.

(66) On censorship, see Breques, Sebastião Geraldo, A Imprensa Brasileira Apos 1964, Encontros Com a Civilização Brasileira 1979Google Scholar; Candido, Antonio, Repressao, A Verdade de, Cadernos de Opinião, no. 13 (1979)Google Scholar; Khede, Sonia Salomao, Censores de Pinchene e Gravata (Rio de Janeiro 1981)Google Scholar; Marconi, Paulo, A Censura Político na Imprensa Brasileíra, 1968–78 (São Paulo 1980)Google Scholar; SEDOC, II, no. 1 (July 1969), p. 55.

(67) For a sociology of intellectuals that ascribes considerable importance to censorship in the creation of dissidence, see Conrad, George and Szelenyi, Ivan, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York 1979)Google Scholar.

(68) Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, III., 1952)Google Scholar.

(69) The Estado Novo anointed various intellectuals in the capacity of propagandists for the regime, but these writers did not exercise much power in their own right, eithercollectively or as individuals. On the close relations between intellectuals wiitand the state in these years, see Lippi Oliveira, Lucia, Velloso, Monica Pimenta, and Gomes, Angela Maria Castro, Estado Novo: ideología e poder (Riode Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar; Miceli, Sergio, Intelectuáis e Classe Dirigente no Brasil, 1920–45 (Rio de Janeiro 1979)Google Scholar; and Medeiros, Jarbas, Ideología Autoritária no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro 1978)Google Scholar; not all were so fortunate, see Ramos, Graciliano, Memórias do Cárcere (São Paulo 1953)Google Scholar.

(70) The hostility of leftist intellectuals in Brazil toward modern society in all its forms (i.e. science, industry, cities, etc.) is a recurrent theme in the polemical wiitand ings of Josi Guilherme Merquior. See, for instance, As Idéias e as Formas (Rio de Janeiro 1982), pp. 31–7Google Scholar.

(71) On the feeble attempts of the post-'64 regime to develop a sustained defense of its rule, see Klein, Lucia and Figueiredo, Marcos F., Legitimidade e Coação no Brasil pos-64 (Rio de Janeiro 1978)Google Scholar; the best-known spokesman of the ‘national Brazi security’ ideology is General Silva, Golberi do Couto e, Geopolítica do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro 1967)Google Scholar.

(72) Gramsci's writings on folklore and intellectuals were translated into Portuguese in 1968; examples of the reception of his work into Brazilian thought include Doria, Carlos Alberto, Religião e Polirica em Gramsci, Religião e Sociedade, no. 3 (1978)Google Scholar; and Renato Ortiz, Gramsci: problemas de religiao, in A Comciência…; there is an extensive reliance on Gramsci in Moises, Jose Alvaro, Licões de Liberdade e de Opressão (Rio de Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar.

(73) Gonzales, Horacio, O que são Intelectuáis (São Paulo 1981), p. 95Google Scholar. Among the many discussions of the intellectual's role within mass movements, see Cerqueira Filho, Gisalio, O intelectual e os setores populares, Encontros com a Civilização Brasileria, III (1980) 6, 1522Google Scholar; Lesbaupin, Ivo, O papel dos intelectuais junto as classes populares, C.E.I., VII (1979) 148Google Scholar, 34–42; Ribeiro, Darcy, O papel reservado ao intelectual e a ciência nos paises pobres, Encontros com a Civilização Brasileira, III, (1980) 6, 213–16Google Scholar; Sodre, Nelson Werneck, Posição e responsibilidade dos intelectuais, Encontros com a Civilização Bratileira, III (1980) 7, 124–31Google Scholar.

(74) This is a founding premise of the sociology of knowledge. Its pre-eminent work is still that of Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York 1936)Google Scholar.

(75) Mario Viera de Mello observed a similar phenomenon in the preceding generation. Its intellectuals deployed a foreign terminology (existentialism) to lambast its predecessors for excessive dependence on still other foreign ideas: Desenvolvimento e Cultura (Rio de Janeiro 1961)Google Scholar.

(76) Coulthard, p. 28.

(77) On Alexander Herzen, see Cesar Fernandes, Rubem, Dilemas de Socialismo (Rio de Janeiro 1982)Google Scholar; also Gleason, Abbot, Young Russia (Chicago 1980)Google Scholar; and Walicki, Andrezej, The Slavophile Controversy (Oxford 1975)Google Scholar.

(78) Picon Salas, Mariano, Regreso de Tres Mundos (Rio de Janeiro 1959)Google Scholar, cited in Merquior, José Guilherme, O Argumento Liberal (Rio de Janeiro 1983), p. 217Google Scholar.

(79) For discussion of the meanings of universalism, and the specific contribution of the West to its advance, see Berger, Peter et al. , The Homeless Mind (New York 1973)Google Scholar; Patterson, chapter 8; for a Brazilian discussion, see Viera de Mello, chapter 7.

(80) A very good summary of the changes and continuities in the discussion of Brazilian culture may be found in Maria Isaura Peréira de Queiroz, Cientistas sociais e o auto-conhecimento de cultura brasileira atraves do tempo, Anpocs Conference Papers, 1979. Positive views of Brazilian culture, including that of the poor, have a long history dating back at least to the Romantic poetry of the mid-nineteenth century. In our century, the best known favorable account of ‘popular culture’ is the work of Gilberto Freyre. Current authors distance themselves as much as possible from his views, however. Freyre, it is true, portrayed the culture of the slaves with an unprecedented sympathy. But irrespeche did so with a polemical purpose that was decidedly different from that of present day authors. The beauty of black culture was invoked to give a rather rosy-lensed opporrendition of the horrors of slavery. Today scholars praise popular culture not as a product of slave society, but as a tacit form of struggle against it. For recent criticism of Freyre, see Mota, chapter i; de Aguiar Medbiros, Maria Alice, Casa Grande e Senzala, Dados, XXIII, no. 2 (1980)Google Scholar; Ribeiro, Darcy, Freyre, Gilberto: Casa Grande e Senzala, Ensaios Insolitos (Porto Alegre 1979)Google Scholar; and Luiz A. de Castro Santos, Gilberto Freyre: uma visao do passado senhorial, ANPOCS Conference Patury. pers, 1983.

(81) At times Paulo Freire appears suspiciously close to believing in a ‘culture of poverty’. But Artur de Lima argues that at other times Freire holds a broader and non-evaluative view of culture, as a group-response to environment, irrespective of the group's wealth or poverty, The culture of the poor becomes, on this interpretation, a reasonable response to their material circumstances and limited opporrendition tunities.

(82) Boff, , Igreja…, p. 161Google Scholar; Hoornaert, p. 137.

(83) Oliven, Rubem George, A ideologia da modernização, Revista, Institute de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas III (1977), 254–63Google Scholar.

(84) Shils, p. 370.

(85) A history and critical dissection of the more pessimistic judgments on national culture by Brazilian intellectuals is found in Moreira Leite, Dante, O Carácter National Brasileiro (São Paulo 1968)Google Scholar.

(86) This was particularly true of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Mario de Andrade. On the composer, see Squeff, Enio and Wisnik, Jose Miguel, O National e o Popular: musica (São Paulo 1982)Google Scholar.

* The author would like to express his thanks to the Inter-American Foundation for supporting the present research. Thanks also to the members of the Centro de Estudos Brasileiros de Andlise e Planejamento, in São Paulo.