SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF FAMILY IN TRANSFORMATION: FIFTY YEARS IN THE FAMÍLIA CRISTÃ MAGAZINE

Abstract

This article discusses the transformation process of the social representation of family related to Família Cristã magazine between 1962 and 2011. A lexical analysis was performed on 323 articles, which were selected among 100 editions. This study is based on the constructs of social influence, ideology, and social representation. Catholic Christian ideology underlies this magazine's discourse, however, the family representation is shaped by socio-historical changes as well as influenced by different kinds of knowledge and institutions. Thereby, different meanings are produced: the patriarchal family as a selfless woman's responsibility; the families that are diverse and maintained through violence and misery; the educating family that must be subordinated to science; the Christian family that must follow the Church’s rules and practices; and finally, the family in crisis due to their diverted path from religious values. Over time, the magazine has changed its discourse about family in order to maintain its power of influence and transmission of Catholic values.

Keywords:
Social Representation; Family; Sociogenesis; Social influence

Resumo

Este artigo aborda o processo de transformação da representação social da família veiculada na Revista Família Cristã entre 1962 e 2011. Foi realizada análise lexical de 323 artigos, selecionados em 100 exemplares. A discussão foi pautada em construtos como influência social, ideologia e representações sociais. A ideologia cristã católica fundamenta o discurso da revista, mas a representação é moldada em função das mudanças sócio-históricas e da influência de diversos saberes e instituições, gerando múltiplos sentidos: a família patriarcal como responsabilidade da mulher mãe abnegada; as famílias diversificadas e estruturadas em situação de violência e miséria; a família educadora que deve submeter-se à ciência; a família cristã que deve seguir normas e práticas da igreja e, finalmente, a família em crise por afastar-se dos valores religiosos. A revista vai modificando seu discurso sobre a família com vistas à manutenção de seu poder de influência e propagação de valores católicos.

Palavras-chave:
Representação social; Família; Sociogênese; Influência social

Resumen

Este artículo analiza el proceso de transformación de la representación social de la familia difundida en la revista Familia Cristiana entre 1962 y 2011. Se realizó el análisis léxico de 323 artículos, seleccionados en 100 ediciones. El debate se basó en la influencia social, la ideología y las representaciones sociales. La ideología cristiana católica cimenta el discurso de la revista, pero la representación se forma a la luz de los cambios sociohistóricos y la influencia de los diversos saberes e instituciones: la familia patriarcal como responsabilidad de la madre abnegada; las familias diversificadas y estructuradas en situaciones de violencia y miseria; la familia educadora que debe someterse a la ciencia; la familia cristiana que debe seguir las reglas y prácticas de la Iglesia, y la familia en crisis por apartarse de los valores religiosos. La revista va modificando su discurso sobre la familia con la intención de mantener su poder de influencia y propagación de valores católicos.

Palabras-clave:
Representación social; Familia; Sociogénesis; Influencia social

Introdution

Even though 'family’ is a polemic and polysemic topic, as well as an old object, it involves constant revision, given that many different discourses are found on the subject. Currently, a restructuring of family is proposed and explained by the reduction of the inequality among its members and the legitimization of multiple existing configurations. On the other hand, the transformations are understood as a family crisis, which justifies all sorts of psychological and social sores. These conceptions are built in a social amalgam of meanings and institutions and have a history. In Brazilian culture, catholic Church's Christian ideology is one of the most important symbolic matrices regarding the social construction of the family object. Therefore, we question how the historically produced social representations of family, that are linked to the catholic church, are built.

This work aimed to study the Social Representations (SR) of family that are related to the Família Cristã Magazine (FCM) between 1962 and 2011. A sociogenetic approach was carried out by analyzing the variations of content and the processes involved in the representation's genesis over time, considering the dialogue with macrosocial changes. This is not a study about society's ideas, not even Church's ideas, nor of the reader public of the studied five decades. This study analyzes the discourse of a magazine that was produced by a determined group with specific aims.

