As categorias do preconceito

ferramentas e armadilhas

Abstract

The main objective of this text is to identify and to work some important theoretical tools to study the prejudice and its conceptual implications. To this end, I intend to import and use perspectives from social psychology, from international sociology, and especially from Brazilian sociology, since prejudice here assumes particular characteristics. More specifically, I can say that I will mainly use the path of correlations, because in this text I do not intend to work only with separate categories, the focus is how they relate and make sense in the social world. As well placed by Guimarães (2003), there is a distinction between analytical concept, “which makes sense only in the body of a theory,” and native, “which makes sense in the practical, effective world.” In my field work, I try to understand the native concepts by which immigrants are framed in their daily lives and how they are formed. After all, blacks, mulattoes, gringos, immigrants and even Haitians are also native categories that change according to the context in which they are employed. However, some analytical concepts can be defined, worked out and identified in the study of many concrete cases.