Rodrigo Ferreira Simões

Brazil: Where Have We Been?

Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world. The Brazilian economy is the world’s eighth largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and the ninth largest by purchasing power parity. The population of Brazil is approximately 190 million and 83.75 % of the population defined as urban. The population is heavily concentrated in the Southeastern (79.8 million inhabitants) and Northeastern (53.5 million inhabitants) regions [1].

História econômica e regionalização: contribuição a um desafio teórico-metodológico

This paper intends to contribute to the theoretical and methodological debate on regionalization and history. Firstly, it starts discussing the very concept of region on its several related approaches: geography, political economy, history and historiography. Then, a methodological issue is analyzed, that is to say: the paper tries to articulate the most important criteria of spatial segmentation embedded on regionalization (analytical functionalism, heterogeneity and homogeneity) with: a) the necessity of non-anachronism; and b) the necessity of a historical dynamic approach on definition of regional boundaries.