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This article analyzes descriptively the use of the method ofsocial network analysis in the main publications in the Brazilian Social Sciences, in order to offer contributions for two questions: (1) what is the social network analysis?; and (2) how often has the method been used in the main publications in this area? About the first question, extensive bibliographical research is undertaken. Regarding the second question, the publications, between 2006 and 2016, of the journals with the best ranking for the following areas are analyzed: (1) Anthropology and Archeology, (2) Political Science and International Affairs, and (3) Sociology. The analysis of this method's use indicates the existence of a small number of papers, and the absence ofsubstantial differences between thejournals of the three areas. However, the papers that were found exemplify the interdisciplinary aspect ofsocial network analysis and its capability to be combined with other techniques in the study of various phenomena.

The main objective of this paper is to know the daily practices (strategies and tactics) of housemaids who represent their arts of making. The expression arts of making is present in Certeau (1998), an author who theoretically brings us the possibility of presenting a paper dedicated to ordinary women. The research is qualitative and involved a corpus with the production of speeches obtained through interviews with housemaids. These interviews were open and also semi-structured, seeking to apprehend their arts. The theoretical-methodological approach used refers to ACD (Critical Discourse Analysis). This paper allowed the approach of different daily and ordinary knowledge that circulate among the practices of domestic servants within what was called a more excellent knowledge: the knowledge to manage and participate in the management of organized social life. Introducing the perspective of the organized social life of domestic workers, we refer to the study of organized social life, identifying the subjects studied as authors of micro-practices that directly contribute to critical organizational policies, sometimes ignored, in society and mainstream studies.

In the present paper we will discuss, in general terms, the historical and social implications of the analysis performed by the Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács on the novel. For that, we will make a brief resumption of the context of the emergence of his literary-aesthetic work, which emerges with a striking contrast to the previous theories carried out in the field of Marxism on the said theme. In the sequence, we will resume the Lukácsean broader conception of the novel, specially highlighted in the paper “The novel as Bourgeois epic”, published in 1935, and then to delve into the more specific issue of the novel subgenre that combines History and Fiction, recorded in the book The historical novel, published in 1937, both during Lukács’ exile period in the 1930’s on the Soviet Union.

Forms of contemporary cultural production in Brazil have articulated emerging social forms that put strain and open new questions on the boundaries between cultural production, the political and the market. This paper seeks to analyze the relationships between cul- tural production, the market and the political produced by an emerging artistic-cultural movement, Fora do Eixo. This movement emerged in the last decade, and is characterized by its organization in an articulated collective network and the use of digital technologies for work on cultural production. Drawing upon ethnographic work, this paper analyses some of the meanings that Fora do Eixo gives to certain actions of cultural production, transcending the analytical simplifications to understand the modes of mediation among culture, politics and the market that these movements produce in their own terms.

The turn of “almost everything” to the quality of commodity reflects a contemporary process known as commodification (or commoditization). As this process promotes long-term impacts on the constitution of societies, it calls for a reflection on the sociological field of “what” can be bought and sold and about the role of legitimizing agents of these new markets that arise. After extensive review of the transdisciplinary academic literature, this paper summarizes the multiple forms of commodification in contemporary consumer practices. The examples involve tangible goods and symbolic aspects of daily life that become alienable, revealing how the culture, music, food, natural resources, places, violence, body parts, sex, traditions, education, religion and even emotions begin to have value in the market arena. The first purpose of this paper is to understand the origins of the concept, and then be able to seize the crucial features of the phenomenon in the dynamics of social change. It also aims at stimulating the debate and rethinking critically: In a world where “everything is for sale”, individuals also come to be treated as commodities? After the analysis of the cases, it is argued that commodifying processes change the ways of everyday life and affect the social relations, leading, ultimately, to reframe the “human qualities” and to the depoliticization of the individuals to the dynamics of social change.

The paper presents an innovative way of how to create and apply Human Wellbeing Indicators. The paper starts with a historical analysis of how those indicators were created and finishes with a set of indicators self-determined by Amazonian indigenous and riverine people themselves. The set of indicators is based on the concept of abundance as the concept that identifies indigenous and riverine people’s wellbeing. The set of Human Wellbeing Indicators for Traditional Societies presented is supported in five main capacities: collective control of territory, autonomous cultural agency, food security guarantee, the construction of a peaceful environment to live in, and self-care and reproduction. The set of Human Wellbeing Indicators for Traditional Societies was applied in the riverine community of São José, located in the Benjamin Constant municipality, in the triple border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru, as a result of an international scientific cooperation process between the Education and Amazonian Diversity research group of the Estado do Amazonas University of Brazil (GPEDA-UEA) and the Traditional Knowledge Value research group of the Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas SINCHI of Colombia. The experience shared the methodological advances on the construction of precise indicators for traditional societies and showed how traditional communities build up their wellbeing in relation to the knowledge they have of water, soil and forest cycles, making them autonomous in the productive and cultural processes of their territories.

