A FAO num mundo faminto: nro. especial da International History Review

H-Diplo Article Review 949 on “Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective.”

by George Fujii

H-Diplo Article Review 949
7 May 2020

“Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective.”  Special Issue of International History Review 41:2 (2019): 345–458.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2018.1460386.

https://hdiplo.org/to/AR949

Review Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Cindy Ewing | Production Editor: George Fujii

Review by Kaete O’Connell, Southern Methodist University

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was the first of several permanent international organizations established in the postwar period.  The organization’s constitution asserted that members were “determined to promote the common welfare” and pledged to improve nutrition, raise standards of living, enhance food production and distribution, and “[ensure] humanity’s freedom from hunger.”^[1] Since food insecurity was a catalyst for conflict, eliminating hunger and rural poverty was believed to be a necessity for peace. The enormity of the task that lay ahead was not lost on contemporaries who envisioned the program as a key component in the postwar international order.

Regardless of the real or perceived significance of the organization, histories of the FAO remain sparse.  Existing scholarship offers an overview of the FAO’s founding, but few historians explore the organization’s many missions, contributions, or controversies.^[2] It is this “paradox” that contributors to this special issue, “Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective,” seek to address (345). The result is a thought-provoking issue that offers both a top-down and bottom-up perspective on the organization’s early years. Editors Corinne A. Pernet and Amalia Ribi Forclaz offer a collection that breaks with the one-dimensional institutional histories of the past and instead examines the “FAO’s role in the articulation of policies and practices of ‘development’” (346). By focusing on the 1950s, the articles underscore how postwar promises and desires for international cooperation were quickly eclipsed by Cold War politics. The lofty goals of eradicating hunger and poverty remained out of reach, but the FAO’s early projects, which collected information on production and consumption, laid the foundation for later global governance and food safety standardization.

Pernet and Forclaz’s introduction, “Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)”, sets the tone for an ambitious issue.^[3] They believe the general “reluctance” of historians to engage with the FAO is largely a result of archival difficulties, since access to the organization’s papers has been limited in recent years (347). Yet the contributors impressively marshal a diverse array of sources, combing local archives and personal papers scattered across the globe alongside the FAO archives in Rome. One of the great strengths of this collection is the variety of perspectives incorporated in the analyses. Actors from within and beyond the purview of FAO’s administration enrich the narratives, offering valuable insights into the organization’s role in facilitating cooperation among different nations and interest groups.

The first three essays in the issue examine how knowledge was produced and circulated by civil servants and experts in the FAO’s early programs. Amalia Ribi Forclaz’s article, “From Reconstruction to Development,” focuses on the work of the Rural Welfare Division under the leadership of economist Horace Belshaw.^[4] Relying on correspondence, Forclaz traces the origins of rural development planning in the late 1940s, highlighting Belshaw’s sensitivity to local cultures and skepticism towards expert intervention. Belshaw “focused on how to develop people rather than resources,” believing economic development was a social process (364). His holistic approach was abandoned, however, in favor of technical assistance programs and short-term interventions. This shift is important, Forclaz argues, because it deepens our understanding of the intellectual history of development. The FAO offered a platform for experimentation in the early postwar period, demonstrating that “development was never a homogenous set of ideas” (365).

Sarah W. Tracy’s article, “A Global Journey–Ancel Keys, the FAO, and the Rise of Transnational Heart Disease Epidemiology,” similarly examines the contributions made by a single individual working for the FAO.^[5] Keys, who was a physiologist, served as chair of the FAO Committee on Caloric Requirements and the Expert Committee on Nutrition. These experiences piqued Keys’s interest in regional dietary habits, and “led him to think globally about the relationship between diet and cardiovascular health” (372). Tracy argues that Keys’s FAO service profoundly shaped his research agenda. In addition to thinking in broad comparative terms, he developed new techniques for conducting research on a global scale and built a social network of like-minded scientists. Tracy’s article explores the theoretical, interpersonal, and technical changes in Keys’s work as he transitioned from a nutritional physiologist to a chronic disease epidemiologist. She concludes that the relationship between the experts and the FAO’s global mandate was “dynamic and synergistic…with each party influencing the other, sometimes in mutually beneficial ways” (374).

Adopting the perspective of a fieldworker, Corinne A. Pernet focuses on Emma Reh, a staff member of the Nutrition Division assigned to Central America in her article, “FAO from the Field and from Below”.^[6] Pernet relies on Reh’s correspondence and field reports to explore issues of marginalization surrounding the FAO’s work in Central America during the 1950s. These challenges included difficulties establishing a strong presence in the region, structural inequalities within the organization, a growing tendency to privilege medical science over field work, and a gender imbalance that affected Reh’s ability to conduct field work and navigate bureaucratic circles. Reh’s food surveys drew direct correlations between poverty and malnutrition, yet, her emphasis on socio-economic factors was swept aside in favor of nutritionism. For Pernet, this shift toward medicalization is indicative of “gendered power asymmetries” (392).

