Understanding social change in Brazil: the work of Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz

Abstract

The work of Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz has been influential in the understanding of social change in Brazil. Her analyses of the modifications, persistence, adaptations and resistance that have flourished in many spheres of social life provide elements for a reading of the social-anthropological singularities of current change processes that have gone on in the country since the 1950s. Based on an analysis in which the microsociological and macrosociological aspects are combined, she has not only drawn a sociological profile of some environments (rural neighbourhoods, for example), but also developed an approach that shows how Brazilian society has changed under increasing urbanization and industrialization - processes which create interactions, practices and specific contexts that are unique to Brazil and do not merely mirror the trajectory followed by other nations.