Doctor en Sociología por la London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Universidad de Londres. Profesor adjunto e investigador del Instituto Universitário de Pesquisa do Río de Janeiro (IUPERJ). Entre sus publicaciones se cuentan Sociological Theory and Collective Subjectivity (1995), Social Creativity, Collective Subjectivity and Contemporary Modernity (2000), Do ocidente à modernidade. Intelectuais e mudança social (2003), Ensaios de sociologia (2004), Modernity Reconstructed (2006) y Latin American and Contemporary Modernity. A Sociological Interpretation (2008).