The titles below are available for foreign rights.

For requests, please contact Paulo Gonçalves at paulo@radicallivros.com.br

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Rock Underground: an ethnography of alternative rock (Pablo Ornellas Rosa)

 

In this thought-provoking essay, Pablo Ornelas shows us how the so-called “alternative scene” of rock in Brazil works. Taking as a case study the workings of a bar dedicated to underground rock shows in the city of Florianópolis — a place that would end up shut down due to police brutality — the author makes a precise analysis of the behavior of musicians, fans and other characters that interact in the microcosm of alternative music scene in our country. The specific location and city analysed here serve as a portrait, in fact, of the same kind of economic and social logic that runs through the Brazilian alternative scene in any large urban center and even in the country towns. As prefaces Luiz Eduardo Soares in this book: “Rock’n’rollers will enjoy it, the older ones will remember it, the less attuned to this world will have the opportunity to visit it and those intrigued by the harshness of the youth, our new barbarians, will find out surprising mirrors, to examine their own intolerance”.

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Information, knowledge and value (Ruy Sardinha Lopes)

 

Would the capitalist system have moved to an “upper” stage, where the exploitation of living labor was replaced by the free circulation of information? This is the starting point of research in Information, Knowledge and Value. In this book, the reader will accompany the author on a tour of the evolution of modern communication systems (telephony, electronic networks, the computer systems) not from a technical point of view, but from the point of view of its relationship with the movement of Capital, the driving force behind the socioeconomic system that rules the lives of all men. As stated by Otília Arantes, Information, Knowledge and Value should be welcomed as a very strong sign that critical intelligence is recovering in Brazil”.

 

About the author: Born in Rio de Janeiro, in 1961, he holds a bachelor's degree, master's and doctorate in Philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP). He has been working in higher education for 18 years and is currently a professor and researcher at the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos. Specialist in aesthetics and contemporary arts, with several articles and lectures, since the 1990s he has been studying the role of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in society and in the field of arts. More recently, his research turned to a new disciplinary field — the political economy of information and communication — which allowed him to deepen his analysis of contemporary economic issues and to join the board of the Latin Union of Political Economy of Information , Communication and Culture (ULEPICC).

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Cuba without embargo (Hideyo Saito/Antonio Gabriel Haddad)

 

Any fact against the Cuban revolution deserves a headline in the Brazilian press, such as the case of an act by the dissident group Damas de Branco [Ladies in white], which brought together ten people in Havana and made the cover of O Estado de S. Paulo. What other manifestation of this size would deserve such treatment? On the other hand, any news favourable to the revolution is overlooked, as when Veja magazine interviewed educator and economist Martin Carnoy, who was in Brazil to release the Portuguese translation of “Cuba’s Academic Advantage: why students do better in school”, and managed to not talk about the Cuban education. Examples like these are plenty. 

 

To break this “information embargo”, the authors researched both Cuban and foreign sources. In the 12 chapters based in the material thus collected, Hideyo Saito and Antonio Gabriel Haddad give life to a social construction process that aims to face up to its issues, seen as a consequence of errors and all kinds of political and economic distress, but also aggressions and obstacles created by the ruling powers.

 

Definitely, Cuba without embargo does not talk about an earthly paradise. But it raises the question loud and clear: “How many capitalist countries have a reasonably harmonious society, without concentration of wealth, without misery, without hunger, without illiteracy, without social violence and helpless children”, as Cuba does?

 

A possible answer to this question is in its introduction, when he quotes Noam Chomsky: "What is intolerable for this media ('the real crime of Cuba') are the Cuban successes, which can serve as an example for people in underdeveloped countries."