O soft power dos Brics: discussões sobre política cultural e relações internacionais

Abstract

The research aims to deepen the debate on the concept of Soft Power and relate it to the cultural, ideological, and political characteristics of the BRICS member countries, as well as its impact on the activities of these member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), through digital media, from 2006 to 2020. The temporal framework is related to the 61st UN General Assembly on September 20, 2006, where the foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Celso Amorim of Brazil - longtime friends since their work as diplomats in New York in the early 1990s - initiated the formation of a bloc that would unite developing countries. Following this meeting, they decided to organize an informal meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China at the Brazilian mission to the United Nations. The diplomatic relationship between these countries guided the dissatisfaction with the distribution of power within institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN in the reluctance of the G8 to include emerging powers in decision-making. These issues came to light when the group met in Heiligendamm (Germany) in June 2007, where the involved countries reiterated their commitment to jointly press for the reform of global financial structures. The concept of Soft Power, popularized by political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1990s, seeks to understand the changes in coercive policies he refers to as Hard Power, military operations, and economic actions, towards a less tangible international politics that highlights the cultural struggle involving different forms of resistance, identity affirmations, and the fight for rights, considering the material and immaterial heritage of major international powers. We will strive to meet the new demands arising from society regarding history, in order to understand the cultural and social actors who have been silenced and marginalized by dominant discourses. This will enable BRICS countries to rethink their heritage and cultural policies from the perspective of soft power. The analysis will be conducted using electronic journals provided by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation, with international reach) and the Global Times, a newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, to provide an alternative perspective to Western narratives. In the BRICS sphere, we will use digital archives of Folha de S. Paulo, Izvestia, The Times of India, Global Times, and The Times Live, emphasizing the applicability of soft power in the international relations of these countries and the main aspects constituting their persuasive power. It is the corollaries of this meeting that we seek to analyze in the research, with the publication of the media described above as the starting point.