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.