A interpretação da catação pelos catadores : um estudo biográfico

Abstract

The results presented in this dissertation emerge in a research process that analyzes the interpretation of waste pickers on their work activity – the waste picking – as well as the development of this interpretation in the biographical process. Considering that the interpretation of the subjects in the social world consists in the interaction with the other, in the course of their life trajectories from certain mechanisms and rules, the present study searches, in the biographical trajectory of the subjects, evidences of what and how of this interpretation. Based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the interpretative biographical research, I perform the reconstruction of two interviews using the biographical reconstruction analysis method developed by the sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Reconstructions of Aline and Vanessa cases give rise to two distinct types of interpretation on the waste picking, taking into account the macro and micro-sociological mechanisms behind these interpretations. Before presenting the types, I discuss, from the perspective of the authors of interpretative sociology, especially Alfred Schütz (2004), Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (2014), in what way the activity of the waste picking has been institutionalizing in Brazil, since the end of the nineteenth century, as a social, economic, environmental and political practice, according to mechanisms that ensure its legitimacy before society. Institutionalization, legitimation and socialization are therefore some of the processes behind these practices. The proposed approach contributes to the understanding of the social mechanisms behind the phenomenon of waste picking, evidencing the active participation of the collectors in the construction of this phenomenon.