The FCM has its origin in Italy in 1915 and is published in Brazil by the Irmãs Paulinas Comunicadoras do Evangelho Congregation since 1934. It is the only magazine about and for the family with more than half a century of circulation and that has maintained certain homogeneity: it has always been published monthly by the same institution, has had women as target audience, and has aimed to evangelize and guide conducts inside Brazilian homes. Approaching a popularization vehicle of the catholic discourse enables understanding how the transformations in this discourse happened in order for the magazine to maintain its influence.

We sought the symbolic matrices of the SR production of family through the concept of Anchorage, involving the processes of social influence and social change, together with the notion of ideology. The social representation is understood here as a moving point in a system of transformations that is derived from intergroup and interinstitutional relations, as well as from processes of culture production and renovation (Jovchelovitch, 2011). To address how the SR of family has been transformed in the dialogue with different groups and discourses over time, we take as reference the study of Moscovici (1979/2011) on social influence and social change.

With the Theory of Active Minorities, Moscovici (1979/2011) amplified the comprehension of how the process of influence permeate the historical genesis of a SR, which results from negotiations of the past and present between individuals and groups. This way, change and control are both aims of social influence and each member of the group is its source and potential receiver. Thus, beyond conformity, there are other modalities of influence, such as standardization and innovation. In standardization, the reciprocal influence and the need to avoid conflict lead groups to do mutual concessions and to formulate or to welcome acceptable compromises or standards for everyone. On the other hand, innovation results from the action of a minority or when leaders impose new behaviors to their supporters. The influence is associated with the notion of conflict or to the absence of consent to the extent that innovation emerges of the dissent (Moscovici, 1979/2011).

To understand how the studied discourse is organized as immersed in the processes of reciprocal influence with other discourses and institutions, we used the concept of ideology in Geertz's (1989) perspective, seeking its relation with the Theory of Social Representations.

Ideologies are extrinsic sources of information, that standardize mechanisms of comprehension, judgement and manipulation of the world. They offer a template to the organization of social and psychological processes, serving as a matrix to the creation of collective consciousness. Similar to the SR, ideology is a modality of social thinking that depends on accumulated culture and that performs functions in the interpretation and construction of social reality. Despite being intimately related, SR and ideology are different concepts. While SR refer to symbolic determinants, to a particular object and specific agents, ideologies embrace socio-structural determinants and materials, and hold a generality character. SR act as texts and ideologies would be the codes that compose these texts, acting as a judgement generator device. Therefore, SR can modify ideological elements that contributed to its own formation (Ibáñez, 1988).

Method

Documentary sample and collecting procedures

It was selected an RFM article per semester between the years of 1962 and 2011, giving a total of 100 articles equitably distributed for each month. Each article was entirely read and it was selected articles that discussed the following aspects about family: children education; intrafamily relationship; sociological and legal data; events, rituals and courses about family; advices and reflections on the functions and the importance of family; besides 'Trust your Problems to me' and 'Month Letter' sessions. This way, approximately 6.6 articles were selected per year, leading to a text corpus of 323 articles.

Analysis Procedures

A lexical analysis was made with the Alceste software (Analyse Lexicale par Contexte d’un Ensemble de Texte). The work by Alceste (Reinert, 1986) consists in investigating the vocabulary distribution in a text from sophisticated statistical analysis, which allows the corpus organization through its partition and grouping into classes. Initially, the software decomposes "each text - or Initial Context Unit (UCI) -, in text segments (ST) - or Elementary Context Unit (UCE in the text) -, considering the double criterion in the ponctuation and size of the part" (Sousa, 2018, p. 84). Then, as Sousa highlights, the program makes a Descending Hierarchical Classification from the construction of a contingency matrix with all the UCEs. By doing so, it groups the UCEs in homogeneous classes, that are described from the occurrence of words and characterization variables. In this phase, the program does a Factorial Analysis of Correspondence. Ultimately, it identifies "the text segments that are more characteristic for each class, which makes it possible - and even fundamental - to rescue the contexts of enunciation in which the specific vocabulary of each of the classes is updated" (Sousa, 2018, p. 85).

