State paternalism, welfare and social control in the construction of Volta Redonda

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction of the steel town of Volta Redonda, Brazil, as a state paternalist project. The steel mill and its company town, built in the early 1940s during the Estado Novo government of President Getúlio Vargas, were intended to set a new standard for the country’s economic and social development. Empirically, the article tries to explain the logic of the company town as a paternalist project from the perspective of the state and the company, which thought of social assistance programs and mechanisms of social control as two sides of the same coin. Within that perspective, the article analyzes how the company translated paternalist ideology into concrete measures, but it also takes account of the shortcomings. The discussion highlights the importance of Christian social doctrine for the underlying ideology of welfare paternalism and demonstrates how its doctrinal principles permeated the urban design and the company’s social assistance programs. It also shows how the company reinforced the ideology through its penalty regime. At the theoretical level, the article suggests that the construction and administration of the company town, as part of broader national welfare policy, should be understood as a system of reproduction under Brazil’s state capitalism. Using the conceptual framework of the sociologist Michael Burawoy, it complemented the mill’s system of production, together forming a factory regime of advanced capitalism.