The Brazilian rabble

The new edition of Jessé Souza's first bestseller, A ralé brasileira (The Brazilian rabble), sheds light on the life stories and desires of an invisible social class that faces difficulties and prejudice to survive in Brazil.

*A râlé brasileira* , by Jessé Souza—one of today's most important sociologists—can already be considered a classic of Brazilian social thought. First published in 2009, the work has been republished by Editora Civilização Brasileira, with a new preface and introduction. By far, this is Jessé Souza's book that has had the greatest impact on academia. Its success stems from the application of a new methodology that combines data science with a critique of Brazilian sociology. The result is impressive precisely because it brings scientific techniques closer to the lives of ordinary people, using testimonies gathered through careful field research as the primary guide for revising theory and statistics.

The various contributors here bring to the study multifaceted perspectives on the real problems of the most vulnerable population. Thus, Jessé Souza gives visibility to the "Brazilian rabble" in a unique way, decentralizing the power of analysis and building new paths to understanding complex issues in the daily lives of men and women living in "subcitizenship." Never perceived by the elites as a "class," this "rabble" is seen only as a group of needy or dangerous individuals—precisely the Manichaean and judgmental treatment that Jessé Souza aims to dismantle.

Essential for understanding the changes that occurred between 2000 and 2010, whose impact we still see today, the arguments presented in The Brazilian Rabble highlight how a dominant and conservative social science system was constructed in Brazil and expose how this "intelligence" fostered a public debate that is subservient to the elite and hides the population's needs more than it reveals them. It is required reading for all Brazilians who wish to truly understand our challenges to social, political, economic—and, why not say, emotional—development.