The remaining articles explore issues of sovereignty, examining how local dynamics shaped the implementation of rural development programs. Oliver Dinius’s “Transnational Development on the Frontier” looks at the Brazilian government’s effort to promote social and economic development in the Amazon with the creation of a regional development agency, the Superintendency for the Plan of Economic Valorization of the Amazon (Superintendência do Plano para a Valorização Econômica da Amazônia, SPVEA).^[7] The Brazilian government requested FAO assistance to develop programs in fishery, agriculture, and forestry. Dinius offers a close analysis of competing visions of development that emerged in the Amazon Mission, demonstrating how these differences influenced the FAO’s planning and shaped Brazilian agendas. The FAO’s Amazon Mission failed, Dinius concludes, because the host nation lacked the administrative capacity to support the project (423). Surprisingly, the failure of the Amazon Mission cannot be attributed to resistance to foreign meddling or differences in strategy but rather was the result of a lack of resources that were then further undermined by existing economic circumstances and Brazilian politics.

Finally, Benjamin Siegel’s essay, “The Claims of Asia and the Far East”, focuses on newly independent India where the FAO’s agenda held great promise but failed to deliver.^[8] Siegel examines the converging interests of Indian experts, administrators, and politicians, concluding that the FAO “proved a greater boon to Indian careerism and the authority of Indian experts themselves than to the amelioration of hunger” (428). Siegel identifies a disconnect between FAO administrators and Indian representatives, highlighting the tension between national and international aspirations. The FAO offered a platform for international recognition and legitimacy but failed to provide adequate material assistance. The FAO’s marginal role in Indian agricultural development reflected a “winnowing scale of ambition” that importantly coincided with decolonization and an escalating Cold War (428).

For this reader, the greatest takeaway is the collective emphasis on interpersonal relations. The FAO encouraged collaboration across disciplines and state borders. It enabled Keys to forge important connections with scientists across the globe. Keys’s research paid close attention to similarities and differences in eating across cultures, reflecting field worker Reh’s interest in local custom and Belshaw’s holistic approach to rural welfare. Belshaw and Reh remained skeptical of top-down development programs and believed that greater attention needed to be paid to individual needs and establishing goodwill with local communities. In Brazil and India, government agents and experts manipulated FAO strategies to serve their own needs and interests, often at the expense of recipient populations.

Together these articles illustrate how different actors, agencies, and governments interpreted the FAO’s mission to eradicate hunger and combat rural poverty and adapted it to suit a range of long- and short-term objectives. The issue concludes with a thoughtful epilogue by Corinna R. Unger that reflects on the articles’ interventions and offers suggestions for future historical inquiry.^[9] Unger commends the issue’s focus on rural development, which she believes offers new insight into both the FAO’s history and the organization’s contributions to the field of international development (452). She also notes how the articles situate the FAO in the larger political context. The organization was not isolated or static, but adjusted strategies in response to a variety of external political and economic factors.

“Confronting a Hungry World” stresses the importance of the FAO to postwar histories of transnational cooperation, international organizations, development, and food and nutrition. The essays do an extraordinary job of breathing life into the early years of the organization, as it struggled to reconcile its idealism to meet practical demands and evolving geopolitical circumstances. Buoyed by postwar idealism, the FAO endeavored to make freedom from want a reality for populations across the globe. Yet almost 75 years later, food security remains elusive.^[10] Conflict, climate change, and poverty continue to stymie the U.N.’s efforts. Even so, this exploration into the early years of the FAO offers fresh insights on the renewed program to eradicate global hunger and malnutrition.

Kaete O’Connell is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.  Her research explores food diplomacy in the early Cold War, specifically looking at the political and cultural significance of U.S. food aid in post-WWII Germany.

Notes

[1] “Constitution,” in Basic Texts of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, vol. I (2017), 3, http://www.fao.org/3/K8024E/K8024E.pdf .

[2] Aside from organizational histories, such as Gove Hambidge, The Story of FAO (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 1955), the scholarship on the FAO is thin. See for example John Cave Abbott, Politics and Poverty: A Critique of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (New York: Routledge, 1992); Ruth Jachertz, “ʻTo Keep Food Out of Politics’: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 1945–1965,” in International Organizations and Development, 1945–1990, eds. Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel and Corinna R. Unger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 75–100; Amy L.S. Staples, The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945-1965 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2006).

[3] Corinne A. Pernet and Amalia Ribi Forclaz, “Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): International Histories of Agriculture, Nutrition, and Development,” International History Review 41:2 (2019): 345-350, (hereafter IHR).

[4] Amalia Ribi Forclaz, “From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955,” IHR: 351-371.

[5] Sarah W. Tracy, “A Global Journey - Ancel Keys, the FAO, and the Rise of Transnational Heart Disease Epidemiology, 1949-1958,” IHR: 372-390.

[6] Corinne A. Pernet, “FAO from the Field and from Below: Emma Reh and the Challenges of Doing Nutrition Work in Central America,” IHR: 391-406.

[7] Oliver Dinius, “Transnational Development on the Frontier: The FAO’s Fishery and Forestry Missions in the Brazilian Amazon,” IHR: 407-426.

[8] Benjamin Siegel, “‘The Claims of Asia and the Far East’: India and the FAO in the Age of Ambivalent Internationalism,” IHR: 427-450.

[9] Corinna R. Unger, “International Organizations and Rural Development: The FAO Perspective,” IHR: 451-458.

