Volume 9, Issue 1 (2018)


Social Classes, Habitus and Sociocultures in South Africa
Boike Rehbein
There is a lot of excellent work on inequality in South Africa. However, most studies focus on economic inequality and/or race. In contrast, this paper looks at social inequality. It argues that in contemporary South Africa, a hierarchy of social classes emerges, which is the heir of hierarchies developed under Apartheid. The segregated hierarchies now converge into a single social structure but partly persist as distinct hierarchies. This becomes evident in the habitus types that research for this study established on the basis of life-course interviews conducted in 2017.

Social Impact Measurement and Investment: Methods, Limitations and Challenges
Bibhu Mishra
Every programme or project either by Government, Business or International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) running across continents creates either positive/ negative or both values (or impact). Intermittently, several attempts have been made to capture that value in di erent terms like Financial, Social and/or Environmental, separately or collectively. In the First part of the paper, I am discussing about various prevalent methods of Impact Measurement. In the second part of the paper, I am focusing on Impact Investment which is a new and upcoming field. At the end, I am presenting my findings on how businesses can be more responsible through reporting of non-financial performance.

Social Inequality and Housing Policies in Rio de Janeiro: Impacts of the 2016 Olympic Games
William Bueno Rebouças
The relationship between social classes and occupied territory in the city of Rio de Janeiro can be understood through the analysis of how they fought for space and formed the urban environment as we know it today. We can find the goal of increasing the spatial distance between social classes in the recent history of the city, which has formed a unique configuration of segregation and unequal access to the most needed urban goods. Such pattern of segregation was produced by authorities in favor of powerful actors, like the construction companies, by the removals of favelas in valued areas. The activities brought by the 2013 Olympic Games aggravated this scenario, removing communities, as Vila Autódromo, in new disputed lands. Understanding the Olympic Games through the history of the city will clarify the relations between global and local economic interests, and their capacity to shape domestic politics.

The Geopolitics of the Brazilian Coup d'État and its Consequences
Carlos Henrique Vieira Santana
In order to understand the 2016 coup d'état in Brazil, two distinct approaches are necessary. On the one hand, the coup is fundamentally connected with a long-term process of epistemological and normative public battles among professional networks who are in charge of the political legitimation of judicial and macroeconomic field of state power. I am going to call these struggles palace wars. On the other hand, it's related to a specific role played by United States' geopolitics. By employing a Clausewitzian concept of center of gravity and its deployment in a new pattern of non-conventional warfare, including a cyberwar, it will be sustained that "Bridge to the Future" is one of the main mechanisms pushed by the hybrid warfare under which Brazilian democracy has been subjected to in recent years.


An Interview about Contemporary Inequality with Boike Rehbein and Jessé Souza
Tamer Söyler