This paper investigates how utopia is a recurring term in the contemporary art world. The spread of collaborative relations - through art collectives, artistic residences, artivism - and the valorization of these practices by institutions afterwards is a frequent process in the art world today. In this paper I will discuss the discourse produced by artists, curators and theorists, thinking if these artistic practices in the world of contemporary art can work as a representation of the way in which contemporary culture has established its relationship with time and space. The hypothesis that I sustain here is that we live in a scenario where the art world valorizes collective artistic experiences that are associated with everyday aesthetics and afterwards classify it as a new utopia. A new temporality seems to emerge in the present culture, along with this, different utopian discourses rise in art. This type of art places itself as the utopia of the everyday life, constructed for the present time in the urban space. Thus, the focus of this paper is to make a brief theoreti- cal study on contemporaneity which points to important changes in the way in which individuals relate to everyday experience, narrative and memory, in order to understand the recent transformations in the world of contemporary art.

This paper discusses the convergence between literature and social-political analysis in Axel Honneth’s social philosophy, more precisely in his most recent work. Honneth demonstrates how primarily films and novels can draw attention to social pathologies in the sense pursued in his model of critical theory, thus creating tracks to investigate a particular understanding of a society situated in its time. Thus, this paper starts by focusing on the delineation of what is meant by social pathology and some of its modes in Honneth’s theory of recognition. It then analyzes how Honneth draws on works of art to identify social pathologies and subsequently applies this method of analysis to the Brazilian film “Neighboring sounds”, of director Kleber Mendonça Filho. In the conclusion it returns to the consideration of the mechanism of social pathologies that cause invisibility as impediments to social emancipation and how these barriers can be analyzed from a methodological point of view in consonance with the critical theory.

This paper is focused on urban interventions mediated by culture in large cities. Such inter- ventions aim to promote the cities with economic objectives such as attracting investors, residents and tourists. From an empirical case, the Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade, in Belo Horizonte, the changes in sociability at Liberdade Square and the sociocultural limits of this strategy to the urban public life are discussed. The paper discusses the concepts of landscape of power, scene and public space.

The main objective of this paper is to examine the present stage of Brazilian democracy from a theoretical-historical perspective, in which the influence of historical-structural factors in the country¿s political culture is highlighted. It also evaluates elements related to contemporary forms of social malaise (corruption, patrimonialism, among others) and their impact on generating cynicism and distrust among Brazilians. Based on these concepts, the paper tries to identify what political values and norms are internalized by Brazilians and produce their empirical memory. Relying on data from a survey analysis, the results indicate that Brazilians show a tendency to naturalize negative political values producing an empirical memory that devalues democratic principles.

This article aims to introduce memorization practices, experienced by diverse groups, focusing on hegemonic memories (such as those represented in memory institutions like museums and archives as well as those carried on by its professional archivists, librarians, historians and official state policies of patrimonialization) and dissenting memories (in our case, indigenous thought). The definition of history and memory (Popular memory group, 1982) has played a key-role during the construction of national identities and political domination, through the imposition of specific and partial versions as universal and shared ones, and through the occlusion, exclusion and silencing of the meanings of the past for subaltern groups. The same dynamic applied in processes of colonization, expropriation (Bonfil, 1993) and domestication (Gnecco, 2000). This paper questions to what extent the official mechanisms or devices of memory and forgetting were successful in silencing, change or represent truly the "non-hegemonic voices". On the other side, the paper introduces "new" forms of inscription and expression of non-hegemonic memories, other than documents in archives, such as body (corporal painting), rituals and landscape (sacred lands). Therefore, the definition of historical text expands dramatically. This research is situated at the crossroad of global and local cultural practices, which are represented most obviously in challenges around the definition of identities. Systems of historical representation (such as archives and museums) have played a crucial role in meeting this challenge. In spite of relations of subordination experienced by indigenous people, some groups have had success in reinventing and construct "another history".

This paper addresses inequalities as historical constructions. It sees the disjunction between inequalities and rights as having continuity and discontinuity in economic, political, and cultural aspects. In this sense, despite social policies and the middle scale decision devices, the evaluation of the Gini coefficient shows a massive persistence of inequalities. On one hand, human rights had consolidated in Brazil through conflicts regarding democracy; on the other, there are still paradoxes on contemporary democracy, and this paper aims to show some obstacles for an adequate distribution of civil rights.

