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This study aims to analyze the configuration of the board of directors of the five largest banks operating in Brazil, which are members of a financial elite that directly influences the socioeconomic life in Latin America.

This assessment is inspired by Bourdieu's sociological approach and in the discussion on his work in organization studies and economic sociology. It addresses the organization as a field and investigates its associated field of power. The authors conducted qualitative research and relationally analyzed data related to the trajectory and the social properties of the councilors using the statistical technique called multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

The results show that forms of social and cultural capital are particularly influential in the production of distinctions among banks' board members. Moreover, councils' priorities and configurations are diverse: some idealized and based on knowledge, others pragmatic and based on customs, others still anchored in a double logic of market satisfaction and family wealth preservation.

Understanding the objective power relations among these top agents may be crucial for effectively regulating certain aspects of their activities. Furthermore, understanding how different forms of capital affect the relative position of the board members may help us reduce representative bias in what seems today an inner circle.

This study is relevant because it makes an in-depth analysis of the composition of one of the most influential financial elites in Latin America, combining sociological theory and advanced statistical techniques for qualitative grouping (MCA).

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.