Brazil After Lula and Dilma Administrations： The Bolsa Familia and Implantation of a Basic Income

The Family Stipend Program （Bolsa Famflia--BF） has been implemented since 2003 as the main strategy to face poverty in Brazil. Its benefit is the transfer of income to poor and extremely poor families as well as to articulate the monetary income transfer with some structural policies, mainly education, health, and work. The BF has already reached almost 14 million of families and is implemented in all the 5,545 Brazilian municipalities, i.e. about ~ of the Brazilian population. The program requires the fulfillment of some conditionalities in the field of education and health, such as： enrollment and attendance of the children and adolescents in school; children must get basic health care; and pregnant women must receive prenatal care. The BF is considered in Brazil, according to Eduardo Suplicy＇s Law Bill 266/2001 sanctioned by President Lula on ]anuary 8 of 2004, as the first step towards creating a Citizenship Basic Income. The goal of this proposal is to present and to problematize the recent political and economic post Lula and Dilma Administrations situation in order to demonstrate the climate of regression in the social protection programs and the dismantling of the same social rights already conquered by the worker class and the poor population. Among the programs to be mentioned is the BF. The intention is to highlight the economic situation of a long recession and rise in unemployment rates besides the decrease of the workers＇ income and the repression of social movements, in order to develop an analysis of the BF in this context.

Social Identity in The Tattooed Girl

The relationship between social class and social identity is that, on one hand, social identity is linked to social class and class distinction plays the most important role in determining social identity; and on the other hand, social identity stresses the individual＇s subjective feelings and it refers to the perception of the individual. What is important is the effect of the psychological essence of social identity. In Oates＇s The Tattooed Girl （2004）, an individual＇s perception of social identity has an impact on his or her behavior that causes conflicts between the characters. This paper will analyze the issue of social identity in The Tattooed Girl from the following aspects： How the lower class with a subordinate social identity experiences the personal struggles; How the middle class with a privileged social identity undergoes spiritual suffering due to the traumatic memory; And how the less advantaged attempts to break the social identity boundary, and how such efforts lead to tragedy.

Consumption and Culture： Understanding the Shaping of the New Brazilian Middle Class

In a recent historical process of economic stabilization and of social policies focused on the disadvantaged, major changes in the composition of the Brazilian social pyramid are happening. Driven by the increase of employment and income, in conditions of low inflation and abundant credit, millions of Brazilians have increased in recent years their purchasing power and started to acquire their own home and car--gaudiest symbols of joining the middle class--as well as a wide range of consumer goods. It appears that this set of transformations profoundly altered the perceptions and strategies of social mobility. So this phenomenon is being called the shaping of the new Brazilian middle class. The fact is that there is a group growing, sustained mainly by a decrease in income inequality. In this study, we attempted to draw a clear overview and some disagreements about the emergence of a new Brazilian middle class. On the topic of the emergence of a new Brazilian middle class, one can say that it is not a completely true fact, and that there was actually an expansion of the income of families who still harbor extreme ties with the working classes and why not, popular classes. What to some scholars would be the emergence of a new working class, whose average income is approaching the middle income of what is considered as the lower middle class？

两种不同的发展模式及其社会政治后果——苏南和温州的调查

基于对中国在转型过程中出现的两个区域经济发展模式，苏南模式和温州模式的分析，本文指出，不同的发展模式导致了不同的社会政治后果，苏南的发展导致了两级分化的社会（阶级）结构，这种社会（阶级）结构催生了经济精英和政治精英的联盟，从而延续甚至巩固威权主义；而温州的发展则产生了相对均衡的社会（阶级）结构。这种社会结构带来经济精英之间的竞争和经济精英对政府改革的推动，从而推动基层民主化的出现。本文从而揭示，中国的政治前景在很大程度上取决于社会（阶级）结构和阶级关系。