This paper discusses some interfaces between the approaches to political learning, and their reference to situations of social exclusion, conflict and popular organization. The first part of the paper discusses the approach to the study of political learning among the elites; the second part examines approaches to research of political culture among the masses; and the third part outlines an alternative approach to political learning derived from Jürgen Habermass theory of communicative action. In the paper these approaches are applied to the study of a territory of exclusion, conflict, and popular organisation (a group of favelas in downtown Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil). Finally, the paper outlines some procedures to achieve a more general understanding of political learning

The article analyses the emergency measures of social protection created in response to the COVID-19 crisis in Brazil – the Emergency Benefit aimed at the formal labor regulated by the Consolidation of Labor Laws, and the Emergency Assistance offered to “informal” workers. In particular, it focuses on trade unions and on the definitions of “labor” and “workers” that guide these welfare programs. The paper draws on qualitative and quantitative evidence to assess the role of trade unions and the self-organization of workers in the making of social protection in the context of the pandemic.

The aim of this paper is to problematize current expectations around the future of Brazil in a context of post-pandemic of Covid-19. Whereas several analyses point out the novel coronavirus as a generator of historical ruptures, capable of fostering considerable economic, political and social change, we argue that the effects of the pandemic are prone to reinforce the established structures. In order to substantiate empirically our investigation, we adopt as a research strategy multi-sited ethnography contributions, through which we juxtapose: (1) the progressive adoption of neoliberal measures, in Brazil and overseas; (2) the intimately related process of environmental deregulamentation in Brazil; and (3) measures taken by the Brazilian government in face of the pandemic of Covid-19. Hence, we identify a process of universalization of economics logic, granting the market the institutional responsibility to control and overcome not only environmental degradation, but also economic crisis and Covid-19 propagation and treatment. Our conclusions indicate that, instead of triggering the process of building a “new world”, crisis such as the current environmental degradation and pandemics might actually sustain the present hegemonic order.

This paper addresses the dispute between the realization of rights and the financialization of the Brazilian State, focusing on the analysis of the economic discourse and legal structure of the New Tax Regime, in force since 2016. It is questioned whether the New Tax Regime is constitutional and whether its duration impacts the realization of rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is carried out by means of historical survey, budgetary data and legal interpretation using the constitutionally adopted ideology theory as an instrument that affirms that there isn’t a unique economic ideology in the constitution, but a plurality of possibilities to materialize the welfare state. Among the economic aspects that dispute the public budget, it is possible to point two main doctrines: the economics of ethics and the economics of engineering. There is a predominance of the economics of engineering in the current legal regulation and budget formation, which allows a perception of reduction in the realization of rights both in ordinary times and in times of COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper analyzes the compulsory measures adopted by Brazil and Chile in processes of expulsion of migrants. The particular case of Haitian migration is studied, and what its implications have been at the judicial level, through a case study highlighting what have been the criteria and standards applied by the immigration authorities of both countries. In relation to the procedure to be adopted, it is observed that through qualitative research it will be possible to account for the different representations on the subject under study, without neglecting the quantitative method, as it will contribute to the evaluation and categorization of contained data in government information databases, such as data from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security of Brazil, the National Institute of Statistics and the Judiciary of Chile, and the Institute of Public Policies and Human Rights of Mercosur, with the elaboration of a diagnosis of the displacement of Haitians in South American countries, with special emphasis on the migratory realities of Haitians in Brazil and Chile. In the same way, the research includes the analysis of decisions adopted by the Superior Courts of Justice of Chile and Brazil, as well as the documentary and bibliographic survey, especially articles from specialized international magazines on the subject. In addition, the existing laws and public policies in Chile and Brazil, the conventions, protocols and other international instruments that help to better understand the reality studied will be consulted.

The social vulnerability of youth results from a series of overlapping factors. The combination of low schooling and income, labor market insertion difficulties and barriers to access to social policies can be understood as structural causes for vulnerability. This is a phenomenon that has significantly affected a large portion of the young population in Brazil. The main dimensions for the study of social vulnerabilities are work, human capital and social relations. Considering the diverse dimensions, this paper focuses on one of the determinants of vulnerability, which is the way certain population groups enter the labor market. The objective is to investigate the characteristics of the labor market of young people in five large favelas of the city of Belo Horizonte, analyzing indicators such as occupation rates, unemployment and distribution in the occupational groups, considering the differences for men and women and for the age groups of 15 to 18 and 19 to 24 years. In addition, has also been calculated The Youth Vulnerability Index, which measures the degree of social exclusion of young people. The data used came from the demographic census of 2010 of IBGE, considering as a lower level of aggregation the weighting areas that were compatible with slums areas. The results show that in certain areas of the city of Belo Horizonte young people enter the labor market earlier, without continuing their studies, have a higher rate of unemployment and greater insertion in the informal sector. It is also observed a greater occupational segregation of women in relation to men.