[10] In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly established the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 as part of the organization’s sustainable development goals. For more see https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/.

Time and Power. Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty years War to the Third Reich, book by Christopher Clark, reviewed by Helmut Walser Smith

H-Diplo Review Essay 226 on Clark. Time and Power. Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty years War to the Third Reich

by George Fujii

H-Diplo Review Essay 226
6 May 2020

Christopher Clark.  

Time and Power.  Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty years War to the Third Reich.  

Princeton.  Princeton University Press, 2019.  ISBN:  9780691181653 ($29.95/£25.00).

https://hdiplo.org/to/E226

Review Editor: Diane Labrosse | Production Editor: George Fujii

Review by Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University

Time and Power is an elegant, innovative intervention in what has come to be called the “Temporal Turn.”^[1] Christopher Clark, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and the author of a string of masterful and influential works, turns his attention to the way holders of power imagine temporal horizons, and how these horizons shape what might be called the root metaphor of their style of rule.^[2] Following the pathbreaking work of Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, Clark’s Time and Power spans the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and focuses on four rulers: the seventeenth-century ruler of Prussia, known as the Great Elector; Prussia’s eighteenth-century enlightened king, Frederick the Great; the nineteenth-century Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, and the dictator Adolf Hitler.^[3] The focus on major figures is meant to combat a tendency, which Clark sees as being especially prevalent in new work on history and temporality, to write as if only abstract processes brought about shifts in conceptions of time. With astute attention to detail, Clark shows that this is not so—and that fundamental transformations emerged from very concrete historical contexts.  At least in the first three chapters (on the Prussian statesmen), he also aligns the rulers with major intellectual figures: The Great Elector with the jurist Samuel Pufendorf, Frederick the Great with the Voltaire of the Siècle de Louis XIV, and Bismarck with the theologian-philosopher Ernst Troeltsch and his reflections on the crisis of historicism. Although Clark desists from using the term, the pairing has the effect of making the rulers express something like a wider ‘spirit of the age.’

The detailed readings are masterful.  Clark argues that the Great Elector, who ruled for nearly a half century, did not set out to centralize the Prussian state.  Rather, he faced decisions, especially in the wake of the cataclysmic Thirty years War, that encouraged a constant confrontation with uncertainty.  Particularly in in his battles with the estates, the Prussian ruler assumed a permanent anticipatory posture, emphasizing the need to confront a multiplicity of possible futures.  By contrast, the estates, with whom he found himself at constant odds, clung to their rights and privileges, and this backwards look, far from conserving the way things were, actually endangered the whole polity. Temporality was thus a central issue in the Great Elector’s struggle with the estates.  As these back-and-forth tussles over money and control played themselves out, the Great Elector amassed an ever-larger army and did, in fact, come to centralize the state—though less by design than is typically assumed.

If Clark’s interpretation of the Great Elector as not setting out in a conscious drive to centralize the state will surprise some, his reading of Frederick the Great as essentially interested in stasis will also give commentators reason to pause.  It is true that Frederick’s preemptive strike in Silesia in 1740 brought about the midcentury Silesian Wars that caused so much bloodshed and ended by draining the treasuries of any number of states.  Yet it bears recalling that most of Frederick’s reign occurred after this initial moment.  In his writing, and in his actions (the case is stronger for the years subsequent to the Seven Years War), Frederick, according to Clark, was essentially a conservative ruler. Less interested in bending the real to the ideal, the king saw history in terms of a recursive, non-developmental paradigm; in other words, he worked towards a condition of well-ordered temporal stasis.

Bismarck was different again.  He understood that the Revolution of 1848 had inaugurated a new political epoch, one that made rulers appear ever more helpless when faced with great historical forces.  Bismarck realized that one could at best steer these forces, but attempting to constrain them fully was quixotic, if not ruinous.  For Bismarck, the temporal dimension was nevertheless of immense importance.  Clark attributes the Iron Chancellor’s success to his ability to focus on the moment as a central category of statesmanship.  For Bismarck, the moment of decision, not the general philosophy, was load-bearing. He intervened in history any number of times—momentously, for example, in his decision to anchor universal manhood suffrage in the constitution.  In these moments, Bismarck was supremely non-ideological, much to the chagrin of supporters and opponents alike.  In Clark’s interpretation, Bismarck’s temporal frame was of immense importance to such history-changing, if momentary decisions.  Bismarck, according to Clark, saw history as developmental, not progressive in the sense of movement in a single direction or towards an ultimate goal.

Clark’s interpretation of Bismarck as not imaging an ultimate goal is a subtle critique of the Borussian tradition, which imagines state power as that goal.^[4] A temporality fixated on the future also defined the gulf between Bismarck and Hitler.  It was, according to Clark, the Nazi dictator who thought primarily in terms of end goals.  He spoke of prophecies, end states, final solutions, and an Endkampf.  This made him fundamentally different than other fascist leaders, like Benito Mussolini, who were anxious to align themselves with the general sweep of modernity.  For Hitler, the state was not the end, but merely a means to the preservation and extension of the Germanic race.  Hitler’s temporal register was indeed future oriented, but with the added sense of being a rejection of history, or at least the post-Westphalian, state-centered, history with which Clark’s book begins.

