This book approaches the impact of globalization on peripheral societies by identifying the philosophical, cultural, and economic transformations that accompanied Brazil's modernization in the twentieth century. By emphasizing the foundations of national identity and searching for points of resonance between these foundations and the forces of globalization, the authors examine the conceptions of modernity and intersections of the global context with what it is—and what it means—to be Brazilian.

The editors set up the volume as a response to the processes associated with globalization. However, the real value lies in its diversity of views about a complex society and the multidisciplinary approach to understanding Brazil's political order. As such, it blends contributions from the disciplines of history, political science, and sociology with those of writers, critics, and “scholars of culture.” These perspectives are divided into a two sections: the first, which approaches society and politics directly, and a second that explores the deeper political context of literature and culture. Each of these sections addresses the “uneasy juxtapositions” of opposites that are familiar to students of Brazilian society and politics, yet the authors manage to go beyond the familiar descriptions of social inequality to find the political, economic, social, and cultural forces that contribute to unequal citizenship.

The development of the argument about unequal citizenship relies on the idea that there are ambiguities and contradictions in the Brazilian “social imaginary” that obscure, rather than reduce, the persistence of unequal citizenship. Jessé Souza explores the Brazilian social imaginary, in particular, the idea that society is unified in its multiplicity though a common celebration of diversity within a unifying national frame. He argues, however, that the constructed idea of unity in difference masks an “intensely segmented” public sphere and obscures persistent inequality. As such, it perpetuates what he calls the “naturalization of inequality” and undermines the possibility that either social theory or the process of politics ultimately will offer tools to extend citizenship. Leonardo Avritzer argues that attempts to remedy the problem by deliberately constructing a more democratic public space are hampered by conflicting logics. Economic modernization—rather than encouragement of political modernization and accountability—instead reinforced tendencies toward privileging the private over the public. Social modernization, on the other hand, was the result of mobilization in opposition to authoritarianism but generated few lasting inroads for changing the broader structure of politics. The result is a hybrid form of the democratic public space characterized by conflict between its institutional and popular elements. Neves zeroes in on the argument that political institutions—specifically the judiciary—can be the custodian of citizenship and emphasizes that this strategy is unlikely to deepen democratic citizenship. His consideration of the difficulties of relying on the judiciary to guarantee citizenship underscores the inherent inequality of judicial access, especially the overintegration of the privileged and underintegration of the vast majority of the population (pp. 68–69).

The second half of the volume offers what few edited volumes on politics attempt: a deeper view of the cultural context that underlies the political and social developments of the first half of the book. This broadened scope is both a strength for its ambition to provide ample cultural grounding for political forces and a hurdle for the more general reader unfamiliar with cultural traditions. For the reader strictly interested in politics and governance, the importance of the latter half of the volume could be, at times, tangential even as it provides a necessary counterpart for the social and political phenomena described in the first half. That is, while the latter half continues to explore the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion—this time from the literary and cultural perspectives—a direct connection to theories in the first half is not always immediately apparent. Some of the chapters do draw direct links between culture and the political climate. For example, Walter Sinder and Paul Jorge Ribeiro discuss the way in which literary and cultural criticism became “increasingly allegorical and dissimulated” (p. 175) during the most intense periods of political oppression in the 1960s, and as democracy returned, shifted to a “pragmatism” enabled by greater political openness (p. 184). Heloisa Maria Starling explores the construction of the sertão region in the writings of Machado de Assis and others as a way of developing “themes and aspects of republican thought” (p. 205). Sento-Sé offers insight into the way the imagination of a future Brazil functions as an obstacle to real political change, leading to a series of “wasted opportunities to institute an autonomous, prosperous, and democratic national state” (p. 231).

The organizers frame this collection as an exploration of the “liberating aspects of art and politics in a country and in a region in which economic inequality, violence and social alienation are defining traits of the social order” (p. 5). If the diverse viewpoints offered are not uniformly consistent in immediate relevance to the intersection of globalization and Brazilian political identity, they are unified in the aim of shining new and multidisciplinary light on the problem of inequality read broadly, and how it perpetuates profound contradictions within the democratic system. While the chapters in the latter half of the book may be less accessible to a reader who has neither the disciplinary background nor the goal to explore the cultural side of Brazilian identity, the target audience of those desiring a more holistic view of Brazilian politics and culture will be more receptive to the collection's approach. A structured conclusion would have been useful as a way to bridge this gap and offer a more complete integration of the two halves of the volume. On balance, however, Imagining Brazil offers a wide-ranging and inclusive multidisciplinary analysis of Brazil's complex social and political identity.