Citizenship in contemporary Brazil: A “deviant modernity”?

Brazilian contemporary society is commonly viewed as a second-class variation of modernity. With special attention devoted to the citizenship scene that marked the 1930-1945 period (the “Vargas era”), this paper intends to carry out a critique of the so-called “thesis of the Brazilian normative exceptionality”. While investigating the main pillars that sustain such widespread diagnosis about Brazil’s alleged “twisted” modernity we want to indicate its main epistemological fragilities, which help to perpetuate stereotypes permeating the scholarly production on Brazil. Last but not least, we intend to lay out an alternative interpretation that by overcoming the “exceptionality thesis” also raises some criticisms to the “center/periphery” divide that has largely informed Brazilian sociological thought so far.