Michel Rochefort and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statitics (IBGE) in the 1960s

ABSTRACT

French geographer, Michael Rochefort (1927-2015), built his career as an important name in the planning of his country. Part of this was because of his lengthy participation in the Comissariat General du Plan, a governmental agency in France, whose objectives are quite similar to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), an institution which would be one of the nodal points in Rochefort’s relationship with Brazil for over five decades. This article analyses this relationship in the 1960s, when IBGE, together with the methodologies proposed by Rochefort and François Perroux, developed important subsidy policies for planning. Despite the theoretical limitations in IBGE’s work in the 1960s, the institute’s work turned out to be of great importance for the political territories in at least the two decades following. Michael Rochefort exemplifies, through his work, the undeniable contribution of French geography to Brazilian geography during the years marked by the period of planning and national developmentalism in Brazil.

History of Geographical Thought; IBGE; Michel Rochefort; Planning; Regionalization in Brazil