On this paper, we investigate black bloc’s mobilization processes for protest events, based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation. In order to do so, firstly we localize black blocs in the field of autonomism, highlighting the autonomist cultural and identity plurality. Secondly, we proceed to map the analysis on black bloc’s mobilization processes in Brazil and abroad. Finally, we take on our interviews’ content analysis, provided with theoretical elements extracted from the expert literature on one hand and, on the other hand, with ethnographical experience. Our results converge into the creation of three interrelated types of black blocs’ mobilization, oriented by (a) the articulation of affinity groups; (b) previous and systematic bloc organization; and (c) the spontaneous bloc formation through the sharing of affective states and interaction on digital social networks.

The objective of this paper is to report a study carried out at three Brazilian universities addressing only production engineering undergraduate courses. We sought to locate agents that had the same professional education to identify their different social positions, struggles, and disputes. The reason is based on the hypothesis that the students enrolled in the same university course, such as a prestigious engineering university course, are marked by different trajectories that may depend on symbolic capitals (cultural and economic) and the social origin and life trajectory of these students and of future graduates.

Calculation of production costs suggests that economic viability of soybean crop is higher in more extensive areas, where gains of scale are higher. However, family farmers have kept this activity for many generations, defying the purely economic logic of efficiency and profitability. Having this in mind, the main goal of this paper is to understand the rationality, strategies, and motivations of family farming involved in soybean production, based on a field research with farmers in Capanema, located in the southwest of Paraná. The empirical evidence gathered in the region reveal some endogenous factors related to culture of the rural population, know-how on soybean production, tradition, and possibilities given by favorable soil and climate. The different combinations of these factors explain the resilience of family farmers in growing soybean, despite the existing economic difficulties.

In Brazil, Extractive Reserve is an environmental conservation unit. It is subject to a comanagement regime by residents, resources users, representatives of public and private agencies and civil society. This paper aims to understand how these actors interact to build this institution in a participatory way. It applies the sociological concepts of social networks, social and cultural capital, habitus and field, common resources management and interactive governance to the experience of the Caeté-Taperaçu Extractive Marine Reserve, in Bragança municipality, Pará State. The research employed a qualitative methodology, including document analysis about fisheries in the Amazonian seashore, semi-directive interviews with local fishermen and observations in meetings at the Association of Residents and Users of the Reserve during the year 2012. The social networks among users, especially fishermen, were incomplete, denser at the local level and with few external links, hence the contradiction between inshore fishery management and distant fishery deregulation. Yet, the growth of awareness of caring for the environment in the new territory is evident. The local committees, assemblies and the joint designing of rules and plans foster the interactive learning, despite the capital inequalities of the involved actors.

In this paper we analyze some aspects related to the problem of violence against women from a qualitative research completed recently (2016) with women living in Goiânia, Goiás, who have gone through contexts of violence triggered by their partners – boyfriends or husbands. We explore the meanings attributed to the experiences, attentive to the subjective processes that signal a break and a reframing of the situation of violence suffered by the women, the research subjects. The study focuses on specific characteristics and similarities in the analyzed trajectories and allows to conclude that: (i) despite the relative delay in understanding the context of violence in its early signs, (ii) assigning idiosyncratic traits to partners such as explosive behavior or jealousy and (iii) the reluctance and hesitation to seek help at moment of violence, this group of women managed to give a new meaning to their lives, indicating a desire to overcome what they went through, something already or very close to the outcome in the narratives of them all. Their overcoming points to a shift in power relations, as stressed by feminist studies dealing with the issue of violence. The notion of subjectivity as agency and not only as a subjection leads to the possibility, at least in some contexts, of resistance and freedom of action. It is about this dyad, subjection/agency related to the issue of violence against women, this article aims to deal with.

Contemporary economy – marked by a very intense globalization as well the new in- formation and communication technologies – has achieved an incredible increase in competitiveness. Cultural and intangible meanings linked to products and services have become almost more important than their functionality. This is particularly – but not exclusively – true in sectors that comprise the so-called creative economy, as the design, visual arts, music, fashion, food etc. In contemporary societies, merchandises stand out for their uniqueness and for having both economic value and symbolic value. Having this scenario as background, this paper presents a case study based in Australia, which reveals how the segment of indigenous arts turned to be part of the creative economy in that country, allowing first nation people to have a culturally significant and economi- cally positive occupation. Finally, the text illustrates the relevance of interdisciplinary approaches to analyze artistic-cultural practices and processes.