The underlying idea is that different classes of words represent different forms of discourse about the topic. These classes were submitted to a semantic analysis in order to contextualize and interpret them (Kronberger & Wagner, 2002). In this case, the article's decade of production variable allowed to do an analysis of the discourse transformations over the researched period. This enabled understanding the Anchorage of these variations in the history of Brazil, the Church and the magazine.

Results and Discussion

All the corpus was analyzed by being divided in 2 great axes, that were subdivided in 5 classes, as it can be observed in Figure 1.

Figure 1:
Descending Hierarchical Classification of all corpus

Axis 1 explains 63% of the corpus' total variance and was named The discourse on/of family: prescriptions and practices. This was divided in three classes that address: the Christian ideology's prescriptions about family; the family discourse on its practices; and science's prescriptions about family. Axis 2 explains 37% of the corpus variance and was named Institutions that (in)form the family. It was divided in two classes that address the Christian ideology's materialization in Church's devices, as well as the notion of crisis and its relation with other social institutions.

Class 1/Axis 1 was named God created men with the head over the heart. This matches 12% of the corpus and 530 UCEs, and refers to Christian prescriptions about family. The underlying idea is that to build a life with mutual love, happiness and peace it is needed to forgive and please the husband, to control the impulses, desires and emotions. The prayer helps to keep God in the heart to face the sin of the meat, with sacrifice and without dismay, because it is needed to wipe away the tears and always keep hope and joy.

The woman-mother-spouse, built in the Christian-religious precepts, presuppose the renounce to her own pleasure in the name of the man and of the family. Her only accomplishment is the wedding. The notion that men and women complete each other and were made to live together in an ideal of love as chaste and submissive to God is naturalized. This way, love must not be permeated by carnal passion, source of desires and pleasure. Reason must always be above desires and emotions. A normative discourse is observed, serving as a species of recipe to a good life in family. The focus is on the couple:

The woman waits for her husband to forgive small tragedies, such as a burned meal and a buttonless shirt. With this tenderness made of smiles, she learns better the lesson than if it were an unfortunate scene. (1970)

Who forgot the dimension of faith, of the sacred, in the encounter between men and women got in the wrong train, headed to passion and intense pleasure, but that not always led the tender love, to the agape communion encounter in joy and in pain. (1985)

Class 2/Axis 1 is named Between science and religion, family is built in its practices and matches 20% of the total corpus, with 890 UCEs. It is a discourse regarding the family's daily life and it reflects the family's own line. The subjects of these lines tell their experiences, many times different religious or scientific prescriptions, revealing the existence of families with multiple formations and contexts of existence. Family can be a place of love and care, but it is also a place without conflicts, suffering and instability. The conflicts in the couple's relationship usually come from disagreements about the masculine and the feminine social meanings and places.

The relationship between parents and their children is described through affection and giving, but also through the difficulties assigned to personality characteristics or to generation conflict. The youngster fights for freedom of choice, the parents try to impose their authority. The children's lines reveal a reality in which they play but also work and are direct or indirect victims of violence.

The problem is that he forbids everything. I cannot leave alone for he would make a scandal. I do not forbid anything, I give him all liberty. (1973)

It is fun to work in the fair. I also like playing, playing marbles and riding a bike. I, myself, bought my bike with my money. (1993)

The police force beats a lot, just like happened when they took my father. Only, in the movies, cops are handsome and the real ones are not. (1978)

Class 3/Axis 1 was defined by the sentence: There are fundamental principles in psychology that parents cannot ignore if they want their children well and congregates the greatest percentage of the analyzed corpus (31%), which matches 1359 UCEs. In spite of also bring a prescriptive discourse, the vocabulary neatly differs from Class 1 by fundamentally focusing the scientific prescriptions on family. The aired idea is that adults need to understand the mind and personality in childhood development to mold attitudes and behaviors in the relationship with their kids. For a child to have a balanced development, exceeded demands must be avoided, but limits are very important, just as the expression of their own emotions. These teachings are based in psychology, a field of knowledge that must be sought by those who want to be good parents.

