Banca de DEFESA: Luciana Lombas Belmonte Amaral

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : Luciana Lombas Belmonte Amaral
DATE: 12/12/2025
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: Sociologia - híbrido
TITLE:

Business Lawyers, Financialization of Brazil’s Legal Elite, and Social Representations of the Value of Labor (2017–2024)

KEY WORDS:

Social Representations; Sociology of Legal Elites; Private Legal Practice; Labor Value; Financialization

PAGES: 434
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUMMARY:

Contemporary transformations reveal a scalar logic of social change that affects structures, institutions, and subjects. Rather than reifying elites, understanding how these processes operate through them aims to uncover the material and symbolic mechanisms that sustain, legitimize, and naturalize social and economic inequalities in Brazil. In light of the abrupt normative and ideological shift in labor relations in the current context—and the role played by segments of Brazil’s private legal elite in this process—this thesis investigates the social representations held by top-tier private lawyers regarding the value of labor. The scholarly contribution of this study lies in its analysis of a segment of the elite that remains largely unexplored in existing research agendas, despite occupying strategic positions of power across legal, political, and economic fields. The timeframe (2017–2024) reflects the profound changes initiated by the 2017 Labor Reform, which accelerated the dismantling of social protections at the national level.The specific objectives of this thesis include: a) examining the Theory of Social Representations, its epistemological foundations, and its intersections with the concepts of field, power, and discourse; b) analyzing the macro-social context, with emphasis on significant transformations in labor and its (de)regulation in both international and national spheres; c) understanding the socio-historical processes and power dynamics that have shaped and consolidated the private legal field in Brazil; d) outlining the theoretical and methodological foundations of qualitative research through methodological triangulation, adapted documentary analysis, netnography, and Critical Discourse Analysis; e) investigating the material and symbolic variables that define the upper echelon of Brazil’s private legal profession, and its differentiation based on reputational criteria; f) analyzing partners’ discourses—both textual and non-textual— within digital institutional communications concerning contemporary labor relations. A total of 755 documents were collected, systematized, and analyzed from six law firms representing the apex of Brazil’s private legal elite, encompassing 647 partners. The empirical analysis revealed profound transformations within this segment, marked by logics of governance and financialization, and by the reconfiguration of juridical habitus around the valorization of international credentials and global metrics of performance and professional reputation, as promoted by legal rankings. This shift in symbolic frameworks—shaping partners’ profiles, institutional structures, academic backgrounds, and the construction of the business lawyer’s image—is central to understanding their social representations and their relation to the world of objects. These representations materialize in discourses of inevitable modernity, technological optimism, private autonomy, and legal certainty, legitimizing a reconfiguration of the State as guardian of the economic order at the expense of social protection.The discursive practices, sustained by strategies of relexicalization and moral justification, reflect the incorporation of financialization by business lawyers who, aligned with global capitalist expertise and performance standards, contribute to the reproduction of hegemonic discourses that legitimize the transformation of labor value into reputational and financial assets.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externo à Instituição - FABIANO ENGELMANN - UFRGS
Presidente - 2279253 - ARTHUR TRINDADE MARANHAO COSTA
Interno - 6404308 - CARLOS BENEDITO DE CAMPOS MARTINS
Externo à Instituição - FERNANDO DE CASTRO FONTAINHA - UERJ
Interno - 1505195 - SERGIO BARREIRA DE FARIA TAVOLARO