The central purpose of this paper is to question the low visibility of food insecurity and food aid in the current European political context. At first, the reader is invited to a commented and critic visit to Milan 2015 Universal Exhibition. Also, it is demonstrated that food security and food aid remained in second plan in relation to other themes that rich countries prioritized to show the world. Then, the analysis of the main European Food Aid Program is able to demonstrate the social, political and economical relevance of the food insecurity problem in the continent and particularly in France. In second, the article examines the problems of poverty, food insecurity and waste of food in the European context. Third, it is mentioned the main European program of food aid, which existence shows the social, political and economic relevance of the problem in that continent. The case of France, one of the countries whose pavilion was one of the most visited in Milan 2015, which has a portion of its population living in food insecurity and assisted by food aid. Finally, three reasons for the scarce mention of those themes in the event in Milan are presented.

This paper analyses the relation between identity and the stigmas which are connected to the people that somehow deal with trash, emphasizing features in the studies related to the contemporary subjects and their identifications, within their own social transformation. The methodological procedures adopted were: from the point of view of the form of the problem’s approach, a qualitative paradigm was chosen; with regards to their objectives, the research has an explanatory approach, and as a technical procedure, the field research was chosen. In order to analyze the testimonials collected from the Social Representation Theory, the main features of the Collective Subject Approach methodology was used. Finally, it has been noticed that working with trash has an impact on the constitution of its processes of emancipation and identification.

The goal of this paper is to understand how some changes in the Brazilian classical music field since the late 1970s happened, through the analysis of the trajectory of two impor- tant Brazilian composers: Gilberto Mendes and Willy Corrêa de Oliveira. I noticed that a pulverization of aesthetical fights and movements not occurred only in Brazil, but also in the Euroamerican context in that moment. Those alterations were connected to political and aesthetical perceptions. Besides that, the discourse in favor of an approximation of popular artistic creation was present in the creative process of these two composers, in a movement characterized by the musical field as “aesthetical overture” or “post-modernism musical”. Therefore, I seek to demonstrate the process that led to the dissolution of some practices and discourses of important social actors of avant-gard music in the period between 1960 and 1980 in Brazil.

This paper analyzes the process of institutionalization of community participation as a collegiate level of the Unified Health System. The Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito’s approach of the Immunization Paradigm has been used as both a theoretical-methodological tool to analyze the relationship between life and law and a strategy to advance in the construction of policies oriented to a common framework. In its approximation to law, the focus of the community experience as a political strategy for struggle and institutionalization in the State has taken the path of negative immunization of the right to health by the State. In such approximation, the community participation enters into the dual universe of the property system and starts generalizing the common of its claim in a sense of public property, i.e. state property. In this sense, we have pointed out a community participation that is not limited to reproducing models, but rather able to disrupt the public/private dichotomy in favor of the notion of common and an affirmative bio-politics.

This paper aims to compare the use of the concept of hierocracy, in its dynamic complexity, in various historical roles it assumes, especially in terms of its influence on the development of Western modernity. The main text used for this analysis is Sociology of Domination, by Max Weber. The article discusses the relationship of hierocracy with political power, petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, capitalism, democracy and human rights. It makes some considerations about hierocracy as fundamental to the development of Weber’s sociology, as a necessary step to understand what is rationality, modernity, disenchantment of the world and heroic individualism, which are essential elements of the author’s theoretical constructs.

Games, competitions and plays are some of the most constant phenomena of human experience. According to the classic formulation of Johan Huizinga’s Homo ludens (from 1938), culture itself would derive its fundamental features from the elementary structure of play. To him, poetry, law, war, music, religion and everything we regard as serious, sacred and respectful derive at some level from ancient sacred games, and still keep their elementary features. In social theory, the participation in games and competitions usually highlights their symbolic, ritual and communicational aspects, as well as their links to wider sociability networks. However, it should be noted that game-like situations show a great potential for the expression of social dramas, as they develop the passion they raise out of the dramatic tension of the conflicts they represent. In this paper, starting from two ethnographic experiences, we wish to explore the symbolic dimension of ordinary participation in games in Brazilian culture.

