The Business of Racism
Labor and Environment in Brazil's Racial Capitalism

Ian Carrillo (Author)

9781478029700

Hardback, published 19 May 2026

272 pages, 4 illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.535 kg

In The Business of Racism, Ian Carrillo employs a case study from Brazil’s sugarcane industry to show how racial capitalism is promulgated and maintained through politics and business. As Carrillo recounts, in the mid-2000s, Brazil embarked on a state-led project to improve environmental and labor conditions in sugarcane production. He describes how, seeing increased government regulation of their worksite as a threat to their power, the elites of Brazil’s sugar-ethanol industry repurposed long-standing racial ideologies to undermine progressive institutions and elevate their own leaders. Carrillo’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork in mills and plantations, as well as interviews with federal labor regulators and sugar-ethanol industry elites in Brazil, weaves together an account of how Brazil’s labor and environmental regulations are forged through racial and class struggles at worksites and within the state. The Business of Racism contributes to ongoing sociological debates about race, development, and the environment while highlighting future pathways for achieving racial justice, labor equality, and climate sustainability.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Slave Labor and the Remaking of the Racial State in the Amazon 29
2. Reforming the Business of Racism in Sugarcane 59
3. Racialized Modernity, Interest Convergence, and Sã
o Paulo Elites 95
4. Racialized Organizations, Crises of Legitimacy, and Northeastern Elites 125
5. Regulators and Repertoires of Revaluation 151
6. The Patrimonial Backlash 181
Conclusion 209
Appendix: Methods 225
References 229
Index 253