Facing Poverty and Marginalization ─ Fifty Years of Critical Research in Brazil

A long history of poverty, discrimination, colonialism and struggle for social justice has provided, over the last fifty years, the context for the development of a vast amount of critical scholarship targeting marginalization in Brazil: Freireian pedagogics, theology of liberation, critical sociology, anthropology and ethnomathematics, critical social psychology and discourse analysis. Most of this scholarship has unfortunately been accessible only to the Portuguese-speaking readership. This volume presents, for the first time to an international audience, the novel understandings of critical research that have emerged in this frame. While Brazil is entering a new phase of socio-economic and political turmoil, distinguished representatives of the various critical research traditions from all over Brazil explore the voices and practices of those who are usually hardly heard: the helpless, the mentally ill, the landless, the homeless, the voiceless youth, delinquents, indigenous people, the powerless. The volume proposes original theoretical tools and arguments that can inspire social-scientific discussions on facing poverty and marginalization not only with regard to Brazil, but also other parts of the world. It is the first book of its kind in English and a unique tool for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and specialists across the social sciences.

Michalis Kontopodis is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Sheffield. He has held post-doc positions and visiting scholarships at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Amsterdam, Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo, Jawaharlal Nehru University and City University New York. His research explores global educational and social inequalities, marginalization and social movements.

Maria Cecilia Camargo Magalhaes is Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is well known for her research on critical thinking, collaboration and intervention-oriented research.

Maria Jose Coracini is Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and researcher of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico in Brazil. Her numerous publications explore the links between identity, otherness, migration and reading/writing in mother and foreign tongues.