Wolfe's 'Autos and Progress' published by Oxford University Press
“Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity” by Joel Wolfe, associate professor of History, has been published by Oxford University Press.
The book reinterprets 20-century Brazilian history through automobiles, using them as a window for understanding the nation’s struggle for modernity in the face of its massive geographical size, weak central government and dependence on agricultural exports.
Among the topics Wolfe reaches by cars are the first sports cars and elite consumerism; intellectuals’ embrace of cars as the key for transformation and unification of Brazil; Henry Ford's building of a company town in the Brazilian jungle; the creation of a transportation infrastructure; democratization and consumer culture; auto workers and their creation of a national political party; and the economic and environmental impact of autos on Brazil. This focus on Brazilians’ fascination with automobiles and their reliance on auto production and consumption as keys to their economic and social transformation, explains how Brazil, which enshrined its belief in science and technology in its national slogan of Order and Progress, has differentiated itself from other Latin American nations.
“Autos and Progress” engages key issues in Brazil around the meaning and role of race in society and also addresses several classic debates in Brazilian studies about the nature of Brazil’s great size and diversity and how they shaped state-making.
Wolfe, who joined the History Department in 2006, studies the impact of modernity, industrialism and trade on Latin American societies and their politics with a primary focus on modern Brazil.
He is also the author of “Working Women, Working Men: S?o Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955,” published in 1993. His articles have appeared in the Latin American Research Review,Hispanic American Historical, Radical History Review,Review, Luso-Brazilian Review and Revista Brasileira de História. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled “100 Years of Trade in Latin America.”
“Autos and Progress” is available in paperback for $21.95 and hardcover for $99.
February 23, 2010.
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