Individualization and recognition: a study based on life stories of women who had experienced the modernization process of Assis/SP

• Grant number: 19/24607-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2020
• End date: February 29, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: José Sterza Justo
• Grantee: Laura Meira Bonfim Mantellatto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Among the particularities of the contemporary period, we will study the process of individualization as one of the gears that drives the social dynamics of today. Advancing on the theoretical-conceptual mapping of this phenomenon, we will refer to Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, which articulates the perspectives of symbolic interactionism with critical theory, thus promoting a theoretical renewal on the subject of individualization. We will conduct a field research, working with life stories of elderly women, aiming to go through the modernization process of the city of Assis/SP and, mainly, the way the structural and social transformations reverberated in the self-relationship of these women, considering the opening for a diversity of interpersonal relationships and engendered possibilities for recognition. Thus, from an Honnethian approach, we will examine the concrete experience of the modernization process, lived by women, and its possible relations with senses of autonomy. Considering the strong appeal of the family tradition in Brazilian culture, which restricts the possibilities of the existence of women as an individual agent, we understand that the time frame adopted will allow us to understand, more clearly, the establishment of a tension given between the values of modern orientation and the conservative roots of our country. (AU)