This line of research focuses on current social transformations and their historical dimension, with reference to their implications for the social structure, for power relationships, and for the constitution of sociabilities and subjectivities. Changes in work, production and social reproduction give new meanings to social action, as well as to the categories of space, time, moralities and identity negotiations. Cities become privileged localities of new social and spatial inequalities, as well as sites of struggle. This line of research includes topics such as globalization, technological innovations and the labor market; professions; creative and immaterial work and reconfiguration of social classes; social actors and collective action; social, occupational and spatial mobility; peripheries and urban social movements, territorialities and migrations; new forms of solidarity, moral markets and religiosity.

LEST-M – Laboratory for Studies on Work, Professions and Mobilities

Sociology of Professions

NEREP – Center for Studies on Religion, Economics and Politics

NaMargem – Center for Urban Research

Professors involved in this line of research

Aline Suelen Pires, André Ricardo de Souza, Cibele Saliba Rizek, Gabriel Feltran, Isabel Georges, Jacob Carlos Lima, Maria Aparecida Moraes, Maria da Gloria Bonelli, Oswaldo Truzzi, Paul Freston, and Samira Feldman

The classical sociological themes of social differentiation and economic inequalities have been refined in recent decades to include reflections on national, religious, racial and ethnic, sexuality and gender identities. In addition to investigations based on field research and statistics, cultural production has also proved to be an important means of analysis for understanding the social mechanisms of creation and reproduction of exploitation, marginalization and subalternization of specific social groups. Cultural production comprises studies concerning social inequalities of a socioeconomic nature, as well as those that ponder about other forms of subalternization of groups and cultures: the reproduction of inequalities through the culture industry; contemporary race-ethnic relations in Brazilian society; gender relations and social reproduction; historical investigations into the social processes of subalternization and control of stigmatized social identities; and diversification of Brazil’s religious market.

Sociology and Studies on the African Diaspora

NEAB – Center for Afro-Brazilian Studies

Center for Research on Differences, Gender and Sexuality

Research Group on Sexuality, Entertainment and Body

Studies on children, childhood and early childhood education: policies and practices of difference

Professors involved in this line of research

Anete Abramowicz, Jorge Leite Júnior, Maria Inês Rauter Mancuso, Oswaldo Truzzi, Priscila Medeiros, Richard Miskolci, and Valter Roberto Silvério

The focus of this line of research is the study of contemporary transformations promoted by new technologies, environmental issues and forms of rural sociability. In studies on technologies, it investigates their applicabilities and impacts on social relations and on forms of sociability, cyberactivism and the relationships between subjectivities and digital culture. With regard to the environment, the investigations here focus on social patterns of use, regulations and access to natural resources, socio-environmental conflicts, complex interactions between the social system and socialized nature, and the dynamics of environmental movements. Contemporary ruralities are studied from the perspectives of agrarian issues, the forms of exploitation of rural labor, rural settlements, public policies, and conflicts over access to natural resources in rural areas.

NAMCULT – Center for Studies on Environment, Culture and Technology

Trama – Land, Work, Migration and Memory

Ruras – Ruralities, Environment and Society

Professors involved in this line of research

Maria Aparecida Moraes Silva, Rodrigo Constante Martins, Rosemeire Scopinho, Samira Feldman, and Richard Miskolci

This line of research examines power in its various macro and microstructural, institutional and non-institutional manifestations, especially insofar as it pertains to the relationship between the state and civil society. Ii includes research on social conflicts, collective actions and social movements; conflict and justice management; dynamics of implementation of social policies; the action of actors and ideas in the negotiation, formulation and implementation of public policy strategies. It also involves the development of studies on the State and its reconfigurations, in the institutional and social sphere, elitist or at its borders, highlighting research on the justice system, policing, prisons and sentencing, security policies; forms of justification; judicial behavior, legal discourses and practices; social construction of violence and crime; citizenship and social control; public policies to fight injustice and inequality; and state ideologies and capacities.

Dissenso – Political sociology research collective

GEVAC – Study Group on Violence and Conflict Management

Center for Studies on Law, Justice and Society

LMI-SAGEMM – Mixed International Laboratory for Social Activities, Gender, Markets and Mobilities from below (Latin America)

Professors involved in this line of research

Fábio Sanchez, Vera Cepeda, Isabel Georges, Fabiana Luci de Oliveira, Jacqueline Sinhoretto, Cibele Risek, and Maria da Glória Bonelli