The attempt to convince parents that they do not have enough knowledge to provide a good education for their children is evident, seeming to be needed to appeal to the science of psychologists, educators and doctors. Specific knowledge, exemplary behaviours and affective detachment synthesize the Herculean efforts that parents need to do in order to fight against an external threatening world that is opposed to the sane development of their children.

Parents are good emotional educators when they are able to notice and understand their children's sentiments, to calm them and guide them through emotions. (1989) Men look back searching for some reference to give them more confidence regarding the attitude they must adopt when dealing with their children, and what they see is an anachronistic model that is totally inconsistent to the contemporary world. (2003)

Class 4/Axis 2 is named The Church and its devices and refers to the Church as an institution with practices and norms. It matches 12% of the corpus with 523 UCEs. This class addresses the Church as an ideological apparatus and its devices - letters, encyclical and documents - that aim to diffuse and control the Christian ideological discourse about family, as well as to exert control over its practices.

The anti-divorce campaign was taken on by Church authorities as a holy crusade… they asked the people to pray and to appeal together with deputies and senators, pressuring them to vote against the amendment to the constitution's article 175… the Bishop Conference promised to review the praxis of religious marriage with civil effect and the demand of civil marriage as a condition to the religious. (1979)

Divorced people with new civil union will not be able to receive Eucharist, nor to be godparents of baptism, chrism or religious marriage. (1979)

A series of religious documents that regulate familiar situations are presented, seeking to propose a clear division between right and wrong, and to guide practices in homes and in the Church. These documents affirm the Church's law supremacy, which would transcend men's law. International gatherings are organized to diffuse the Church's precepts on family, but also to discuss and adept them regarding social changes. In a local scope, discussions and diffusions of catholic ideology happen in working groups, pastoral groups and teams. These groups, together with sacraments and great catholic rituals, such as baptism and marriage, are fundamental to the ideology's maintenance and diffusion. Thus, they turn to family control by focusing on its main moments of transformation.

Class 5/ Axis 2, named Family in crisis: whose fault is it?, addresses a sociological, political or juridical discourse about the family institution. It matches 25% of the analyzed corpus and aggregates 1109 UCEs. The discourse about family is developed in the analysis on its members, that is crossed by topics that configure relevant social issues: violence, media, public policies, economy, sexuality and bioethics. The influence of different social institutions - press, school, law, science - provoked transformations in family that resulted in a crisis situation, which leads to multiple social problems.

Gender relations in the family are discussed mainly in terms of changes of the social place of women: in 1980, it points to a place of subordination; in 1990, public policies for women were highlighted; in 2000, reflections were proposed on the consequences of the increased feminine participation in the familiar income.

Another change in the family is due to the Brazilian population's aging and the constitution of a new elderly social group, with practices that were not accepted before: listen to electronic music, attend gyms, dress juvenile clothing. However, the public policies would not guarantee the appropriate assistance to this group, as well as it would not be enough regarding youth. The focus lies on the association of youth with rebellion and violence, which is considered to exist due to a worthless society. Besides, a preoccupation with an education that exerts control over sexual behavior is evident.

Educate women and immediately will grow the human level of masses. In Brazil, when a woman leaves the marginality she is placed in, the country will leave its economic, social, political and cultural asphyxiation. (1985)

Currently, there are 11 million elderly people in the country - or one out of 16 inhabitants. Brazil already surpassed 7% of people with more than 60 years old… Its number is growing, but the elderly in general are people neglected by public authorities and by their family. Moreover, they are discriminated against and are inactive, living in precarious conditions. (1992)

It is not by chance that student entities are emptying. Youngsters are now replacing political action by individual solutions to the problems. In a society each time more worthless, this means banditry and violence. Acts of violence have been turning into hits of the urban youth. (1990)

Families are presented as a place where violence begins and gets materialized, considering it is built on a relation of causality between familiar crisis and social/urban violence. Thus, the current family is blamed by the increase of violence, along with the influence of school and media.

