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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

Trust as a precondition for socio-economic development: what can we learn from the case of Brazil?

Awarded: NOK 3.1 mill.

This project explores the relationship between trust and economic processes. This relationship is complex; trust is often considered a precondition for economic growth, both in economic theory and in everyday talk. At the same time, some degree of economic inequality is usually considered necessary to stimulate investments and hard work. Within trust research, in contrast, inequality and power differences are often seen as incompatible with trust relationships. Taking the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics - mega-events that are as much vehicles for economic growth and urban development as they are sporting competitions ? as a point of departure, this project explores the cultural conditions for Brazil?s economic growth and efforts to reduce inequality. In recent years, Brazil received much praise for their ability to combine economic growth with reductions in poverty and inequality. However, the on-going economic and democratic crises, as well as human rights violations and protests ahead of the World Cup and the Olympics, now make for a more complicated situation. This project explores in particular the perspectives of those who have been critical of Brazil's hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics. The empirical focus is on how forced evictions and militarisation have been used as a vehicle for urban development in Rio de Janeiro, and the resistance to these processes. The aim is to understand how the complex relationship between social inequality, trust, mistrust and economic growth is played out in contemporary Brazil.

This project provides new knowledge on trust and economic processes highly relevant for the handling of the ongoing economic crisis in Europe. It will do so by investigating the cultural conditions for Brazil's impressive economic rise and efforts to ta ckle inequality. More specifically, it will use the implementation of the conditional cash transfer programme Bolsa Familia as a prism for studying the cultural conditions that has made this change possible in a hierarchical society like Brazil. It is of ten pointed out that widespread societal mistrust has been the outcome of the crisis in Europe. This represents a serious challenge for economic recovery and leads to social disintegration, for it is widely recognised that the workings of both societies a nd economies depend upon a certain degree of trust. Furthermore, dominant economic ideology considers that a degree of inequality is necessary to stimulate investment, hard work, economic growth - and consequently, good societies. The juxtaposition o f these two assumptions with existing perspectives in trust research presents us with a riddle, for here, it is widely presumed that trust cannot be a feature of relationships marked by power differences. Thus, it would appear that both trust and inequa lity are preconditions for economic growth, yet cannot occur simultaneously. With the ongoing economic crisis, the question of which societal conditions are favourable for stimulating economic recovery and social cohesion has acquired importance far bey ond theoretical realms. This project will therefore subject this contradictory assumption to critical scrutiny by exploring the cultural conditions for economic growth and reductions in inequality in Brazil. Central research questions focus on how the cultural conditions for trust and hierarchisation have influenced policy, as well as the historical trajectories and social embeddedness of the contradictory ideas about trust, inequality and economic development.

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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell