The Logic of Poverty - The Case of the Brazilian Northeast

First published in 1981, The Logic of Poverty consists of eight essays that share at least one assumption: that Northeast Brazil provides a startling example of inhumane economic development. The contributors have all worked in the area, and know it at first hand. They look at rural structure and the role of the unemployed 'reserve army', the state of the sugar industry, the ineffectiveness of the irrigation schemes, the stagnation in the fishing sector, the lack of credit available to peasants and the role of SUDENE, the first development agency in the region. Together they paint a picture of poverty and of the factors that allow it to continue, and they place that poverty in the context of the wider economy of Brazil, relating it to the extraordinary transformation that has been called 'the Brazilian miracle'. This book will be of interest to students of geography, anthropology, economics and sociology.

List of contents

Preface 1. Introduction 2. Rural structure, surplus mobilisation and modes of production in a peripheral region 3. Hunger in the Northeast 4. The hungry imagination 5. On the relationship between the subsistence sector and the market economy in the Parnaiba valley 6. Stagnant peasant capitalism 7. Innovation and social structure 8. Irrigation in the Brazilian Northeast 9. State and society in Northeastern Brazil

Product details

• Assisted by: Simon Mitchell (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 19.01.2026
• EAN: 9781032763781
• ISBN: 978-1-032-76378-1
• No. of pages: 201
• Series: Routledge Revivals
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, Brazil, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Poverty & unemployment, Social and cultural anthropology, Human Geography, Poverty and precarity, Brazil: Northeast Region, poverty;northeast brazil;latin america;logic