Arthur Borba Colen França

Political Commodities and Sovereignty Management: Cigarette Smuggling across Brazil’s Southern Borders

ABSTRACT Cigarette smuggling across Brazil’s borders with Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina involves large amounts of merchandise and money. The public in Brazil associates this activity with images of war, contamination and other threats to state sovereignty. This article assesses the political meaning and uses of smuggling in order to challenge the assumption that smuggling threatens the sovereignty of the Brazilian state. With the help of a literature review, fieldwork at the border, interviews with practitioners, a cartographic analysis of news coverage of seizures, the tobacco production and consumption, the market and its regulation, actors, routes and networks were mapped and analysed. In the Southern Cone of South America, an integrated transborder territory emerges where tobacco is cultivated, prepared and distributed, and cigarettes are manufactured, transported, sold and smoked. These flows cross distinct legal framings and lead to an increase in danger and profit. Thus, the market is segmented between national legal products and imported cigarettes that are cheaper and illegal but easily obtainable. The concepts of political commodities understood as the acts of powerful agents who barter advantages related to their authority and sovereignty management, understood as the use of legal (state-managed) structures according to private interests at different scale levels, provide useful theoretical tools to examine the territorialisation of the cigarette smuggling and its control by the state and private agents. We conclude that tobacco production and trade, as well as cigarette smuggling, are connected via agents who use the border to build the legal market and, consequently, to increase the trade value of national tobacco. Cigarette smuggling across the state borders of the Southern Cone combines networks and places in such a way that is integrated into the legal economy and the national territories, and it does not defy state’s sovereignty.

Construindo a base de dados de teses, dissertações e monongrafias sobre estudos fronteiriços

A construção de uma base de dados de teses, dissertações e monografias sobre Estudos Fronteiriços envolve definir a comunidade dos Estudos Fronteiriços brasileiros (com base nos diretórios e plataformas das agências de fomento); investigar os limites teóricos do termo fronteira (centralmente, a fronteira territorial interestatal, emergindo estudos ligados à migração e às fraturas urbanas); estabelecer o recorte temporal da pesquisa (entre 2000 e 2014, com atualizações anuais); elencar universidades prioritárias (UFRGS, UFGD, UFRJ, UFMS e UNIPAMPA), entre outras decisões. Em suma, trata-se de definir como representar teses, dissertações e monografias: como localizá-los nos repositórios, quais dados selecionar, como registrar esses metadados etc. Os propósitos da base de dados organizada pelo projeto Unbral Fronteira (oferecer referências de estudos sobre as fronteiras brasileiras para ciências espacializadas) demandam esforços para a inserção de informações georreferenciáveis, levando à organização