In this line of research, the objective is to address socio-political phenomena at the national and international levels and their relations with the public sphere. The line operates in four main axes.
The first axis approaches political theory from a historical and comparative perspective. It focuses on the political reflection elaborated in the Western World from Antiquity to our Age. It is understood that the study of the topics that deals with political science does not exempt but requires the knowledge of both the political thought produced by philosophers and more normative knowledge, and that developed from empirical research.
The second axis takes as an object of analysis the State and its institutions. The various dimensions of strict policy, such as voting and political behavior, democracy, governance, criminal justice, and public security are analyzed. It also includes the study of political participation and formation of public opinion within the sphere of the public sphere, as well as its effects on political institutions.
The third axis deals with the interrelationships between social groups and government policies. Thus, politics is not understood as restricted to the spaces of the state and formal institutions, but as a complex dynamic that articulates and is articulated by the different social forces in their multiple potentialities and determinations. In particular, the axis is formed by researches that reflects on the locus and role of organized civil society, subaltern groups, popular movements and identities that produce in the public arena new senses and discourses.
These actions and representations are, on the one hand, responses to state policies, and actions and, on the other hand, to form new agendas and spaces within the State itself. Social conflict and political struggle are thus elements that shape politics in a broad sense and public policies in particular. Finally, the fourth axis addresses global dynamics and international relations.
The increasing flows of trade and investment in the era of globalization have challenged the borders of the state and sovereignty, generating transformations in the functions of the state and its relationship with market players. Multinational companies and multilateral financial institutions emerge as powerful actors that seek to condition states’ actions and direct public policies. As a result, States tend to create new networks of global governance and to act in regional integration processes and international regimes. In this sense, new forms of international conflicts, migrations, and transnational social movements gain relevance in this line of research.
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The research interests gathered in this line have as privileged focus the study of identity processes, based on comparative and/or relational analyzes, diagnoses, studies of sociability, and conflict inherent in social life.
The investigations start from the perception of the constitution of markers of difference: race, class, gender, and generation in contexts of production of inequality, as well as the strategies of insertion and mobility of social groups, of the processes of social change, considered in their different intellectual expressions, cultural, political, institutional and organizational.
Also studied are studies dedicated to the relations between society and nature, rural and urban, as well as processes of circulation and mobility, territorialization and ethnic belonging, which constitute networks of political participation, production, and knowledge. It is interesting to investigate, through the study of relations in zones of real or figurative frontiers, interfaces and meanings of experiences of exchanges and conflicts occurring in intermediate spaces, in the formation of new social and symbolic categories, as well as other phenomena related to interculturality. Our investigations are organized into three main axes, often interchangeable.
The first axis is devoted to the study of processes of production of inequality and difference. Ethnic-racial relations, gender studies, generation and sexuality, the emergence of new political subjects in relation to demands for recognition of the State and other social sectors, and the impact of these systems of difference in the production of knowledge are privileged.
The second axis deals with the phenomena of social and political organization and mobilization, whether in historical or contemporary contexts, urban or rural, as well as processes of mobility and migration. The themes of this axis are the impacts of public policies and development on indigenous and traditional peoples in their respective environments; the ways of inhabiting the city and the government of populations on the banks.
The third axis focuses on the production of social and political thought in Brazil, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, in contexts involving center-periphery relations, post-colonial relations, and global interactions. The analysis of this production takes place in the interface with processes and conflicts related to inequalities and social differences, expressing a diversity of political projects and of intellectual and cultural lineages/experiences.
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This line of research presents a field of debates about the production of social life in the articulation between individuals, social processes and cultural practices, guiding as a common issue a broad problematization around the construction of social classifications.
Reflections on the formation of explanatory and interpretive categories of life in society are contemplated and how they are the result of wide-ranging disputes between fields, agents, forces, discourses, and representations. This academic exercise of analysis of social processes takes place within the scope of this research line from the following major themes: artistic manifestations, patrimony, representations, power and culture; religion, morality and politics; gender, family and sexuality; power, territory and representation; trajectories, biographies, sufferings and human rights.
One of the thematic axes of this line deals with the constitution of subjects and the construction of the person, whether from the question of memory, gender and sexuality or family configurations and kinship relations. The reflections address the different sensitivities, narratives, trajectories, and biographies of individuals or groups, considering the displacements, bifurcations, and temporalities. This analysis can focus on the interface between nature and culture and from normative systems such as law and medicine.
The second axis of this line focuses on artistic manifestations and material culture, starting from the possibility of thinking specific heritage, collections, and objects – museums, cinema, art – as means of attribution of meanings that go beyond the consecrated forms of categorization of the social world. Appreciated from a technology of enchantment, things go through classifications – art/artifact, ethics/aesthetics, masculine/feminine, individual/collective, public/private – allowing to perceive processes of objectification of identities, social affiliations and everyday practices and contributing effectively to self-creation and identification and understanding of others.
The third and final axis of this research line deals with the question of religion based on its intrinsic articulation with different fields of social and subjective life, considering the analysis of religious transformations in institutional, individual and collective contexts. We are particularly interested in the relationship between religion and politics, religion and territoriality, religion and public space, religion and media, disputes of moralities, and controversies surrounding religion in the national debate. We also aim to follow the formation and changes of the Brazilian religious field, in conjunction with comparative studies of religion. Based on these themes and their cross-links, the productions of this line of research challenge boundaries between fields of study, based on a critique of the reification of categories, even the most classic, and fostering works that contribute to this research interest.