This brief recounting does not do full justice to subtle complexities of Clark’s arguments.  These arguments are conceptually sophisticated, forcefully presented, and persuasive on many levels.  With respect to the Third Reich, however, there remains an open question as to the relationship between ruler and regime, and how, in this interplay, history actually unfolded.  The word ‘final solution,’ for example, fits Clark’s cogent analysis of Hitler’s basic eschatological stance.  But the word itself did not always mean what we now take it to mean.^[5] Originally it pointed to expulsion, not genocide.  Hitler’s so-called “Second Book,” while never published in his lifetime, was full of medium-range foreign policy prescriptions about continental, not world, or end-state hegemony.^[6] Of course, how the rhetoric of the Third Reich functioned is an open question. But for the temporal turn, it does raise the broader issue of whether and how historians can appropriate the rhetoric of the age of the extremes to gage its underlying sense of time.  However we answer this question, Clark has offered a rich and compelling analysis that will influence the very grammar with which we write political history.

Helmut Walser Smith is the Marth Rivers Ingram Professor of History and the author of Germany.  A Nation in its Time.  Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000 (W.W. Norton, 2020).

Notes

[1] Central inaugurating texts of the “turn,” if it may be called that, can now be found in Reinhart Koselleck, Zeitschichten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000).

[2] See, most recently, Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Harper Collings, 2012).

[3] Koselleck, Zeitschichten (fn.1); François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity.  Presentism and Experiences of Time, trans. Saskia Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

[4] For a brief, if scathing, account of what is also known as “the Prussian school” of history, see George G. Iggers, The German Concept of History.  The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), 90-123.

[5] Mark Roseman, The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002).

[6] Gerhard L. Weinberg, ed. Hitler’s Second Book.  The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, trans. Krista Smith (New York: Enigma Books, 2003).

Livros sobre o Brasil e os Estados Unidos - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

3293. “Livros sobre o Brasil e os brasilianistas e sobre as relações Brasil-Estados Unidos organizados/editados por Paulo Roberto de Almeida”, Lisboa-Porto, 29 de junho-1 de julho de 2018, 15 p. Explicações sobre e sumários dos seguintes livros:

 O Brasil dos Brasilianistas: um Guia dos Estudos sobre o Brasil nos Estados Unidos, 1945-2000; Rubens Antonio Barbosa, Marshall C. Eakin e Paulo Roberto de Almeida (editores) (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002); 

Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States, 1945-2003; Edited by Marshall C. Eakin and Paulo Roberto de Almeida (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 2005); 

Guia dos Arquivos Americanos sobre o Brasil: coleções documentais sobre o Brasil nos Estados Unidos; Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Rubens Antonio Barbosa e Francisco Rogido Fins (orgs.) (Brasília: Funag, 2011); 

e Relações Brasil-Estados Unidos: assimetrias e convergências; Paulo Roberto de Almeida e Rubens Antônio Barbosa (orgs.) (São Paulo: Saraiva, 2005). 

Postado no blog Diplomatizzando (link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2018/07/o-brasil-dos-brasilianistas-2001.html); divulgado na plataforma Academia.edu (http://www.academia.edu/36951550/3293BrasilBrasilianistasEnvisagingGuideRelaBrEUA.pdf); Facebook (5/10/2018; link: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/2119428084787297).

3664. O Brasil dos Brasilianistas: um guia dos estudos sobre o Brasil nos Estados Unidos, 1945-2000; organizadores:Rubens Antônio Barbosa, Marshall C. Eakin e Paulo Roberto de Almeida (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002, 514 p.; ISBN: 85-219-0441-X); Brasília, 7 maio 2020, 455 p. Reformatação da edição comercial, fora do mercado, para fins de divulgação nas redes sociais. Disponível nas plataformas Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/42973774/O_Brasil_dos_Brasilianistas_um_guia_dos_estudos_sobre_o_Brasil_nos_Estados_Unidos_1945-2000_2002_) e Research Gate (link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341220241_O_Brasil_dos_Brasilianistas_um_guia_dos_estudos_sobre_o_Brasil_nos_Estados_Unidos_1945-2000); divulgado no blog Diplomatizzando (link:  https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2020/05/o-brasil-dos-brasilianistas-livro.html). Capítulo 1 (“Introdução: uma certa ideia do Brasil: as afinidades eletivas dos brasilianistas”, Marshall Eakin e PRA; na Academia.edu, link: https://www.academia.edu/42975463/Introducao_Uma_certa_ideia_do_Brasil_as_afinidades_eletivas_dos_brasilianistas); Capítulo 2 (“Tendências e perspectivas dos estudos brasileiros nos Estados Unidos”, PRAlmeida; link na plataforma Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/42975560/2._Tend%C3%AAncias_e_perspectivas_dos_estudos_brasileiros_nos_Estados_Unidos); Capítulo 15. (“Cronologia da produção brasilianista de 1945 a 2001”; na plataforma Academia.edu; link: https://www.academia.edu/42975754/Cronologia_da_Producao_Brasilianista_1945_a_2001); Capítulo 18 (“Bibliografia seletiva”, plataforma Academia.edu; link: https://www.academia.edu/42975795/18._Bibliografia_seletiva_da_produ%C3%A7%C3%A3o_editada_ou_publicada_nos_EUA_sobre_o_Brasil).

3172. “Você é um ‘accident prone diplomat’: minhas interações com o embaixador Rubens Antônio Barbosa”, Brasília, 2 outubro 2017, 45 p. Ensaio impressionista para servir de depoimento sobre minha relação de trabalho e amizade com o diplomata que foi meu chefe em diversas ocasiões. Publicado em versão resumida no livro de Rubens Antônio Barbosa: Um diplomata a serviço do Estado: na defesa do interesse nacional (depoimentos ao Cpdoc) (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2018, 300 p.; ISBN: 978-85-225-2078-7), pp. 273-289. Divulgado em versão completa na plataforma Academia.edu (21/10/2018; link: https://www.academia.edu/37622963/Um_accident-prone_diplomat_depoimento_sobre_emb._Rubens_Barbosa) e em Research Gate (link:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328416691_Voce_e_um_'accident-prone_diplomat').

The Lancet: So what Brazil? - Um presidente DEBILOIDE

Repito: um presidente DEBILOIDE.
Essa é a imagem que o dirigente do infeliz Brasil transmite ao mundo, segundo uma das melhores revistas científicas, da área médica, do mundo...
Repito mais uma vez, um presidente DEBILOIDE.
Chega a ser CONSTRANGEDOR, para nós, pessoais normais, ter de assistir ao espetáculo de uma das mais importantes revistas da área médica do mundo, fazer um EDITORIAL contra o presidente de um país. Constrangedor porque temos de aparecer ao mundo como tendo eleito além de um presidente DEBILOIDE, repito DEBILOIDE, também alguém que é JUMENTO, pois só um JUMENTO pode fazer coisas contra os seus próprios interesses. 

Imagino que se os ministrinhos do Supreminho tivessem esse poder, já o teriam CASSADO no ato, ao penetrar sem convite no STF. 
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

EDITORIAL| VOLUME 395, ISSUE 10235, P1461, MAY 09, 2020

COVID-19 in Brazil: “So what?”

• The Lancet

Published:May 09, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31095-3

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic reached Latin America later than other continents. The first case recorded in Brazil was on Feb 25, 2020. 

But now, Brazil has the most cases and deaths in Latin America (105 222 cases and 7288 deaths as of May 4), and these are probably substantial underestimates. Even more worryingly, the doubling of the rate of deaths is estimated at only 5 days and a recent study by Imperial College (London, UK), which analysed the active transmission rate of COVID-19 in 48 countries, showed that Brazil is the country with the highest rate of transmission (R0 of 2·81). 

Large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are the main hotspots now but there are concerns and early signs that infections are moving inland into smaller cities with inadequate provisions of intensive care beds and ventilators. Yet, perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil's COVID-19 response is its president, Jair Bolsonaro.

When asked by journalists last week about the rapidly increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, he responded: “So what? What do you want me to do?” He not only continues to sow confusion by openly flouting and discouraging the sensible measures of physical distancing and lockdown brought in by state governors and city mayors but has also lost two important and influential ministers in the past 3 weeks. 

First, on April 16, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the respected and well liked Health Minister, was sacked after a television interview, in which he strongly criticised Bolsonaro's actions and called for unity, or else risk leaving the 210 million Brazilians utterly confused. 

Then on April 24, following the removal of the head of Brazil's federal police by Bolsonaro, Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, one of the most powerful figures of the right-wing government and appointed by Bolsonaro to combat corruption, announced his resignation. 

Such disarray at the heart of the administration is a deadly distraction in the middle of a public health emergency and is also a stark sign that Brazil's leadership has lost its moral compass, if it ever had one.

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Even without the vacuum of political actions at federal level, Brazil would have a difficult time to combat COVID-19. About 13 million Brazilians live in favelas, often with more than three people per room and little access to clean water. 

Physical distancing and hygiene recommendations are near impossible to follow in these environments—many favelas have organised themselves to implement measures as best as possible. Brazil has a large informal employment sector with many sources of income no longer an option. 

The Indigenous population has been under severe threat even before the COVID-19 outbreak because the government has been ignoring or even encouraging illegal mining and logging in the Amazon rainforest. These loggers and miners now risk bringing COVID-19 to remote populations. 

An open letter on May 3 by a global coalition of artists, celebrities, scientists, and intellectuals, organised by the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, warns of an impending genocide.

What are the health and science community and civil society doing in a country known for its activism and outspoken opposition to injustice and inequity and with health as a constitutional right? 

Many scientific organisations, such as the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and ABRASCO, have long-opposed Bolsonaro because of severe cuts in the science budget and a more general demolition of social security and public services. In the context of COVID-19, many organisations have launched manifestos aimed at the public—such as Pact for Life and Brazil—and written statements and pleas to government officials calling for unity and joined up solutions. 

Pot-banging from balconies as protest during presidential announcements happens frequently. There is much research going on, from basic science to epidemiology, and there is rapid production of personal protective equipment, respirators, and testing kits.

These are hopeful actions. Yet, leadership at the highest level of government is crucial in quickly averting the worst outcome of this pandemic, as is evident from other countries. 

