IPSA 23 rd World Congress of Political Science July 19-24, 2014 Montréal, Canada RC15 Political and Cultural Geography Sense of Place, Arts and Politics: A Cultural Geography Perspective Political Networks: Portugal and Brazil [Draft paper; please do not quote] Abstract CRISTINA MONTALVÃO SARMENTO 1 ISCSP-ULISBOA CAPP-ULISBOA Observatório Político, Portugal [cris.lu@mail.telepac.pt] In a contemporary context, the concept of power networks is used in the study of political society. The overlapping of political power and the varied networks of entities that shape the social context, constitute the political communities. This paper aims to develop the study trough the concept and methodology of political culture analysis of the notable instances of the phenomenon of transatlantic transmissions of norms, beliefs and values that have cemented (or deconstructed) the sense of a Luso-Brazilian community. In this sense, the contemporary historiography has registered a process of renovation of the cultural and political history domains, in which the study of the Portugueses- Brazilian relations has gain visibility. This paradigmatic evolution has allowed for the development of new researches pointing to the bridges between the historical and the political spheres of changed political ideas, regimes, and culture. It is our goal to determine how the cultural interdependence manifests itself, establish network s trends, while understanding the reach of power networks and cultural linkages, which are associated with the Portuguese- Brazilian relationship. Keywords: political networks, political culture, Portugal, Brazil. 1 PhD in Political Science. Professor of Political Theory at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Director of the Portuguese Journal of Political Science. Director of the Observatório Político. [http://www.observatoriopolitico.pt] 1
The study of political power cannot be developed through the monolithic study of the social structures, institutions, and established political hierarchies. Social power is disseminated in contemporary societies in what can be better grasped as networks of information, symbols and cultural codes that frame the relations between social agents (Sarmento, 2008). There are notable instances of the phenomenon of transatlantic transmission of norms, beliefs and values that have cemented (or deconstructed) the sense of a Luso-Brazilian community. Mobility and migrations, joint cultural events, interactions between intellectuals, diplomats, and cultural institutions: all diagnose tendencies and shifts in the Portuguese-speaking network of power and culture (Guimarães& Sarmento, 2010, 2012). Historical Perceptions The implementation of the Brazilian Republic in 1889 constituted the backdrop for Portuguese scholars who researched the influences and idea networks that could have helped the future Portuguese republicans to fundament their political ideals, and its consequences in Portuguese thought regarding the regime differentiation over the two decades that passed between the victories of the republican ideas in both countries. The ruptures in the Empire appear to be perceived differently, but the cultural knowledge was maintained and the collaboration between intellectuals was so intense that various joint publications are indeed the most immediate expression of the existence of that debate and the intellectual sharing of ideas. 2
On the Brazilian side, on the other side of the Atlantic, a renewed perspective was designed. Recognised as a shared historical legacy, the Portuguese heritage is reviewed without complexes or constraints. There are some stinking examples of this new attitude: the way the legacy of Camões was utilised in the celebrations of 1880, or even in the revision of great cultural conceptualisations present in the luso-tropicalism of Gilberto Greyre. In both cases, it is clear that a new historiography standpoint was adopted. All these experiences recognise the impossibility of separating the cultures which crossed with one other and which are still united through a common language. From this powerful acknowledgement emerged other research oddities, Brazil's perspective on the Portuguese New State, and its relation with the colonial Portuguese history, which take different contours. Newspapers, media and correspondence give important information for researchers of Portuguese political exiles before and after the April Revolution, and are fundamental instrument that can shed light over networks that these people forged with their Brazilian counterparts. - -vis Brazilian internal affairs which was, at the time, on a route opposite to that of newly-democratic Portugal. These studies also emerge with renewed significance in terms of the triangulation of Brazil's external affairs, in the geopolitical south-south panorama, in which Angola's decolonisation becomes relevant. The insufficiencies in better analyses should be credited on the pressure exercised by the republican ideology which sought to legitimate the new regime through the end of the monarchy in 1889, an event identified as a consequence of the Portuguese colonisation. Another factor which contributed to aggravate such deficiency was the strong ascendancy of the French historiography matrix, under the Brazilian production in the last century. As it is known, the theoretical and 3
