Afetos e controle social na crise climática: o caso brasileiro (1990-2023)

Abstract

This research project proposes to critically investigate the role of affects in the discursive support of the climate crisis in Brazil, taking as a temporal framework the period between 1990, the year of publication of the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and 2023, with the release of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The central objective of the study is to understand how the Brazilian State, guided by the dominant fraction represented by agribusiness, produces and mobilizes narratives and discursive frameworks that manage emotions in order to neutralize collective action and maintain the primacy of environmentally unsustainable political and economic projects. The hypothesis is that the recurring dissociation between Brazil's discursive position on the international stage, marked by rhetorical adherence to climate commitments, and its domestic practices, guided by the prioritization of sectors intensive in environmental degradation, operates as an affective device for producing social apathy. Methodologically, the project adopts a qualitative approach, combining critical bibliographic review and discourse analysis. The bibliographic review will seek to systematize the main debates on affects, climate policy, and collective action, with special attention to empirical and geographical gaps in the context of the Global South. The discourse analysis will be guided by Maarten Hajer's argumentative approach, especially by the concepts of storylines and discursive coalitions. By articulating emotions, discourse, and climate policy, this research aims to contribute to the advancement of International Relations by highlighting how the dispute over the environmental future is also a dispute over the affective field, especially in contexts marked by profound structural inequalities, such as the Brazilian one.