This paper aims to investigate the growing internationalization of higher education by examining the federal government’s Science without Borders Program, highlighting the academic debate on topics such as territorial boundaries and flows, globalization and geopolitics of scientific knowledge. It also aims at analyzing this program on the basis of official speeches and news present in the mainstream media, observing its conception, forms of participation and early developments. As a method, we used literature review and documental research in order to see how the Science without Borders Program, although strategic for Brazil’s development as an important nation of the Southern Hemisphere, reproduces conventional values. Far from questioning the current Western model of development, it is based on the center-periphery model and on the supremacy of natural science as a way of integrating our country into the valued industrial and technological routes of the world system.

This paper discusses the relationship between the Catholic Church and the State in Cuba from the beginning of the revolutionary process (1959) to the present day. In this sense, it examines three key moments: the tension and distance in the context of the transition to socialism developed in the country; the reapproaching that culminated with the visit of Pope John Paul II in the 90s, still under the impact of the fall of the Soviet bloc and the international isolation faced by the country, and finally the more recent relationships, marked by the visit of the Pope, now emeritus, Benedict XVI and the affirmation of the Catholic Church as the main internal interlocutor with the Cuban government. Thus, this work demonstrates that the strained relations in the 60s were replaced by the establishment of stable relationships, a checkered normality, which enabled the emergence of the Catholic Church as a key actor in the current Cuban political context.

This paper is an original exercise of exploring some of the social actions of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Portugal. Taking into consideration the contingences of each region, the UCKG tries to make and link new faithful through the social action organized mainly by organizations such as Sisterhood and Woman in Action, and by the Associação Beneficente Cristã, which has been already closed in Brazil. On the one hand, the church establishes partnerships with governmental institutions in order to promote itself as a social welfare organization. On the other hand, the sisterhoods offer promises of emotional success and social reconstruction. These programs encourage women to be committed to the church routine and to discipline themselves. The resulting achievement is a vehicle of empowerment and transformation. The ethnographic material is composed of articles and stories collected from newspapers, journals, magazines, websites and blogs created by the church and that register social actions of the UCKG during 2009 and 2010.

This paper theme is the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in sociological research, and in social sciences, in general, from the perspective of the multi-method approach – also designated as methodological triangulation. The argument presented here is that a multi-method approach is one of the most complete forms of empirical research, once it combines the strength of large samples, and their ability to generalize, with the strength of case studies, and its ability to identify causal mechanisms. However, it presents many challenges in its implementation, especially when its goal is corroboration. From a review of the reference literature, I will indicate how these challenges can be overcome. I begin by specifying the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative methods, and of their combination (multi-method approach), pointing to the potentials and limitations in this combination, and I conclude describing two studies as examples: a classic research for excellence (Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste), in which Bourdieu (1977b) used a combination of methods to verify the determinants of cultural practices, and a more recent study (Corruption and inequality at the crossroad – a Multimethod Study of Bribery and Discrimination in Latin America), in which Fried et al. (2010) discuss the relationship between corruption and social inequality in Latin America, from an experiment followed by qualitative interviews as a way to better understand and explain the results of the experimental phase.

The paper presents the Brazilian heritage policies with emphasis on the appreciation of the cultural diversity and cultural heritage of the expressions of African origin, discussing projects, tensions and paradoxes. The investigation of aspects of the “patrimonialization” of the guardians of the quilombola memory in Laranjeiras (Sergipe State) discusses the development of public policies concerned with the symbolic value of the Brazilian cultural heritage and its conceptual expansion – as presently perceived and understood – as a result of the crossing of elements that constitute the material and immaterial culture.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of prosumption on the basis of the re-significations that the term underwent in the context of the restructuring of production in the 1980s and the new links between work and consumption resulting from that. Based on academic texts and empirical illustrations, as well as on Marxian literature on the production of value, the aim of the paper is to understand how the formatting of the consumer-worker and worker-consumer takes place and to discuss the way in which contemporary capital has sought to deal with two of its main challenges: the extension of abstract labor and the overcoming of the temporal gap between production and realization of value. This process points to novel and more subtle forms of exploitation of the worker and the consumer and requires a return to Marx to think about the blurred boundaries between production and realization of value in these new forms of work and consumption.

