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This chapter, drawing on an anthropological perspective, explicates the process of tourism development and its implications for Ilha Grande in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The concept of tourismization, influenced by Norbert Elias’s sociological perspective on the “civilizing process,” is introduced to illustrate how social changes and society-individual relationships within this community can be perceived as a set of configurations and articulations, which are mediated by tourism. It is suggested that tourisimization can be perceived as a process which dictates the rules and new customs to be followed by people influenced by new local configurations mediated by tourism.

Objectives: To analyze the tourism policies introduced in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism at the national, state and local levels, considering governmental functions and intergovernmental coordination.

Methodology: The methodology consisted of a review of the scientific literature on public policies, intergovernmental coordination and government functions, in addition to an empirical observation and analysis of norms and legal acts related to the combat against COVID-19 pandemic in four municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The municipalities of Armação dos Búzios, Paraty, Petrópolis and Rio de Janeiro were selected because of their economic dependence on tourism.

Main Results and Contributions: The most important contributions were the theoretical and methodological model of the analysis of government functions combined with the review of intergovernmental coordination.

Originality/Value: To study tourism policies in a time of pandemic, since government functions, when analyzed in a tourism-related context, were conducted in non-pandemic contexts.

Conclusions: Municipal horizontal coordination is highlighted since it has positively impacted the actions of control and flexibility of pandemic measures. It was further noted that the role of the guarantor government was different throughout the whole process.

Limitations: As the study is ongoing and is part of an international project on tourism and pandemic, other data collection techniques will be included.

Lars Birch Andreasen is Associate Professor at the Department of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University, Denmark, where he is a member of the Research Lab: ICT and Designs for Learning. He holds a Ph.D. in Education from the Danish University of Education and an M.A. in Cultural Sociology from Copenhagen University. His research interests are dialogic communication, problem- and project-based learning, collaboration in virtual learning environments, information literacy, and lifelong learning.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

Purpose – To analyze the concept of emerging infectious diseases, departing from the accepted definitions adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, USA) and the now classical definition suggested by Grmek (1993, 1995). The emphasis of this chapter is on the roles that socio-economic and cultural changes play on the emergence of diseases.

Methodology – Bibliographical research.

Findings – Current definitions fail to address all instances of the emergence of disease. In order to illustrate the concept of emergence, we discuss two case studies. The first describes the constitution of abdominal angiostrongyliasis in Costa Rica. The second concerns an outbreak of Chagas disease that took place in 2005 in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Contribution – As a result of our analyses we propose a new classification of instances of emergence and emphasize the importance of an interdisciplinary approach for the understanding of diseases.