Gustavo Onto
Gustavo is an ethnographer of forms of economic policy and regulation. He has published on antitrust, financial education, fiscal policy, and economic nationalism, as part of previous research projects, situated between the areas of economic anthropology and the anthropology of the State, bureaucracy and public policies.
He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), an MA in Sociology from Columbia University (NY, USA), and a Masters in Public Management and Government from Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EAESP, São Paulo). BA in Economics (University of São Paulo). From 2016 to 2021 he was a Post-Doctoral fellow at the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the same university. He was visiting researcher at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, and the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at the New School for Social Research.
He coordinates the research center Documenta - Laboratory of Anthropology of the State, Regulation and Public Policy and is a researcher at the Center for Research on Culture and Economy. He is a member of the Behavioural Studies Panel at the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), where he organizes the Anthropology of Finance Study Group. He also collaborates with the website Estudios de la Economia (http://estudiosdelaeconomia.wordpress.com).
Research Projects
His doctoral research consisted of an ethnographic description of knowledge practices involved in the Brazilian antitrust policy, as implemented by the federal antitrust authority. His aim was to describe how economic subjects and objects are conceived, produced and governed from an antitrust agency, focusing on the way regulatory practices are interpreted by different professionals, in order to foreground anthropological issues that emerge between legal and economic knowledge regarding, for example, the statute of the market, the definition of economic groups, the enactment of legal personhood, and the meaning of documental practices. He is currently writing a book exploring the temporalities of antitrust knowledge practices and of Brazilian economic policy in the last decade.
As a post-doctoral research, he is concluding a project with researchers at Copenhagen Business School regarding ethnographic issues that emerge in collaborative situations between social scientists and economists, engineers or policymakers that work in market design projects or economic policymaking. The project aims at putting into comparison international collaborative experiments, among others the one currently established with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).
Articles in English
MIOLA, Iagê and ONTO, Gustavo. "Antitrust between success and failure: a sociological and ethnographic reappraisal of Brazilian competition policy". Economic Sociology, perspectives and conversations, Vol. 25, Number 2, March 2024.
KINGSOLVER, A. MATHUR, C. ONTO, G. Economic Nationalism in a World on Fire. Special Issue, Anuac - Journal of the Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology. 2022.
KINGSOLVER, A.; PANDEY, A.; ONTO, G.; OPESEN, C.; APPEL, H. World anthropological perspectives on economic nationalisms. Sociologia & Antropologia, Vol. 12 (2). 2022.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Corporate personhood and the competitive relation in antitrust". IN: Neiburg and Guyer (eds.) The Real Economy: Essays in Ethnographic Theory. Hau Books/Chicago University Press, pp. 179-202.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Competition on paper: artifacts of visualization in antitrust policy". Economic Sociology, The European Electronic Newsletter, v. 20, p. 24-30, 2019.
ONTO, Gustavo; UNDURRAGA, T. ; ARIZTIA, T. "The centrality of lateral economic objects: examples from Latin America". EASST Review, v. 35, p. 23, 2016.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Regulation as Cultural Transformation: the 'educational role' of the Brazilian competition policy". Revista Direito e Práxis, v. 7, p. 690-715, 2016.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Economic Regulation or the Ethnography of Attachments” In: Latour, Bruno. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Electronic Version. 2014.
ONTO, Gustavo. "The market as lived experience: on the knowledge of markets in antitrust analysis". Vibrant (Florianópolis), v. 11, p. 159-190, 2014.
Email
CV Lattes
Academia.edu
ResearchGate
He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), an MA in Sociology from Columbia University (NY, USA), and a Masters in Public Management and Government from Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EAESP, São Paulo). BA in Economics (University of São Paulo). From 2016 to 2021 he was a Post-Doctoral fellow at the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the same university. He was visiting researcher at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, and the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at the New School for Social Research.
He coordinates the research center Documenta - Laboratory of Anthropology of the State, Regulation and Public Policy and is a researcher at the Center for Research on Culture and Economy. He is a member of the Behavioural Studies Panel at the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), where he organizes the Anthropology of Finance Study Group. He also collaborates with the website Estudios de la Economia (http://estudiosdelaeconomia.wordpress.com).
Research Projects
His doctoral research consisted of an ethnographic description of knowledge practices involved in the Brazilian antitrust policy, as implemented by the federal antitrust authority. His aim was to describe how economic subjects and objects are conceived, produced and governed from an antitrust agency, focusing on the way regulatory practices are interpreted by different professionals, in order to foreground anthropological issues that emerge between legal and economic knowledge regarding, for example, the statute of the market, the definition of economic groups, the enactment of legal personhood, and the meaning of documental practices. He is currently writing a book exploring the temporalities of antitrust knowledge practices and of Brazilian economic policy in the last decade.
As a post-doctoral research, he is concluding a project with researchers at Copenhagen Business School regarding ethnographic issues that emerge in collaborative situations between social scientists and economists, engineers or policymakers that work in market design projects or economic policymaking. The project aims at putting into comparison international collaborative experiments, among others the one currently established with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).
Articles in English
MIOLA, Iagê and ONTO, Gustavo. "Antitrust between success and failure: a sociological and ethnographic reappraisal of Brazilian competition policy". Economic Sociology, perspectives and conversations, Vol. 25, Number 2, March 2024.
KINGSOLVER, A. MATHUR, C. ONTO, G. Economic Nationalism in a World on Fire. Special Issue, Anuac - Journal of the Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology. 2022.
KINGSOLVER, A.; PANDEY, A.; ONTO, G.; OPESEN, C.; APPEL, H. World anthropological perspectives on economic nationalisms. Sociologia & Antropologia, Vol. 12 (2). 2022.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Corporate personhood and the competitive relation in antitrust". IN: Neiburg and Guyer (eds.) The Real Economy: Essays in Ethnographic Theory. Hau Books/Chicago University Press, pp. 179-202.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Competition on paper: artifacts of visualization in antitrust policy". Economic Sociology, The European Electronic Newsletter, v. 20, p. 24-30, 2019.
ONTO, Gustavo; UNDURRAGA, T. ; ARIZTIA, T. "The centrality of lateral economic objects: examples from Latin America". EASST Review, v. 35, p. 23, 2016.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Regulation as Cultural Transformation: the 'educational role' of the Brazilian competition policy". Revista Direito e Práxis, v. 7, p. 690-715, 2016.
ONTO, Gustavo. "Economic Regulation or the Ethnography of Attachments” In: Latour, Bruno. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Electronic Version. 2014.
ONTO, Gustavo. "The market as lived experience: on the knowledge of markets in antitrust analysis". Vibrant (Florianópolis), v. 11, p. 159-190, 2014.
CV Lattes
Academia.edu
ResearchGate