State, civil society and hegemony of highway network in Brazil

Abstract

By understanding the state whereas a relation of forces, dialoguing with the matrix of thought from Antônio Gramsci, this article aims to investigate the part from the process of highway network formation in Brazil, studying the history of actuation state agencies and social agents in the formation and execution of transport politics from years 1920 to 1960. The movement around the highway network idealism still started in the two first decades from the XX century, in dispute with the railway project. The production of this consensus strengthened due to different services: newspapers, magazines, teaching institutions and several associations aggregating engineers, economists, politicians, legislators, managers, etc, who defended the highway network option, supposedly more adapted to the country’s characteristics. Such idealism was progressively changing into a common sense and in a main directory from the transport politics in the last 50 years.