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| Author(s): |
Lenin Bicudo Barbara
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2018-06-04 |
| Examining board members: |
Leopoldo Garcia Pinto Waizbort;
Renan Springer de Freitas;
Mauricio Roberto Motta Pinto da Luz;
Alexandre Braga Massella;
Gabriel Moura Peters
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| Advisor: | Leopoldo Garcia Pinto Waizbort |
| Abstract | |
The inquiries assembled here belong primarily to the field of cognitive sociology and, to a lesser extent, to the sociology of culture. Their main goal is to sort out and clarify some of the major problems pertaining a sociological approach to the topic of human ignorance. To reach said goal, I start with a conceptual discussion of ignorance, addressing the ontological question as to what ignorance is, as well as the methodological one as to how we should appropriately grasp it from a sociological point of view. This step comprises the first part of the thesis, and said questions are tackled by means of a critical exchange with the available literature on ignorance in the fields of sociology and epistemology. In the second part of the thesis, I endeavor to bring such theoretical discussion into play by presenting two independent empirical inquiries or case studies. These are grounded on a broad documentary research I conducted on two distinct cultural currents, as I call them: namely homeopathy and masculinism. The rationale behind the choice of the aforementioned subjects is that the perpetuation of ignorance of facts one could easily know given the cognitive resources presently available is key to the endurance of both homeopathy and masculinism as \"living\" doctrines as unique belief systems around which individuals coming from different backgrounds associate with each other, and which help to shape the decision making process of a number of those individuals. I hope that, through a detailed and context-sensitive scrutiny of each of these sets of ideas both of which, as I uphold, are greatly at odds with the stock of knowledge currently available to us some insight into the inner workings of ignorance and its social conditioning may be obtained, particularly when it comes to the persistence of unsound ideas; furthermore, I hope that the theoretical and empirical inquiries presented here may shed some light upon the limits of a sociological take on ignorance and other related cognitive phenomena. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 13/23766-9 - Sociology in the triangle of the humanly possible: a sociological contribution to the theoretical thematization of human ignorance, applied to the study of two cultural currents in contemporary Brazil: homeopathy and masculinism |
| Grantee: | Lenin Bicudo Bárbara |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |