Foreword

Abstract

This INTERthesis issue we present here is made up of a variety of texts on Sociology, political discussions and theoretical reflections. The six articles as well as the book review that are a part of this issue share a common concern. All of them analyze, under several perspectives, the challenges of the contemporary society before the new problems and risks peculiar to our late modernity. Among the many challenges of our modernity, we can find the understanding of a recent and little studied phenomenon, which is the proliferation of a literature aiming the massive reading. Whether it is a self-help literature or a best-seller, it seems to have replaced the classic modalities of literary production, establishing a new evaluation criterion in which amount is worth much more than literary richness. Fernando Moreno da Silva’s article discusses this issue, beginning with a historical perspective of the impact of capitalism in the production of books changed into goods. In the second article, Felipe de Paula Souza analyzes, based on the reflections of authors such as Susan Sontag, the circulation and production of images connected to tourism, aiming to find out what is hidden and what is revealed in the proliferation of scenery concerning paradisiacal places and leisure. Andreza Galdioli and Elói Martins Senhoras question the regional integration project between Brazil and Argentina in the Mercosur. Though many pages are dedicated to reflect upon political, economical and cultural challenges of other projects of national integration, such as the European Union, we scarcely have texts dedicated to reflect upon the challenges and difficulties presented by this integration project, the Mercosur, which seems to have been limited to a simple project of economic partnership. The text we present here is a contribution to deepen the necessary discussions on the “winding ways of Mercosur integration”. Beyond any doubt, one of the current great challenges is to reflect upon the destruction of the environment. This is the theme analyzed in José Luiz de Oliveira Soares and Rodrigo Nuñez Viégas’s article. The peculiarity of this study is its approach, based on the perspective of criminal punishment for certain actions and behavior. The authors try to understand in what ways certain kinds of behavior towards the environment started to be considered as a crime, and their agents as criminals. The environment as a theme is back in Agripa Faria Alexandre and Paulo José Krischke’s article, however under a different perspective - the institutionalization of the sustainability polices in Brazil during the democratic period, from1980 to 2006. The article focuses the study of limits and controversies which guide both the conceptualization of democracy and of sustainability. Finally, Rosemeire Barbosa da Silva, resumes the theme of environmental regulation , but concerning a specific and often discriminated occupation – the recyclable supply collectors. They are united in a National Movement which the author analyzes in this article as being an institutional ground of fight against poverty and social exclusion. Besides the articles published in this INTERthesis issue, Leandro Oltramari publishes a beautiful book review on “Histórias de amor no Brasil” ( Love stories in Brazil ) by Mary Del Priore. The author has been a professor of Colonial Brazil History at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro and at Universidade de São Paulo (USP). This review invites us to read the book by Mary Del Priore as a helper to have a better understanding of our present. It shows that love, in our daily life, becomes a “social practice” which is essentially historical. The review suggests that it is in this history that we must look for the different and conflicting faces of love. Sandra Caponi Editor