This article analyzes the contributions of the Institutional Scholarship Program for Initiation (PIBID) of Social Sciences of the Federal University of Mato Grosso in the training of Sociology teachers for basic education in Cuiabá (Mato Grosso State). The main objective of this paper is to discuss the scope and the limitations that the conceptions and practices prevailing in the public schools of basic education and higher education institutions that train teachers, on the one hand, and the factors that influence recruitment for the teaching career, on the other, may bring to the purposes of the recent Institutional Scholarship Program for Initiation into Teaching (PIBID-CAPES). This is a qualitative investigation that has as its main techniques bibliographical review, ethnography at the PIBID schools and interviews with scholarship holders and supervisors. Since the Program is part of a wider set of actions that aim to establish a public policy for teacher training and basic education, the first part of the article describes the goals and principles that give support to the proposal. The second part is devoted to the assessment of the impact of training actions of the PIBID of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Mato Grosso on students (both scholarship holders and non-scholarship holders) and to the contextualization of the experience in the more general framework of this teacher training course. Finally, in the light of the experiences described in the second part, the article presents an assessment of current features of the educational systems that can prevent, if they not changed, the objectives pursued by the Program, viz. fostering the improvement of training and the enhancement of the teaching career, integrating the theoretical and practical training in the curriculum of the courses with the inclusion of schools as loci of training.

The academic debate about the teaching of sociology has been continuously promoted, especially since 2008, when the subject returned to the school curriculum in the whole country. However, new elements have emerged and have led to new research topics. Among them is the production and circulation of textbooks, considering mainly the introduction of Sociology in the National Textbook Plan (NTP) since 2012. While in the first bidding two books were selected, in the second one for the year 2015 six were selected, which mirrors the increase in production and the improvement of these cultural artifacts. In this article we contextualize the Sociology textbook as well as its introduction in the NTP and then examine how research is present in the activities of selected Sociology textbooks for the 2015 NTP, considering that research is understood in this paper as a pedagogical principle for the teaching of Sociology in accordance with the National Curriculum Guidelines (2006), which is deeply relevant in view of the central role that textbooks play in the practice of Elementary Education teachers. For a better analysis of this issue, we classify the research proposals in two types: methodological and informative research. At the end we notice the persistence of the latter type, which has a more superficial character, although there is a broad recognition of the importance of considering research as a pedagogical principle as well as a qualitative increase of this issue in the approved textbooks, so that we can consider that this is a phenomenon that is in a process of consolidation.

This paper aims to investigate the motivations that have led students to the teacher training course on Social Sciences at UFMT. In recent years we can see some changes in this course such as the introduction of the Institutional Program of Initiation into Teaching - PIBID/Sociology/UFMT, new approaches to supervised internship as well as a greater presence teachers qualified in Social Sciences at the local schools. The impact of these changes was investigated in a qualitative research project with in-depth interviews, starting from semi-structured script and with a sample of eight Bachelor’s Degree students of Social Sciences. The results indicated that the profile of students has changed. Before, the course attracted lot of working students/graduates, just like most evening courses. Today, the entrants’ profile is younger. The motivations of these young people have been twofold: an admiration for inspiring teachers and a view of Sociology as a science required to unravel the complexity involved in social relations.

The paper aims to bring new elements to the current debate about the middle class in Brazil, taking the class identities and perceptions about middle class as its object. In recent years a huge number of individuals and families achieved intermediate levels of income and joined the middle layer of the population. We analyze the perceptions of those individuals about their social position – seeking to establish a comparison with the perception present among the “traditional middle class” – using data collected through semi-structured interviews. The analyzes show that individuals of intermediate socioeconomic profile do not seem to be the ones who more typically identify themselves as middle class; it was only among respondents of “traditional middle class” that we observed a clear and obvious identification with that class. These results show some of the limitations of the concept of ‘new middle class’ currently applied to Brazil.

This paper refers to a broader research focused on the trajectory of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Brazil. As an important institution in the Brazilian labor scene, the ILO has currently excelled in projects that move around the idea of decent work. Through intense cooperation with other institutions, the ILO has exerted great influence on the so-called “world of work”. In this sense, I have performed a mapping of themes and areas of social and political articulation primarily engendered between the ILO, the Labor Prosecution Office, and the Ministry of Labor and Employment, focusing on an analysis of the dissemination of the policy of decent work. I think that through this mapping it is possible to identify, on the basis of these privileged spaces, relevant themes and guidelines for the field of labour in Brazil. For this purpose, I conducted an extensive bibliographic and documentary research, prioritizing information about actions of the ILO in Brazil.

This paper discusses how, through the creation of Embratur (Brazilian Tourism Company) in 1966, an idealized Brazilian female body was constructed and used to help manufacture a national identity, reinforcing the stereotype of the sexualized Brazilian woman. As it was often associated with sex tourism, this stereotype received much criticism and led to a negative image of Brazil abroad. However, in the 1990s the official tourism lobby softened the “sexy tone” of its discourse, and in 1999 Embratur received an award from the World Tourism Organization for its campaign to help fight the exploitation of children and youth by sexual tourism. In order to better understand how this change in the idealized Brazilian female body unfolded, it is important to deconstruct beauty standards – focusing on those that apply to Brazilian women as seen from abroad – and their relationship to modern consumer culture. Assuming that the cultural analysis of the female body emerges as an important issue in the field of Social Science, the focus on body image can be viewed as a key element in discussions about the construction of national identity.

