Performing Brazil

These essays on Brazilian performance culture comprise the first English-language book to study the varied manifestations of performance in and beyond Brazil, from carnival and capoeira to gender acts, curatorial practice, and political protest.

Drawing on an eclectic array of research and evaluative studies culled from a mix of sources, this volume analyzes Brazilian hospital performance along several policy dimensions including resource allocation and use within hospitals, hospital payment mechanisms, organizational and governance arrangements, management practices, and regulation and quality. An agenda for hospital reform is proposed which synthesizes priorities that are integral to improving hospital performance-and which should be considered for implementation in the near and medium term.

As “market referees”, regulators contribute to the delivery of essential public utilities. Their organisational culture, behaviour, actions and governance are important factors in how they, and the sectors they oversee, perform.

This report is the first OECD review of Brazil’s environmental performance. It evaluates progress towards sustainable development and green growth, with a focus on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and protected areas.

As “market referees”, regulators contribute to the delivery of essential public utilities. Their organisational culture, behaviour, actions and governance are important factors in how they, and the sectors they oversee, perform. The OECD Performance Assessment Framework for Economic Regulators (PAFER) looks at the institutions, processes and practices that can create an organisational culture of performance and results. This report uses PAFER to assess both the internal and external governance of Brazil’s National Agency for Water and Basic Sanitation (ANA). The review offers recommendations for the regulator to build upon its strong technical reputation and good practices. It proposes an integrated set of recommendations to help ANA best fulfil its roles relating to water resource management and water-use regulation, dam safety, and water supply and sanitation.

Tourists exult in Bahia, Brazil as a tropical paradise infused with the black population's one-of-a-kind vitality. But the alluring images of smiling black faces and dancing black bodies masks an ugly reality of anti-black authoritarian violence. Christen A. Smith argues that the dialectic of glorified representations of black bodies and subsequent state repression reinforces Brazil's racially hierarchal society. Interpreting the violence as both institutional and performative, Smith follows a grassroots movement and social protest theater troupe in their campaigns against racial violence. As Smith reveals, economies of black pain and suffering form the backdrop for the staged, scripted, and choreographed afro-paradise that dazzles visitors. The work of grassroots organizers exposes this relationship, exploding illusions and asking unwelcome questions about the impact of state violence performed against the still-marginalized mass of Afro-Brazilians.

Over several centuries, the Xavante of Central Brazil have maintained an invincible sense of identity and feeling of control over historical processes, despite repeated invasions by colonists and settlers, capitalist commercial ventures, and most recently, an enormous government-sponsored agricultural project. In this discourse-centered study, Laura Graham explores how the Xavante use the ritual performance of myths and dreams to maintain their culture despite these disruptive forces. At the heart of the book is an extraordinary performance, in which a community elder tells his dream of an encounter with the creators. Graham analyzes the various components of his performance--narrative, myth-telling, song, and dance--and considers the entire community's participation in the preparations, rehearsal, and public performance of the dream, including their adaption to her presence and modern technologies. From this analysis, Graham demonstrates how the practice of myth-telling is an essential element in cultural continuity and the creation of social memory and how it also provides a kind of immortality for the myth-teller. Her findings will be of interest not only to students of South American cultures and linguistics but also to everyone intrigued by the role of myth and dreams in social life and social change.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Brazil has followed a pattern of economic development inspired by Washington Consensus. This framework includes a set of liberalising and market friendly policies such as privatisation, trade liberalization, stimulus to foreign direct investment, tax reform, and social security reforms. This book assesses the determinants and impacts of financial liberalisation in Brazil considering its two dimensions: the opening up of the balance of payments capital account, and the penetration by foreign bank of the domestic banking sector. The author combines theoretical and empirical analyses. Some make use of mathematical models and/or statistical techniques; however, they are only used when they are strictly necessary to the analysis.