This book looks at the development of thinking about security in Brazil between 1930 and 2010. In order to do so, it develops a new framework for thinking about intellectual history in Brazil and applies it to the development of knowledge on security in that country.

Building on the Gramscian literature on ‘late modernization’ and ‘conservative revolution’ and drawing on the idea of ‘Emotional Theory of Action’ proposed by Brazilian sociologist Jessé Souza, this book sets out to establish an innovative framework with which to analyse the development of ‘thinking about security’ in Brazil in three specific historic contexts. This theoretical framework is then used to argue that one specific discourse of Brazilian identity has been the main source of knowledge production in that country since the 1930s. In doing this, the book offers thought-provoking arguments about the role of intellectuals in Brazil and reassesses the exclusionary ideas embedded in the politics of identity and security.

This book not only introduces a novel framework to analyse intellectual production outside the core, it also sheds light on how security has been historically thought of outside the core and will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Critical Security Studies and Latin American Studies.