This paper discusses the importance of analysing Hollywood productions in Sociology. Most of these reflections derive from research for my PhD thesis, in which the use of movies to undertake consistent analyses of subjects relevant to life in society was central. Methodological questions about the analysis of fictional movies and its contributions to Sociology are dealt with, as well as about the presence of cinematographic references and audiovisual media in contemporary life. Thus, the article discusses how the mainstream cinema constitutes a relevant object of sociological analysis, which demands specific methods that are capable of going beyond the limits of technical analyses and a simple quantification of reception variables. At the same time, it also problematizes how this particular cinema affects social life and is affected by it.

Throughout our history, the idea of Brazil has been the subject of several elaborations, in general combining political and aesthetic aspects. However, at the turn of the third mil- lennium this process has taken a new shape. Appropriations and reworkings of the idea of Brazil multiplied. The initiatives were everywhere, reaching different sectors of cultural and artistic production, the media and especially the market. The objective of this paper is to present the results of a documentary research project on the topic conducted in the course of the 2000s, which indicate two basic changes in comparison to the movements in the 20 th century: the displacement of political interest to marketing, as well as of the emphasis on national identity to cultural diversity. In conclusion, we discuss the implica- tions of the slide of identity construction from the sphere of politics to consumption.

This paper examines some of the main theories about stigmatization, deviance, mar- ginalization and criminalization, and submits the situation of the indigenous peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul to a brief analysis according to these theories. In first part, it deals with the sociological approaches of Goffman, Becker and Elias, who point out the reasons and effects of stigmatization, labelling and marginalization and explain elementary fea- tures of the relationship between established people and outsiders. In the second part, it discusses the phenomenon of criminalization and the selectivity the of criminal justice system from the point of view of critical criminology. Finally, it seeks to identify the labelling, stigmatization, marginalization and criminalization of indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul in the light of the fundamental concepts of the theses dealt with in the first two parts of the text.

This paper examines in a comparative manner some interpretations of Brazil’s moderniza- tion and its relation to the issue of social inequality produced in Brazilian Social Thought. We seek to show the points of convergence and divergence between the perspectives of the group of interpreters analyzed here. On the basis of the comparative analysis of some of our main interpreters we look for resources that may contribute to a broad understanding of the phenomenon of social inequality, which is a central theme in Brazil today.

The article aims to investigate an identity process of promotion of an ethnic group by focusing in the 1970s and 1980s, since this period is characterized by a process of mod- ernization of the economy in the region of Caxias Sul, in Rio Grande do Sul State. In order to explain this process of valuing the local culture, which is here called valuing italianity, the research project focuses on two groups, viz. intellectuals and entrepreneurs, since they are considered important social actors in the production of ethnical symbols. The research data showed close relations between entrepreneurs and intellectuals, established as they got together to implement strategies for regional development and to promote the local culture. The paper highlights a specific process of association of economic and intellectual capital, articulated though strategies of interest groups designed to legitimate and recognize a field of knowledge, as well as through actions designed to value and promote the local culture. In order to map the network of relations between these two groups, the article discusses trajectories of entrepreneurs and intellectuals involved in the promotion of the local culture and in regional development.

The theoretical and political approach process involving the categories of culture and development engendered the conditions of possibility that enabled the development of economic and cultural policies. Such policies now occupy the center of the contemporary agenda for public cultural policies. The actions and programs that mobilize most discursive and material resources are directed to the so-called creative economy, whose concep- tual and political lexicon is spreading and consolidating in very diverse organizations. To understand the specificity of this process, it is necessary to explore the theoretical, political and institutional realm in which the categories of culture and development stood in sharp contrast between the years 1950 and 1980. This paper seeks to objectify the main sociological conditions responsible for the dissolution of that tension, whose practical effects have allowed the operation of certain cultural policies, such as financing the incubation cultural enterprises.

This paper addresses a discussion on excessive consumption in postmodernity and its effects on female subjectivity. From a theoretical perspective guided by the social sciences and gender studies, consumerist behavior and its pathological bias are seen primarily as symptomatic products of sociocultural transformations, which impact the emotional lives of women.

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct, from a eurocentric perspective, how migration is objectivated, today, in Cape Verde, the circumstances in which immigration is thought and the conditions to understand it out of the patterns that shape it into a Western form, static. Here, witchcraft appears as an obstacle to this relation of domination.