This book discusses the social and economic problems currently faced by Brazil as one of the largest ¿emerging countries¿. It examines the prospects of Brazilian development from an interdisciplinary perspective, and studies both socio-economic and political variables. The book embraces the large period of Brazil's development in the 20th and the first decades of the 21st Century. The peculiar attention is drawn to the short period of prosperity under the left-centrist governments as a continuation of the previous conservative modernisation model, which produced an increased dependency on China and a premature deindustrialisation of the economy. Assessing Brazilian statistics on households¿ incomes and consumption, the book subsequently