Engineering, Political Economy and progress

a biography of engineer Luiz Rafael Vieira Souto as a case-study

Abstract

The confluence of interests among engineers, entrepreneurs and industrialists in the late nineteenth to the twentieth century was underlined by several studies, particularly those focused on the Clube de Engenharia, created in Rio de Janeiro in 1880. The engineers also had outstanding performance in the debate on urban improvements, aimed at reordering of the spaces of capital. The article examines ideas mobilized by engineers from the trajectory of the civil engineer carioca Luiz Rafael Vieira Souto (1849-1922), his interventions in the debate on economic policy, defined by binding to class associations, and his role as professor of Political Economy of the Escola Politécnica.