Methodological and Empirical Lessons from Brazil for Examining Inequality Reduction

• In Event: 3167 - Section on Sociology of Development Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Human Development, Fertility, and Health in Lower to Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

Two methodological and empirical tendencies characterize many efforts by sociologists to conceptualize and explain the roots of changing inequalities in global contexts. First, studies commonly define their main unit of analysis on either the macro-level scale of entire countries. Secondly, studies often employ a single analytic method – rather than integrating multiple methods – to explain changes over time in inequality. Global and development sociologists often use comparative-historical analysis, single case-study analysis, fuzzy-set analysis, or regression methods in isolation from one another when examining how and why inequality changes within and between macro-level units like countries. Drawing on an examination of changing health inequalities across urban Brazil, this paper argues that meaningful sociological insight about drivers of changing inequalities can also emerge from combining multiple analytic methods to study oft-overlooked, meso-level units like major cities. The paper crystallizes a new measure of inequality on the city-level called “Inequality in Infant Mortality” (IIMR), and then describes a new methodological approach that combines fuzzy-set, regression, and comparative-historical analysis to explain its pattern of change across Brazil’s largest cities during recent years. This application shows how combining such methodological approaches can strengthen inferences about INUS causes – namely, causes that are insufficient but necessary parts of conditions which are themselves unnecessary but sufficient for an outcome of interest to occur. For instance, the approach reinforces the inference that robust declines in IIMR from 2003 and 2012 between Brazil’s largest cities resulted from two INUS causes: the infrequency or outright absence of mayoral rule by right-leaning parties, and frequent office-holding within political positions atop the subnational public health state by a particular kind of civil society activist whom I call “pragmatist publics”. I conclude by considering the methodological and empirical lessons of these findings for global and development sociologists.

Author

• Christopher Laurence Gibson, Simon Fraser University