In our 2009 Brazil Series, the authors concluded: “The challenge is ultimately political, requiring continuous engagement by Brazilian society as a whole to secure the right to health for all Brazilian people.” Brazil as a country must come together to give a clear answer to the “So what?” by its President. He needs to drastically change course or must be the next to go.

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Published: 09 May 2020

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31095-3

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O Brasil dos brasilianistas: livro disponível - Paulo R. Almeida, Marshall C. Eakin, Rubens A. Barbosa

Acabo de reformatar este livro, já fora do mercado: 

O Brasil dos Brasilianistas: um guia dos estudos sobre o Brasil nos Estados Unidos, 1945-2000 


Organizadores: Rubens Antônio Barbosa, Marshall C. Eakin e Paulo Roberto de Almeida (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002, 514 p.; ISBN: 85-219-0441-X)


Brasília, 7 maio 2020, 455 p. Reformatação da edição comercial, fora do mercado, para fins de divulgação nas redes sociais. 

Perfil dos autores        10

Apresentação

Os estudos brasileiros nos Estados Unidos: um projeto em desenvolvimento   14

Rubens Antônio Barbosa 

Introdução

1. Uma certa ideia do Brasil: as afinidades eletivas dos brasilianistas   18

     Marshall C. Eakin e Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Primeira Parte

Desenvolvimento geral dos estudos brasileiros nos Estados Unidos

2.    Tendências e perspectivas dos estudos brasileiros nos Estados Unidos   28

    Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

3.    Pesquisas: fontes e materiais de arquivos, instituições relevantes, abordagens 51

        Robert M. Levine

4.    Ensinando o Brasil: uma revisão dos programas sobre o país nos Estados Unidos  74

        Theodore R. Young

Segunda Parte

Pesquisa disciplinar e produção seletiva publicada, 1945-2000

5.    A língua portuguesa falada no Brasil e os estudos linguísticos nos Estados Unidos: euforia e desânimo 93

        Carmen Chaves Tesser

6.    Literatura, cultura & civilização: estudos do Brasil nos Estados Unidos: levantamento histórico e avaliação     114

          K. David Jackson

7.    Artes e Música    140

        José Neistein

8.    História do Brasil nos Estados Unidos, 1945-2000     178

       Judy Bieber

9.    Antropologia (Etnologia amazônica)   210

        Janet M. Chernela

10. O sistema econômico brasileiro visto pela ótica norte-americana    241

          Werner Baer e Roberto Guimarães

11. Ciência política e sociologia     264

        Marshall C. Eakin

12. Relações internacionais    288

       Scott D. Tollefson

13. Estudos geográficos do Brasil nos Estados Unidos e no Canadá: tendências e perspectivas, 1945-2000   310

      Cyrus B. Dawsey III

14. Brasiliana nos Estados Unidos: fontes de referência e documentação   347

     Ann Hartness 

Terceira Parte

Informação sobre a produção acadêmica brasilianista, 1945-2001

15. Uma cronologia das relações Brasil-EUA e da produção acadêmica,

       1945-2001     380

       Paulo Roberto de Almeida

16. A contribuição britânica para estudo do Brasil       395

       Leslie Bethell

17. Desenvolvimento comparado do estudo do Brasil nos Estados Unidos 

       e na França       418

       Edward A. Riedinger

18. Bibliografia seletiva da produção editada ou publicada nos EUA 

       sobre o Brasil     435

       Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Apêndice

Notas sobre os comentaristas dos capítulos      454

Disponível nas plataformas Academia.edu 
link: 
https://www.academia.edu/42973774/O_Brasil_dos_Brasilianistas_um_guia_dos_estudos_sobre_o_Brasil_nos_Estados_Unidos_1945-2000_2002_

e Research Gate 
link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341220241_O_Brasil_dos_Brasilianistas_um_guia_dos_estudos_sobre_o_Brasil_nos_Estados_Unidos_1945-2000

Deng Xiaoping: o comunista capitalista - Ezra F. Vogel

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China 

by Ezra F. Vogel. 

Through time, Deng Xiaoping has become one of China's greatest leaders, even eclipsing Mao Zedong in the minds of some, since it was Deng whose leadership brought the greatest advance in China's economic growth:

"[While living ] in France, [a young] Deng quit his factory jobs and did odd jobs around the tiny Chinese Communist Party office led by Zhou Enlai, who was six years older than Deng. Deng, known then as 'Dr. Mimeograph' for his role in producing the simple propaganda pamphlets that publicized the leftist cause to Chinese students in France, became in effect an apprentice where he could observe how Zhou Enlai, already a leader among fellow Chinese youth, with experience in Japan and England, went about building an organization. Though one of the youngest in the group, Deng soon was on the executive committee of the Communist youth organization in Europe. At Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University in Moscow where the Soviets were just beginning to train Chinese for the international communist movement, Deng was selected for Group No. 7, in which the highest level of Chinese leaders were trained for the international Communist movement. At Sun Yat-sen University Deng had an opportunity to understand how the Soviets had built their Commu­nist movement and to learn their views on how to build a movement in China.

