Odd Partners

Antonio Candido and the Caipira Sharecropper

Abstract

This article argues that Os parceiros do Rio Bonito (1964), Antonio Candido’s most celebrated sociological work, adopts a cultural framework which subtly undermines the work’s progressive political goals. By blurring the distinction between sharecropper–a category defined by economic relations–and caipira–a category defined by culture–Candido horizontalizes the relationship between landless and landowners. I argue this is in part due to Candido’s class identity as a descendant of rural oligarchies, and to his relationships with other planters–including the owner of the estate where he performed his fieldwork on the living conditions of sharecroppers in rural São Paulo. Even as he strove to produce scholarship with progressive political ambitions, Candido fell back into hegemonical ideologies of consensus. More than a critique of his sociology, the article proposes a consideration of Candido’s work as representative of how the engagement of Brazilian intellectuals with the countryside was informed by class relations.