The Brazilian Way by Dr Cassiano R Endres de Oliveira

When: Mon, Apr 17 2017 6:00pm

Where: UNM SUB

The 21 Club wishes to thank our speaker, Professor Cassiano R.L. de Oliveira, Department of Nuclear Engineering, for an excellent presentation.

Brazil is the world’s 5th largest country (it is bigger than the US without Alaska) and the Amazon forest makes up 60% of its land. It has the world’s 5th largest population and it is the world’s 3rd largest democracy. It has all the natural resources one can think of and it is not prone to natural disasters. Yet,
for reasons still being actively debated, society does not function well there resulting in an extremely uneven wealth distribution and quality of life. Whether a contributing cause or a consequence, life in
Brazil is governed by sets of legal, constitutional and societal rules mostly inherited from Portuguese colonial rule, which, whether sensible or not, greatly impact and complicate the lives of everybody. As a result, it has become customary for Brazilians to seek ways around difficulties in their day-to-day lives through the so-called “jeitinho brasileiro” or “the Brazilian way”. In this short talk we address the “jeitinho” and try to answer the fundamental question: is this a harmless and clever societal survival mechanism or a morally questionable behavior whereby the clever and/or privileged few take advantage of the good-natured character of the Brazilian population and its institutions? As one would expect the answer might not be simple although the rampant corruption scandals recently exposed provide serious food for thought on what happens when instead of working the system those trusted by the people effectively game the system.

Dr de Oliveira is currently a Professor at the Department of Nuclear Engineering of the University of New Mexico and his main area of research is computational nuclear science. He was born in Brazil and grew up in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating in Physics and obtaining a Masters in Nuclear Engineering he went to London, UK in 1982 to study for his PhD and stayed there for 21 years. He came to the US in 2003, firstly to Georgia Tech and four years later to UNM. His 3 citizenships - US, Brazil, Italy - along with his UK and New Mexico experiences have helped him to develop a more glocalized and less cynical view of the world.