A Tale of Youth and Institutions: Second Modernity in China and Brazil

Even though Ulrich Beck’s theory on the Risk Society was developed in German specific context, the methodological cosmopolitanism inaugurates a framework that has been used worldwide, especially to understand the development of the emerging countries. However, it is necessary to problematize the insertion of each country in the modernization and individualization process according to the specificities of each context (Yan, 2010).

According to Beck & Grande (2010) “all paths of modernization are confronted with the problem of what kind and quality of insurance can be provided to enable individuals, groups, and classes to come to terms with the risks, insecurities, uncertainties and threats produced by social transformation”. From this perspective, they develop three models built based on the contrasting role played by institutions in each context: ‘statist model’, ‘societal model’ and ‘neoliberal model’. The multiple possibilities of modernization that coexist nowadays inaugurate the opportunity for the developing world to establish dialogue. This research focuses on a comparative study between China and Brazil on the trust the Youth nurtures for their institutions in both countries.

The data analyzed is part of the first Sino­-Brazilian survey in Social Sciences “Jovens Universitários em um Mundo em Transformação: uma pesquisa sino­brasileira” (2016) that researched about the perceptions and values of young university students in both countries. This research will contribute not only to shed light on important issues experienced by the Youth and values they share (Dwyer, 2016; Nakano, Sposito, Chen, 2016), but also contribute to the scholarship on reflexive modernization and individualization processes from a developing world perspective.