Entrenched and unequal at the top: Brazilian capitalism and the social space of its corporate elite

Abstract

This article discusses the relations between the features of the largest firms structuring Brazilian capitalism and the configuration of the social space of their directors. We assess the social trajectories and properties of 175 CEOs and chairpersons from the 100 largest domestic and foreign companies operating in the country through multiple correspondence analysis, finding that the major forms of distinction in this social space are associated with the oppositions between the national and the foreign and between private/economic and public/educational forms of reproduction. Cross-fertilizing works of political economy and sociology about Brazilian capitalism and the sociology of elites, we show that the distribution of agents in the identified structure is homologous to the so-called “triple alliance” of the largest firms of Brazilian capitalism. We also identify a subgroup of the domestic elite that concentrates cultural and social capital and is particularly proximate to the state.