Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-14T14:28:50.262Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Relational legal consciousness and anticorruption: Lava Jato, social media interactions, and the co-production of law's detraction in Brazil (2017–2019)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Fabio de Sa e Silva Open the ORCID record for Fabio de Sa e Silva [Opens in a new window]
Fabio de Sa e Silva*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
*
Fabio de Sa e Silva, Department of International and Area Studies, University of Oklahoma, 729 Elm Ave., Farzaneh Hall, Room 316, Norman, OK 73069, USA., Email: fabio.desaesilva@ou.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Starting in 2014, Brazilian politics was shaken up by the lava jato (LJ) operation, a law-centered anticorruption initiative. LJ unveiled a large corruption scheme in Brazil's national oil company Petrobras, which involved Petrobras directors, political party officials, and large construction companies. LJ was both disruptive and contentious. To some, it started a new chapter in Brazilian history, marked by greater respect for the “rule of law” and a collective “state of mind” concerned with “ending impunity” and building integrity in politics and businesses. To others, it contributed to undermining democracy and the rule of law, paving the way for an autocratic leader—the current Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. This article sheds further light on those discussions by looking at LJ as a site of “legal consciousness” production. Empirically, the article focuses on conversations generated by lead LJ prosecutors on a major social media platform (Facebook) from 2017 to 2019. Considering this body of data, the article addresses the question: “When prosecutors and ‘the people’ talked about LJ, what did they talk about?” My findings support the more skeptical views of the operation. The exchanges between LJ prosecutors and their Facebook followers supported the co-production of a cultural schema averse to the “rule of law.” These findings have implications for both legal consciousness and anticorruption research.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 344 - 368
Copyright
© 2022 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The ideas behind this article were first presented and discussed at the 2019 Law and Society Annual Meeting, the 2019 Cardiff Centre of Law and Society Annual Conference and the 2019 Yale Law School Human Rights Workshop. I thank Raquel Pimenta, Mario Schapiro, Ricardo Horta, and Francisco Mendes for their feedback to an earlier version of this article; Gabrielle Alves and Ana Margarida Martins for their research support; Charles Santana and Tarsio Barreto for the big data analysis support; and the three anonymous reviewers for their incredibly constructive comments to earlier versions. All the remaining flaws of this article are, of course, my sole responsibility.

How to cite this article: de Sa e Silva, Fabio. 2022. “Relational Legal Consciousness and Anticorruption: Lava Jato, Social Media Interactions, and the co-Production of Law's Detraction in Brazil (2017–2019).” Law & Society Review 56(3): 344–368. https://doi.org/10. 1111/lasr.12620

References

REFERENCES

Abrego, L. J. 2011. “Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants.” Law and Society Review 45(2): 337–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albiston, Catherine R. 2006. “Legal Consciousness and Workplace Rights.” In New Civil Rights Research: A Constitutive Approach, edited by Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin and Nielsen, Laura-Beth, 55–75. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Anderson, Perry. 2019. Brazil Apart: 1964–2019. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Aranha, Ana Luiza. 2020. “Lava Jato and Brazil's Web of Accountability Institutions: A Turning Point for Corruption Control?” In Corruption and the Lava Jato Scandal in Latin America, edited by Lagunes, Paul F. and Svejnar, Jan. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1972. Crisis of the Republic. New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich.Google Scholar
Avritzer, Leonardo. 2017. The Two Faces of Institutional Innovation: Promises and Limits of Democratic Participation in Latin America. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bello, Enzo, Capela, Gustavo, and Keller, Rene José. 2020. “Operação Lava Jato: ideologia, narrativa e (re)articulação da hegemonia.” Direito & Práxis 12: 1665–1667.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhagwati, J. N. 1982. “Directly Unproductive Profit-Seeking (DUP) Activities.” Journal of Political Economy 90: 988–1002. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-58802-2_392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackstone, Amy, Uggen, Christopher, and McLaughlin, Heather. 2009. “Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment.” Law and Society Review 43(3): 631–668.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boittin, Margaret L. 2013. “New Perspectives from the Oldest Profession: Abuse and the Legal Consciousness of Sex Workers in China.” Law and Society Review 47(2): 245–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullock, Jessie W., and Stephenson, Matthew C. 2020. “How Should Lava Jato End?” In Corruption and the Lava Jato Scandal in Latin America 213–226. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carvalho, Alexandre Douglas Zaidan, and Palma, Maurício. 2020. “Juristas contra a democracia: usos do direito e desintegração democrática no Brasil pós-2014.” Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política 29: 80–108 http://www.scielo.edu.uy/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1688-499X2020000100080&nrm=iso.Google Scholar
Cheeseman, Nic, and Peiffer, Caryn. 2020a. “The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Corruption Messaging in Nigeria: Why Pessimists Are Always Disappointed.” Working paper 024, SOAS ACE.Google Scholar
