Bourdieu and Brazil: the outline of an academic genealogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The diffusion and appropriation of Pierre Bourdieu’s work in Brazil has been consolidated as an object of study in the last two decades within the Social Sciences. Therefore, this article joins this line of analysis, with the scope limited to Brazilian researchers who acted as disseminators of Bourdieu’s ideas and work between the 1960s and 1990s, from direct and indirect contact with the French sociologist. To understand the role of these then young researchers in the dissemination of Bourdieusian thought in Brazil, we developed an outline of Bourdieu’s academic genealogy in Brazil from data extracted from the Lattes and Acácia platforms, from interviews and reports of experiences published in the Center for Research and Documentation of Contemporary History of Brazil (Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil, CPDOC) and in scientific journals, as well as from direct contact with the mapped subjects. The results point to the existence of a scientific dissemination that occurred not only through the translation of Bourdieu’s original work into Portuguese and the publication of articles and collections about his work, but also through the circulation of his ideas through courses, lectures and supervisions, so that these interlocutors assumed a central position in the consolidation of this author in the Brazilian academic field.