Cultura e produção de conhecimento: as apreensões acerca da categoria cultura nas teses de doutoramento do Serviço Social brasileiro e a sua relação com a direção social da profissão

Abstract

The present research/study deals with the conceptions linked to the category of culture in doctoral thesis of the Social Service field, available online at the Sucupira digital platform, during the period between 2011 and 2017 and its relation to the social direction of the profession. From an exploratory, bibliographical and documental research that had as general objective to analyze the relation between the appropriation of the category of culture and the social direction of Brazilian Social Service in doctoral thesis defended at the Post-graduate Programs of Social Service (PPGSS). As specific objectives, it is sought to map at thesis depositories of the Programs aforementioned those that deal with the category of culture; to identify, in this production, the apprehensions about such category; and to learn its relation to the social direction of the profession. The length of time defined here justifies itself by the ascension, in such period, of the conservative wave in the country, as an expression of the larger process of the organic crisis in the current phase of late capitalism. To reach the objectives proposed here, this research had as theoretical support the Critical Social Theory of Marxian basis, built over the prism of reason, that allow us a better qualified apprehension between the dimensions that compose the real, starting from the apprehension of the social totality. Therefore, our starting point was social totality, seeking to bind the category of culture to the materiality of social life, in opposition to the culturalist assumptions, which automate and fragment such category, treating it as self- sufficient, dislodging it from materiality, and stopping it, in this way, from its critical apprehension through reason. For the data collection, we resorted to a reading list, and for its analysis, we elaborated a few tables in which the contents of the selected thesis were systematized. In that sense, the sample was composed by 4 (four) thesis, defended at the Post-Graduate Program of Social Service of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGSS/UFRJ). The results discovered confirm the prevalence of culturalist referentials in the apprehensions dealing with the category of culture, suggesting, thus, the influence of post-modern ideological assumptions, and, consequentially, the [tensionamento] in the social direction of knowledge under appreciation.