Cheeseman, Nic, and Peiffer, Caryn. 2020b. “Why Efforts to Fight Corruption Hurt Democracy: Lessons from a Survey Experiment in Nigeria.” Working paper 027, SOAS ACE.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J., and Engel, David M. 2019. “Legal Consciousness Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15(1): 335–353. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbacho, Ana, Gingerich, Daniel W., Oliveros, Virginia, and Ruiz-Vega, Mauricio. 2016. “Corruption as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Costa Rica.” American Journal of Political Science 60(4): 1077–1092. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, Dave. 2004. “Legal Consciousness: Some Observations.” Modern Law Review 67(6): 928–958. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2004.00518.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damgaard, Mads Bjelke. 2019. Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil: The Infostorm of Impeachment and the Lava-Jato Scandal. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Davis, Kevin E. 2019. Between Impunity and Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Almeida, Frederico Soares de. 2018. “Los emprendedores jurídicos como emprendedores morales: La lucha contra la corrupción en Brasil.”Google Scholar
de Sa e Silva, Fabio. 2020a. “From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and Lawyers in Brazil's Illiberal Turn (2014–2018).” Journal of Law and Society 47(S1): S90–110. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Sa e Silva, Fabio. 2020b. “Not Falling for that: Law's Detraction and Legal Consciousness in the Lives of Brazilian Anti-Torture Activists.” International Journal of Law in Context 16(1): 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, David. 1998. “How Does the Law Matter in the Constitution of Legal Consciousness?” In How Does the Law Matter? edited by Bryant, G. and Sarat, Austin. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Engelmann, Fabiano. 2020. “The ‘Fight against Corruption’ in Brazil from the 2000s: A Political Crusade through Judicial Activism.” Journal of Law and Society 47(S1): S74–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Peter. 2018. “An Unfolding Tragedy.” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan. 2003. “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority.” American Journal of Sociology 108(6): 1328–1372. https://doi.org/10.1086/378035.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan S. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Fritsvold, Erik D. 2009. “Under the Law: Legal Consciousness and Radical Environmental Activism.” Law and Social Inquiry 34(4): 799–824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garth, Bryant G. 2014. “Building Strong and Independent Judiciaries through the New Law and Development: Behind the Paradox of Consensus Programs and Perpetually Disappointing Results.” DePaul Law Review 52(2): 383–400.Google Scholar
Gash, Alison, and Harding, Ryan. 2018. “#MeToo? Legal Discourse and Everyday Responses to Sexual Violence.” Laws 7(2): 21 https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/7/2/21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, R. W. 2010. “The Role of Lawyers in Producing the Rule of Law: Some Critical Reflections.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 11(1): 441–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio, Buttigieg, Joseph A., and Callari, Antonio. 2011. Prison Notebooks. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Simon, Kitzinger, Celia, and Kitzinger, Jenny. 2015. “Law in Everyday Life and Death: A Socio-Legal Study of Chronic Disorders of Consciousness.” Legal Studies (Society of Legal Scholars) 35(1): 55–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Simon, and Morgan, Bronwen. 2013. “I Fought the Law and the Law Won? Legal Consciousness and the Critical Imagination.” Current Legal Problems 66(1): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Terence C., Karpik, Lucien, and Feeley, Malcolm. 2007. Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Liberalism, 1st ed. London: Hart Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Halliday, Terence C., Karpik, Lucien, and Feeley, Malcolm M. 2012. Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasty, Jennifer. 2005. “The Pleasures of Corruption: Desire and Discipline in Ghanaian Political Culture.” Cultural Anthropology 20(2): 271–301. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2005.20.2.271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertogh, Marc. 2018. Nobody's Law: Legal Consciousness and Legal Alienation in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsh, Elizabeth, and Lyons, Christopher J. 2010. “Perceiving Discrimination on the Job: Legal Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of Race Discrimination.” Law and Society Review 44(2): 269–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2010.00403.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hough, Dan. 2013. Corruption, Anti-Corruption and Governance. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Charles. 2017. Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development.Google Scholar
Kerche, Fábio. 2018. “Ministério Público, Lava Jato e Mãos Limpas: uma Abordagem Institucional.” Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política 105: 255–286. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-64452018000300009&nrm=iso.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klitgaard, Robert. 1988. Controlling Corruption. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köbis, Nils C., Troost, Marleen, Brandt, Cyril O., and Soraperra, Ivan. 2019. “Social Norms of Corruption in the Field: Social Nudges on Posters Can Help to Reduce Bribery.” Behavioural Public Policy: 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2019.37.Google Scholar
LaForge, George. 2017. The Sum of its Parts: Coordinating Brazil's Fight against Corruption, 2003–2016. https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/publications/sum-its-parts-coordinating-brazil-fight-against-corruption.Google Scholar
