Reductio ad cambitas
The grammar of liberalisation in Northeast Brazil
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Liberalism follows a grammar when representing voluntary social relationships that involve some element of exchange; it reduces them to relations of pure exchange. This paper examines the transmission of this grammar across cultural lines, from the progressive officials comprising Brazil’s Workers’ Party government (2003–2016) to the inhabitants of the country’s northeastern backlands () whose ‘clientelistic’ politics the officials sought to dismantle. By analysing ’ abandonment of the once‐common practice of displaying campaign propaganda on their homes, I hope to explain the political implications of the spread of this grammatical logic – what I call the – to a people who have long embedded political transactions within elector–politician ‘friendships’.