For decades, scholars and journalists have hailed the enormous potential of Brazil, which has for the last twenty years been one of the world’s largest economies. But its promise has too often been curtailed by dictatorship, racism, poverty, and violence.

Offering an interdisciplinary approach to the critical issues facing Brazil, the contributors to this volume analyze the democratization of the country’s media, its potentiality as a nuclear power, the spread of neo-Protestantism, the development of popular culture, the global impact of Brazilian agribusiness, and the implementation of sustainable economic development, especially in the Amazon.

Grouped with Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the other socalled BRICS countries) as one of the world’s emerging economies, Brazil is unique in the Western hemisphere and on the global stage. The wide-ranging contributors also examine the exportation of Brazilian trends, institutions, culture, and religion through the accelerating processes of globalization. Emergent Brazil is a comprehensive and timely collection of essays that explore major Brazilian domestic concerns from the country’s turbulent history to its restless present.