Lehoucq, Emilio, and Taylor, Whitney K. 2020. “Conceptualizing Legal Mobilization: How Should we Understand the Deployment of Legal Strategies?” Law and Social Inquiry 45(1): 166–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lomnitz, Larissa A. 1971. “Reciprocity of Favors in the Urban Middle Class of Chile.” In Studies in Economic Anthropology, edited by Dalton, George, 93–106. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Mancosu, Moreno, and Vegetti, Federico. 2020. “What you Can Scrape and What Is Right to Scrape: A Proposal for a Tool to Collect Public Facebook Data.” Social Media + Society 6(3): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120940703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Anna-Maria. 2017. Confronting Sexual Harassment. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 1990. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mészáros, George. 2020. “Caught in an Authoritarian Trap of its Own Making? Brazil's ‘Lava Jato’ Anti-Corruption Investigation and the Politics of Prosecutorial Overreach.” Journal of Law and Society 47(S1): S54–S73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moro, Sergio Fernando. 2018. “Preventing Systemic Corruption in Brazil.” Daedalus 147(3): 157–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. 2006. “Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment.” Journal of Democracy 17(3): 86–99. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2006.0050.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2000. “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment.” Law and Society Review 34(4): 1055. https://doi.org/10.2307/3115131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nye, Joseph S. 1967. “Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.” American Political Science Review 16: 417–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ocantos, Ezequiel, and Baraybar-Hidalgo, Viviana. 2019. “Lava Jato beyond Borders: The Uneven Performance of Anticorruption Judicial Efforts in Latin America.” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 15(1): 63–89.Google Scholar
Omari, Jeffrey. 2020. “Is Facebook the Internet? Ethnographic Perspectives on Open Internet Governance in Brazil.” Law and Social Inquiry 45(4): 1093–1112. https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2020.5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peiffer, Caryn. 2018. “Message Received? Experimental Findings on how Messages about Corruption Shape Perceptions.” British Journal of Political Science 50(3): 1207–1215. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123418000108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, Timothy J., and Taylor, Matthew Mac Leod. 2011. Corruption and Democracy in Brazil: The Struggle for Accountability. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Praça, Sérgio, and Taylor, Matthew M. 2018. “Inching toward Accountability: The Evolution of Brazil's Anticorruption Institutions, 1985–2010.” Latin American Politics and Society 56(2): 27–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2014.00230.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rae, Maria. 2019. “Trial by Media: Why Victims and Activists Seek a Parallel Justice Forum for War Crimes.” Crime, Media, Culture 16(3): 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659019874179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose-Ackerman, Susan. 1978. “Corruption as A Problem in Political Economy.” In Corruption: A Study in Political Economy. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Rose-Ackerman, Susan. 1999. Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salganik, Matthew J. 2019. Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Steven. 2008. “Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Southeast Europe: Landscapes and Sites.” In Governments, NGOs and Anti-Corruption: The New Integrity Warriors, edited by de Sousa, Luís, Larmour, Peter, and Hindess, Barry. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sampson, Steven. 2010. “The Anti-Corruption Industry: From Movement to Institution.” Global Crime 11(2): 261–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/17440571003669258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarat, Austin. 1990. “The Law Is all Over: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor.” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 2(2): 343–379.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Kearn, Thomas R. 1993. “Beyond the Great Divide: Forms of Legal Scholarship and Everyday Life.” In Law in Everyday Life, edited by Sarat, Austin and Kearns, Thomas R., 21–62. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silbey, Susan S. 2005. “After Legal Consciousness.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1(1): 323–368. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.1.041604.115938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silbey, Susan S. 2013. “What Makes a Social Science of Law? Doubling the Social in Socio-Legal Studies.” In Exploring the “Socio" of Socio-Legal Studies, edited by Feenan, Dermot. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Snelson, Chareen L. 2016. “Qualitative and Mixed Methods Social Media Research: A Review of the Literature.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 15(1): 160940691562457. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406915624574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solano, Esther. 2018. “Pós-democracia e o espetáculo moralista da justiça messiânica.” In Em tempos de pós-democracia, edited by Casara, Rubens R. R. and Pucheo, Alberto. Tirant lo Blanch: Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
St-Pierre, Pascale Cornut. 2019. “Investigating Legal Consciousness through the Technical Work of Elite Lawyers: A Case Study on Tax Avoidance.” Law and Society Review 53(2): 323–352. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 2007. Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R., and Darley, John M. 2000. “Building a Law-Abiding Society: Taking Public Views about Morality and the Legitimacy of Legal Authorities into Account when Formulating Substantive Law.” Hofstra Law Review 28(3): 707.Google Scholar
Wedel, Janine R. 1986. The Private Poland: An Anthropologist's Look at Everyday Life. New York: Facts on File.Google Scholar
Wedel, Janine R. 2012. “Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8: 453–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Mayfair Mei-Hui. 1989. “The Gift Economy and State Power in China.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31: 25–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmer, Michael. 2010. “‘But the Data Is Already Public’: On the Ethics of Research in Facebook.” Ethics and Information Technology 12(4): 313–325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-010-9227-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar