LIST OF PANELS

The analysis of social inequalities is inseparable from understanding the centrality of race in the formation of countries. In this line of reasoning, Mario Theodoro’s work, "A Sociedade Desigual: racismo e branquitude na formação do Brasil" (2022), offers one of the most robust and comprehensive theories in recent years to interpreting the structural and relational bases of racism and racial policy discourses in Brazilian society. He argues that "Brazilian-style" racism, as discussed by Edward Telles (2003), is not a peripheral or residual phenomenon, but a structural element that shapes institutions, social relations, political opportunities, and social patterns of inequality and resource distribution. By analysing dimensions such as the labour market, education, health, and territorial policies, Theodoro demonstrates how these fields have historically operated as mechanisms for the reproduction of racial inequality.

This dynamic is expressed, among other aspects, in the deeply unequal socio-spatial distribution of the Brazilian population, in which the Black population—especially the impoverished Black population—is disproportionately concentrated in territories marked by urban precariousness and socioeconomic vulnerability. In this context, violence, often mediated by state institutions and naturalised institutional practices, appears as one of the mechanisms for regulating and maintaining the unequal social order.

The notion of an "unequal society" dialogues with a broad tradition of critical interpretation of racial relations in Brazil. Authors such as Clóvis Moura and Lélia Gonzalez, among others, have emphasized that racial inequalities cannot be understood merely as side effects of economic inequalities, but as a constitutive part of the processes of forming the Brazilian State, society, and its human institutions.

Based on these theoretical and empirical observations, this panel proposes to discuss how the category of race articulates with contemporary analyses of public policymaking, policy processes, and human society-making, particularly within the scope of so-called interpretative approaches. In the field of public policy, interpretative perspectives have emphasized that policies are not just technical instruments of state intervention, but also sociopolitical and cultural arenas for the transmission, production, and contestation of meanings, values, and interpretations regarding public problems and their possible solutions.

In the Brazilian case, this perspective becomes particularly relevant, as the historical formation of the State and public policies has been deeply marked by racial hierarchies. The absence or marginalization of the racial dimension in many public policy analyses contributed, for a long time, to the production of incomplete diagnoses of social inequality, as well as the reproduction of forms of "blindness" toward racism—which, although not always explicit, acts in structural, institutional, and symbolic ways.

Considering that the Black population currently accounts for more than half of the Brazilian population and remains, both locally and globally, mostly concentrated in the most vulnerable strata of the social structure, it is evident that the racial issue cannot be treated as a peripheral or sectoral theme. On the contrary, it must be understood as a transversal analytical axis, present in all phases of the public policy cycle—from agenda-setting to formulation, implementation, and evaluation, but not limited to these. It must and can consider other arrangements that mobilize collective community actions and practices in multiple territories, not only in Brazil.

In this context, interpretative approaches offer important analytical tools for critical studies to investigate how meanings, institutional narratives, social conditions, and representations of situations, as well as cognitive frames, influence the way public problems are defined and how policies are experienced, and/or designed and implemented. These approaches also allow for the examination of how bureaucrats, managers, and policymakers mobilize specific interpretations of inequality, citizenship, and social justice—interpretations that can either reproduce or challenge historically constituted racial hierarchies by disregarding practices embedded in the multidimensionality of complex public problems.

This panel invites researchers to submit papers that analyze the relationship between race, social inequality, and public policy from interpretative and critical perspectives. The goal is to gather contributions that examine how the analytical category of race, mobilized in a transversal and intersectional manner, can contribute to understanding and transforming the processes of formulation, implementation, and evaluation of public policies in Brazil and other countries.

We particularly welcome papers that explore how institutional interpretations, political narratives, and knowledge regimes influence the way racial inequalities are recognized, made invisible, or confronted in state action. We also encourage contributions that analyze the role of public bureaucracies, experts, activists, and social movements in constructing competing interpretations of public problems related to racial inequality.

Key guiding questions for the panel include: