Failure or success? Defensive strategies and piecemeal change among racial inequalities in the Brazilian Banking sector

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze how Brazilian Black Movement organizations and banks deployed different mechanisms (i.e. cooperation, cooptation and confrontation) that generated affirmative action initiatives in the Brazilian banking sector in the first two decades of this century. The paper shows by connecting fields and exploring a constellation of strategies that – varying from direct action to litigation – black movement organizations seemed to trigger an institutional change. On the other hand, Brazilian banking sector organizations adopted defensive strategies, such as cooptation, aiming to accommodate their own interests. By examining actors’ constant jockeying, our findings stress that a piecemeal change occurred as it has kept the field’s structures – such as resource distribution and power among incumbents and challengers – unscratched. Thus, the success of social movement strategies is dependent upon the framing and sense-giving work that social movements conduct in their continuous jockeying activity towards incumbents