Unionism, industrial labor relations, political parties and political representation in Brazil were some of the primary research interests of social scientist Le\u00f4ncio Martins Rodrigues, 87, who died Monday, May 3, in S\u00e3o Paulo. In recognition of a notably prolific academic career that began in the 1960s at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), he was the recipient of a Florestan Fernandes Award from the Brazilian Society of Sociology in 2009, and an Ant\u00f4nio Fl\u00e1vio Pierucci Academic Excellence Award from the Brazilian Association of Graduate Studies in Political Science (ANPOCS), in 2015. \u201cHe was a twofold pioneer in Brazil,\u201d says Andr\u00e9 Botelho, a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and chairman of ANPOCS. \u201cFirst, through his seminal labor-union research in the 1960s that helped to consolidate the field of labor sociology in Brazil. And years later, in the 1980s, he was among the first to research political parties at a time when this field\u2014now one of the most important research areas in political science in Brazil\u2014was just beginning to take shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodrigues was born in 1934 in S\u00e3o Paulo, where he completed a degree in social science at the then School of Philosophy, Science, and Languages and Literature (FFCL) at USP. In an interview in 2008 at the Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Getulio Vargas Center for Research and Documentation of Contemporary Brazilian History (CPDOC), he recounted how his youthful Trotskyist activism had led him to drop out of high school in his younger years, delaying his admission to university to the age of 25. He described how the idea to study social sciences had been suggested to him by notable anthropologist Ruth Cardoso (1930\u20132008), his history teacher at the Fern\u00e3o Dias Paes State High School. The two would later work together at the Center for Labor Studies under the Office for Labor, a S\u00e3o Paulo State government agency. \u201cWe were having a conversation and she said: \u2018Why don\u2019t you study social science?\u2019 I didn\u2019t quite know what it was. When she explained to me what social science was about, I said: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I want to do!\u2019\u201d he recalled in his interview.<\/p>\n
Indeed, social science became a lifelong research interest. After receiving his bachelor and licenciatura<\/em> (bachelor of education) degrees at USP in 1962, he obtained a master\u2019s degree in sociology with a dissertation titled, \u201cManifesta\u00e7\u00f5es e fun\u00e7\u00f5es do conflito industrial em S\u00e3o Paulo\u201d (Manifestations and functions of industrial conflict in S\u00e3o Paulo; 1964), under the supervision of Octavio Ianni (1926\u20132004), and later a doctoral degree, with a thesis titled \u201cAtitudes oper\u00e1rias na ind\u00fastria automobil\u00edstica\u201d (The auto plant worker mindset; 1967), under sociologist Florestan Fernandes (1920\u20131995). His papers were later edited into two books, Conflito industrial e sindicalismo no Brasil<\/em> (Industrial conflict and unionism in Brazil; Difus\u00e3o Europeia do Livro, 1966) and Industrializa\u00e7\u00e3o e atitudes oper\u00e1rias <\/em>(Industrialization and the plant worker mindset; Editora Brasiliense, 1970), respectively.<\/p>\n He later became a professor of sociology and political science at USP. \u201cHe was very receptive, generous and approachable to his students, often going out with us for a beer,\u201d recalls sociologist S\u00e9rgio Miceli, a professor at FFLCH-USP who pursued his master\u2019s and doctoral degrees under Rodrigues. \u201cHe was also a great host. During the military dictatorship, under the threat of political persecution, his home in Pinheiros became a meeting place for intellectuals. Rodrigues came to many people\u2019s aid during the military regime. When his friend, professor R\u00e9gis de Castro Andrade [1938\u20132002], was arrested for political reasons, he offered to help his family.\u201d<\/p>\n During that period, Rodrigues played a central role in organizing and founding two important research organizations: the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), which he cofounded in 1969 with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, C\u00e2ndido Proc\u00f3pio Ferreira de Camargo (1922\u20131987), Paul Singer (1932\u20132018), Jos\u00e9 Arthur Giannotti, Elza Berqu\u00f3 and other researchers; and the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CEDEC), founded in 1976. He also participated in founding the Center for Industrial and Labor Sociology (CESIT) alongside Florestan Fernandes and Cardoso at USP. Over time, he abandoned his left-leaning views in favor of liberalism. \u201cHe always respected opposing points of view,\u201d says sociologist Glauco Arbix, a professor at FFLCH-USP who completed his PhD under Rodrigues. \u201cBut he was demanding in requiring that proposed ideas were robust, well substantiated and well argued.