"For his entire career, with brief interruptions, Deng had been close enough to the top seat of power that he could observe from the inside how the top leaders responded to different situations. Not long after he returned to China in 1927, he was again under Zhou Enlai, in the Shanghai underground, as the party tried to devise survival strategies while Chiang Kai-shek, their for­mer colleague, tried to wipe them out. Not only did Deng take part in the planning to create urban insurrections, but at age twenty-five he was sent to Guangxi province to lead urban insurrections. As Mao began to build up the Jiangxi Soviet base, Deng went there where as head of the party in Ruijin county, he learned how Mao was building up his rural base. On the Long March, Deng got to attend the crucial Zunyi conference where Mao began to emerge as leader. Before the Long March had ended Deng had the opportu­nity to become a confidante of Mao's. Not long after Mao set up his base in northwest China, Mao entrusted Deng with major responsibilities as a polit­ical commissar, providing political leadership within the military. Later in the civil war, he was given responsibility for taking over Shanghai and guiding the transition to Communist rule and was then sent to the Southwest where he was given responsibility for leading one of the six major regions of the country.

"Above all, it was at the center of power in Beijing, from 1952 to 1966, that Deng had the opportunity to work closely with Mao to consider strategies for China's development and for dealing with foreign countries. Mao had identi­fied Deng as one of his potential successors, and Deng had taken part in Politburo meetings and after 1956 in its Standing Committee, along with the other five highest-ranking officials in the country. Deng also became a central participant in the planning and creation of a socialist structure that featured agricultural collectivization and nationalization of industry, and played a cen­tral role in land reform in the Southwest. In 1959-1961, he had played a major part in guiding the adjustments to the socialist structure after the fail­ures of the Great Leap Forward. In short, Deng in 1978 had half a century of experience in thinking about strategies used by China's top leaders in guiding the country.

Deng Xiaoping at age 16, studying in France (1921)

"Deng was a military leader for twelve years, and even later described him­self as a soldier. He was a political commissar rather than a military com­mander, but he was party secretary and had responsibility for approving mili­tary actions. Working closely with a military commander, he fought first in small guerrilla activities, but then in huge battles in the civil war. During the Huai Hai military campaign in late 1948, he ended up as the party secretary of the front command, responsible for coordinating half a million soldiers in one of the largest battles in military history and one of the key turning points in the civil war.

"Throughout his career, Deng was responsible for implementation rather than for theory. His responsibilities had grown from leading a small county in the Jiangxi Soviet to leading the work of several counties in the Taihang Mountains as political commissar in World War II, to leading a border area where several provinces intersected after World War II, to leading the entire Southwest after 1949, to leading the country.

"In the 1950s, Deng was responsible for guiding the Chinese Communist Party's relations with other Communist parties, at a time when China had few relations with the West. After he was allowed to return from the Cultural Revolution, Deng served as an apprentice to Zhou Enlai as he accepted re­sponsibilities for leading China's work in foreign relations.

"Some say Deng had little experience in economic affairs, but economic activities were always an important responsibility of party generalists. Fur­thermore, from 1953-1954 Deng had served for a year as finance minister at a crucial stage as China was building its socialist economic structure.

"An important part of Communist activity was always propaganda. In France, Deng had been responsible for putting out a propaganda bulletin. In the Jiangxi Soviet, after undergoing criticism, he was put in charge of propa­ganda for the entire soviet area, and on the Long March he again had respon­sibilities in the area of propaganda. As a political commissar in the military, Deng found that he was most persuasive when he was direct and gave his troops a broad perspective, connecting their efforts to the overall situation and mission.

"In short, Deng had an enormous range of governing experiences at the lo­cal, regional, and national levels that he could draw on. For half a century he had been part of the broad strategic thinking of party leaders. He had held high positions in the party, in the government, and in the army. In the 1950s he had taken part in bringing in new industries and new technology from the Soviet Union, just as he would have responsibility for bringing in new indus­tries from the West in the 1980s.

"Deng was very bright, always at the top of his class. He was the youngest of eighty-four students to have passed the examinations to be sent from Sichuan to France in 1920. He had been good at one of the main tasks in his early Confucian training, learning to recite long passages of texts by memory. In the underground he had learned not to leave a paper trail, but to keep in­formation in his mind. Deng could deliver well-thought-through and well­ organized hour-long lectures without notes. Mao once called him a walking encyclopedia. Before important events, Deng liked to spend time thinking quietly by himself as he considered what to say so that when the time came, he could give clear and decisive presentations.

