VEJA AND THE BRAZILIAN FIELD OF WEEKLY MAGAZINES: 1930-2000

Abstract

Abstract

Mobilizing the Bourdiesian notion of “field” to approach the market of the Brazilian weekly magazines during the 20th century, we seek to understand how the publishing house Abril challenged - during the expansion of the Brazilian middle classes and the diversificafication of our market of symbollic goods in the late sixties - the model of the “illustrated magazines”, then dominant in this field, through the creation of a “newsweek” magazine, dedicated to the growing Brazilian middle classes by that time. In this context, we highlight the implementation of a subscription system designed from typical markers of the Brazilian middle class at the time (access to both higher education and private banking services) for the rise of Veja to the dominant position in this field. Having achieved such a position, we argue that the magazine reorganizes the field of the Brazilian weekly magazines, forcing its new entrants to the double movement of adopting the “newsweek” model, consecrated by Veja, at the same time that they struggle to exercise it in a distinct way, in order to assert themselves in a space dominated by Abril’s magazine since the 1980s.