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodrigues served as the first head of the Humanities and Social Science department at FAPESP<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rodrigues also made an important contribution to organizing and strengthening the Humanities and Social Science department at FAPESP, and served as the first deputy scientific coordinator at the Foundation in 1989. \u201cAt a time when peer-review culture was still incipient in the humanities, Rodrigues played a central role in introducing peer review standards with greater methodological rigor, as well as greater academic diversification,\u201d recalls Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, who served as a member of the Humanities and Social Science department at FAPESP under Rodrigues.<\/p>\n In the 1990s he was nominated by Brazil\u2019s then president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Labor Organization (ILO). Around the same time, he wrote the book Destino do sindicalismo<\/em> (The future of unionism; Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais, 1999), about the future of labor unions and labor relations. \u201cIn his book, he argued that labor unions\u2019 political influence was waning due to a number of reasons, including economic globalization and the adoption of anti-union policies on several continents. Though his predictions would ultimately prove correct, his book initially drew criticism because the Brazilian union movement was then still a force to reckon with, and just a few years later, in 2002, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, a former factory worker and union leader, would be elected president of Brazil,\u201d notes sociologist Ruy Braga, a professor at FFLCH-USP.<\/p>\n After retiring at USP in 1985, he was hired as a professor at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), where he served until 2003. \u201cHe came here with other big academic names to organize the university\u2019s first doctoral program in social science. He always enjoyed teaching,\u201d notes Rachel Meneguello, a professor in the Department of Political Science at UNICAMP\u2019s Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH). It was during this period that his interest was drawn to the subject of political parties and political representation in Brazil.<\/p>\n Among the products of his newfound interest were books like Quem \u00e9 quem na Constituinte<\/em> (Who is who in the Constituent Assembly; Editora OESP-Maltese, 1987), sponsored by the Brazilian newspaper Jornal da Tarde<\/em>, in which he describes the ideological, social and cultural biographies of the congressmen who would write the Federal Constitution of 1988, after 21 years of military dictatorship (1964\u20131985). With more than 52% of them describing themselves as being on the left or center-left, Martins Rodrigues coined the expression direita envergonhada<\/em> (literally, the \u201cashamed right\u201d) to refer to \u201cthose congressmen who wished to distance themselves from the dictatorship during Brazil\u2019s return to democracy,\u201d explains Meneguello. In his two last books, Mudan\u00e7as na classe pol\u00edtica brasileira<\/em> (Shifts in Brazilian politics; Publifolha, 2006) and Pobres e ricos na luta pelo poder \u2013 Novas elites na pol\u00edtica brasileira <\/em>(The poor and the rich in the struggle for power\u2014The new elites in Brazilian politics; Topbooks, 2014),<\/strong> he analyzed the profiles of members of the House of Representatives elected in 1998, 2002 and, later, in 2010. He describe the House as becoming incrementally more populist. \u201cBut not necessarily better,\u201d notes Meneguello, who concludes by adding: \u201cRodrigues was a prominent advocate of empirical research, and his analytical approaches influenced several generations of researchers.\u201d<\/p>\n A member of the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC) and a recipient of the title of Commander of the National Order of Scientific Merit, in 2001, Le\u00f4ncio Martins Rodrigues is survived by his partner, political scientist Maria Tereza Sadek, and his two children, Luciana and Daniel, from his marriage to psychologist Arakcy Martins Rodrigues (1936\u20132000).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An enthusiast of empirical research, Le\u00f4ncio Martins Rodrigues helped to pioneer social-science studies in Brazil ","protected":false},"author":689,"featured_media":402066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[214,261],"coauthors":[3453],"class_list":["post-401600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary","tag-political-science","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/689"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402852,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401600\/revisions\/402852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401600"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=401600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}