"Deng had been hardened by seeing comrades die in battle and in intra­party purges. He had seen friends become enemies, and enemies become friends. Three times Deng had been purged, in the Jiangxi Soviet, in 1966 in the Cultural Revolution when he was subjected to blistering criticism, and in 1976. Deng had developed a steely determination. He had disciplined him­self not to display raw anger and frustration and not to base his decisions on feelings but on careful analysis of what the party and country needed. Mao once described Deng as a needle inside a cotton ball, tough on the inside, soft on the outside, but many of Deng's colleagues rarely sensed a ball of cotton. His colleagues did not believe he was unfair: unlike Chairman Mao, Deng was not vindictive -- though when he judged that it was in the interest of the party, he would remove even those who had dedicated themselves to him and his mission."

author: Ezra F. Vogel
title: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
publisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
date: Copyright 2011 by Ezra F. Vogel
page(s): 6-8

Urânio, terras raras e radioisótopos - Rubens Barbosa (OESP)

URÂNIO, TERRAS RARAS E RADIOISÓTOPOS

Rubens Barbosa

O Estado de São Paulo, 28/04/2020

Há um ano atrás, em seu discurso de posse, o ministro de Minas e Energia, Almirante Bento Albuquerque, que tão bem conhece o setor nuclear brasileiro, disse que o atual governo pretende “estabelecer um diálogo objetivo, desarmado e pragmático com a sociedade e com o mercado sobre o programa nuclear, fonte estratégica da matriz energética brasileira. O Brasil não pode se entregar ao preconceito e à desinformação desperdiçando duas vantagens competitivas raras que temos no cenário internacional – o domínio da tecnologia e do ciclo do combustível nuclear e a existência de grandes reservas de urânio em nosso território”.

Na pós pandemia, a redução das vulnerabilidades nacionais vai ser um dos desafios para o governo. Levando em conta as novas circunstâncias globais e a necessidade de o Brasil ter capacidade de assegurar suprimento de suas necessidades essenciais com base na produção local, além da manutenção da política que permita o monitoramento de materiais nucleares, torna-se urgente que sua exploração e comercialização sejam privatizadas.

Dada as características estratégicas da utilização desses minérios, seria importante associar o setor privado aos trabalhos da empresa Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil (INB), estatal responsável pela política de lavra e comercialização do uranio e das terras raras. As restrições orçamentárias, agravadas com o esforço de reconstrução do país, certamente vão continuar a afetar a capacidade de investimento da empresa estatal. A perspectiva de aumento da produção deles será facilitada pela eventual parceria com o setor privado na exploração mineral. A solução dessa dificuldade vem sendo buscada e uma das possibilidades é a formação de consórcio entre a INB e empresas privadas. Existe uma série de situações intermediárias onde a venda do urânio secundário extraído pela INB poderia ser lucrativa tanto para o minerador como para a estatal. A solução deste impasse não precisaria passar pela revogação do monopólio, mas provavelmente necessite de alteração na legislação. 

A recessão global pós COVID 19 pode abrir uma janela de oportunidades. A retomada da economia global e o gradual retorno do mercado externo representarão incentivos para o investimento privado. O Brasil possui a segunda maior reserva global de terras raras, considerado mineral estratégico, e a sexta maior em Urânio, embora ainda o importemos para o abastecimento das duas usinas nucleares em funcionamento. Além desse minério, a demanda global por terras raras para diversificar as fontes de seu suprimento coloca o Brasil em posição privilegiada, não só para atrair novas tecnologias, como também para participar de um promissor mercado externo para o urânio enriquecido. O interesse externo sobre as reservas brasileiras é grande. Impõe-se a aprovação de regras claras de longo prazo que defendam o interesse nacional e possam atrair investimento para a exploração dessa riqueza.

            Outro setor que merece o idêntico interesse é o da utilização da tecnologia nuclear na saúde.  A especialidade denominada de Medicina Nuclear, responsável por milhares de diagnósticos que mudam a perspectiva e a conduta clínica de pacientes oncológicos, cardiológicos e mesmo neurológicos e que recentemente começou a dar importante contribuição no tratamento de pacientes oncológicos, com soluções mais adequadas para os casos de metástase do cancer de próstata, por exemplo. A produção e a comercialização de uma série de radioisótopos essenciais à medicina nuclear continuam sob o monopólio da União e sob dois órgãos, o IPEN e o IEN, autorizados a produzir para uso médico todos os demais radioisótopos. O ideal seria universalizar a oferta dos procedimentos da medicina nuclear de forma a permitir que agentes privados possam produzir e comercializar os radioisótopos de uso médico, com o controle da CNEN.

O Congresso deveria examinar com urgência a flexibilização do monopólio para a produção de radio fármacos. A Constituição prevê no artigo 21, XXIII, b) a autorização para a comercialização e utilização de radioisótopos para a pesquisa e usos médicos, agrícolas e industriais. A produção e o desenvolvimento de radio fármacos no Brasil está longe de atender adequada e rapidamente a medicina nuclear com prejuízo da população, seja na distribuição, seja na oferta de novos produtos. A flexibilização do monopólio, entre outras vantagens e benefícios, favorece maior desenvolvimento de novos radio fármacos, resolve o conflito de atribuições da CNEN que vem historicamente questionando a questão da produção x fiscalização e permite a participação de empresa internacional como supridora regular do 99Mo e outros radio fármacos. O Brasil pode se transformar num fornecedor importante desses insumos médicos no mercado global.

O governo Brasileiro constituiu o Comitê de Desenvolvimento do Programa Nuclear Brasileiro, que, entre outras funções, deve analisar a conveniência de flexibilizar o monopólio da União na pesquisa e na lavra de minérios nucleares, coordenado pelo MME e ainda na produção de radio fármacos, coordenado pelo ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, conforme previsto na PEC 517/2010.

Rubens Barbosa, presidente do Instituto de Relações Internacionais e Comércio Exterior (IRICE)