methodological tendencies of the movement of Annales relegated the political history and co-related territories to a secondary level in the priorities of historiographers. New Cultural Approaches However, in the last two decades the study of Luso-Brazilian relations has achieved greater visibility in terms of the renovation process under which the domains of political history go through. The notion that the politician is subjected to the action of time and composes specific contexts has shed light on certain topics, through questions formulated by cultural history. As a matter of fact, the expansion of the idea of culture and the emergence of the features of human behaviour as privileged focus of the historic knowledge has opened up a path for more fecund dialogues with other fields of knowledge, such as anthropology, social psychology, and political science. The so-called "cultural shift", a term by Peter Burke, which explains the yaw suffered by the historical studies due to the abandoning of generalising analytical schemes, began moving towards the values of social and political groups, thus favouring specific places and time periods. Thus, nowadays, there is a consensus among experts that the end of the colonial pact did not signify a schism in the relationship between Portugal and Brazil, in spite of the dissemination, at the time, of an oppositional quarrel to the old metropolis, which was, in turn, positioned towards the developing of an ideal of 'brazilianity'. Admittedly, this discourse was of greater rhetoric effect than it was of an ideological nature. It is worth remembering that in the national memory, woven by the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute since its foundation in 1838, the monarchical State established in 1822 identifies itself as the legitimate heir and successor of the oversees Lusitanian empire. A legacy supported, not onl language, 4
but mostly because of the presence of a representative of the in the Brazilian throne. Furthermore, underlying this idea was the forged notion that the transition from the status of colony to that of independent country was a natural process, without traumas or ruptures. This was a unique aspect which sought to distinguish the recently established Empire of the Ship of the South ( ), from the troubled republican experiences lived by its neighbours in the Continent. In this sense, in 1880 in Rio de Janeiro, the three- hundred-year was pompously celebrated. The celebrations promoted in the capital of the Empire gave impetus to the developing of an intellectual field that was conditioned by a myth on the founding of the Brazilian national identity which was originally - and in the understanding of its organisers - a fundamentally Lusitanian myth. The beliefs, traditions, and values transmitted by the motherland came back into discussion, in terms of the dimensions of the concept of lusotropicalism, formulated by Gilberto Freyre. If, 's colonialist politics before the international community, on the other hand, uncoupled from salazarism, the work of the Pernambucan sociologist was resignified and actually ended up becoming an important element in the dynamics of the relations between Portugal and Brazil, thus decisively contributing to the developing of a Luso-Brazilian political culture. However, the cult - - -, as in the set of ideals defended by Gilberto Freyre - was to be granted official recognition, so to speak, with the signing of the Luso-B Salazar, in 1941. 5
More informal but no less important, another expressed reinforcement of the narrowing of the Luso-Brazilian ties came from the action of sociability networks which, by various reasons established themselves in the Lusophone world. One of those networks is the one agglutinated around the newspaper Democratic Portugal, which circulated between 1956 and 1975 and was edited in the city. Among these, intellectuals such as Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho, Jorge de Sena and Agostinho da Silva stood out. On the pages of Democratic Portugal were some expressions of the great mesh of information exchange which entangled the Portuguese oppositionists in exile throughout the various continents, as well as their proposals for a post-salazar future. The collapse of the Salazarist regime, which opened a way for the process of democracy-building in Portugal and the definitive dismantling of the Portuguese colonial empire, had replication in the Brazilian press, which emphasized that although the country still remained under military dictatorship since 1964, the successes of the Carnations' Revolution were largely freely covered in Brazil. Reviewing History is Making Politics The historiography review, which results from these works, offers an original contribution to the historic knowledge in both countries. Furthermore, in the Brazilian case, the studies here presented indicate the potential of the proposed approaches as well as new interpretation possibilities, which constitutes a formidable advance as these put aside the usual focus on old paradigms, marked sometimes by Lusophilia, other times by Lusophobia. One valid contribution in history can transcend the particular and suggest to other academics new ideas on the numerous ways through which the various aspects of a civilisation may interact. Within these new ideas, the 6
way in which shapes, symbols and words acquire the load of what we may call cultural meanings, constitutes a particular challenge. The relationship of symbols with the structure of institutions is one of the more fecund issues, and its primordial importance is in the use that is made of them in the justification of the organisation of power. Symbols and politics necessarily establish a narrow relationship. To try and capture the specific relationship between real societal interest groups and the ideas or ways of thinking those interests assume, and in the symbols into which they are transformed, is a determinant step towards understanding the mechanisms of power. The science of politics as cultural science has to gather the existing symbols, in which the politician is always the reflex of an image which society historically constructs of one self. And the latter is always filled with beliefs, conventions, and symbols - thus nearing the poetic. An onus that is necessarily present when we speak of Lusophonia. 7
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