Untangling the "transnational social": Soft affirmative action, human rights, and corporate social responsibility in Brazil

This article analyzes how diversity-managing and affirmative action policies targeting Afro-descendants have been introduced into Brazilian work-places since the late 1990s. It does so by exploring how international regulations and global normative regimes, namely the human rights and the corporate social responsibility movements, have penetrated and shaped the way Brazilian companies deal with racial discrimination. Contending interpretations by executives, managers, and activists are discussed from the perspective of "new legal pluralism," by looking at how these different actors use the norms to induce, subvert, or even evade dominant orders in specific situations. It can be concluded that, even with no legally binding force, global normative regimes have been particularly effective in creating new "sites of opportunity" for Afro-Brazilians. Conversely, the corporate social responsibility premise of going beyond the law neither challenges the ineffectiveness of the national legal system nor disqualifies illegal discriminatory market behavior.