This article aims at analysing the discursive links that exist in the very core of a key approach in the Brazilian sociological tradition (the so-called patrimonial-patriarchal strand) between the place of nature in contemporary Brazilian society, on the one side, and the status of modernity in that society, on the other. The author is mainly concerned with providing answers to the following questions: 1) What are the ways through which the main figures of such patrimonial-patriarchal sociological approach (Freyre, Holanda, Faoro and DaMatta) envision the relations between modernity in Brazil and the natural world? 2) What are the theoretical implications of their diagnoses about the status of modernity in contemporary Brazil?
Brazilian social thinking; Nature and society; Modernity