Violence, whose fault is it? In terms of children formation, society stands on a tripod, which is represented by family, school and social media, especially television. (1977)

Another aspect that is associated to family is the research development in genetics and the new reproductive technologies. The magazine defends that this scientific evolution may be harmful to family and to society, and approaches the evolutions in genetic to the abortion issue, rejecting both by defending the protection of life to the fetus. Ultimately, the damnation of homoaffectivity and the critics to the social notion of gender are addressed by FCM, which stands for the naturalization of the social parts in the difference between genders. In the 1970s, FCM campaigned against the legalization of what was named homophily, spread in the media as a disease with possible treatments.

When a scientific action suppresses a human being with the pretext of favoring another human being, as it occurs with the embryos discard in techniques of assisted reproduction, in clonage and in the use of stem cells… this is called nazi science. (2004)

To legalize would be to give them ways to practice homophily. This solution is against the natural law and society's law. What would be the recommended ways to help cure a brother who is victim of homosexualism? We suggest the following: feminine hormones applied to the masculine organism moderate his libido. (1970)

In summary, this Class shows how great current polemic topics are interpreted as severe problems that may disturb the familiar functioning and that, at the same time, are considered results of familiar transformations. The discussed topics are associated with the notion of familiar crisis, which is considered to be the cause and, at the same time, the consequence of an infinity of social problems. This family crisis has been occupying RFM's pages and the articles try hard to explain its different causes: social structure, work and education organization, the loss of traditional values that structure society, low quality of media, and the absence of public policies.

A factorial analysis of correspondence helps to understand how all these classes and axes and how knowledge, practices, contexts and institutions are articulated to compose the SR of family. In the factorial layout analysis (Figure 2), it is observed the opposition between the two Axes described above. On the right side, we find Axis 1 with prescriptive discourses and practices related to family. On the other hand, on the left side, is Axis 2, with the institutions that anchor these discourses and the reflections about its influences on family.

Figure 2:
Factorial Analysis of Correspondence: the relation between classes

In an analysis guided by the vertical axis, in the upper plane we have the Church. With its practical and legal devices (Class 4), it produces and diffuses prescriptions on family based on Christian ideology (Class 1), as a way of exerting its influence on family discourses and practices (Class 2). In opposition to this process, we observe other State Ideological Apparatus (SIA), such as schools, politics and justice (Class 5), that seek to exert its influence on family. By doing so, it offers material, practical and legal conditions to the production of scientific and prescriptive knowledge on the object (Class 3). It is through this discourse, which is mainly based on psychology, that these institutions aim to exert their influence on family practices (Class 2). What we have observed is how social institutions act like SIA (State Ideological Apparatus), because they create and diffuse their symbolic systems, acting as information sources that sustain social practices and ways of comprehending the subjects' daily life. Thus, beliefs, values and a certain form of social organization is legitimized.

The opposition between Classes, as evident in Figure 2, points to a historical fight between institutions and knowledge, intending to amplify the power of influence on family and, consequently, on society as a whole. It is the dispute between Christian ideology and science, or between Church and State, considering both acting as an hegemonic matrix of meanings and practices production about family. The sociogenesis study constitutes a way to access how this dispute of ideas forms the representation. Through this genetic model, we will observe the historical constitution of a network of unstable relations surrounding catholic ideology regarding the construction of the family object.

In the factorial plane, we verify that each Class is related to an analyzed decade. Class 1's discourse was produced predominantly in the decade between 1962 and 1971, when a prescriptive discourse about the family that preached women's renounce and dedication, as well as the approach to the divine, prevailed in FCM. This was a moment of great effervescence in Catholic Church and one of the periods of more circulation of the magazine - achieving 130 thousand copies. As a reaction to the increasing loss of faithful people in the entire world, Santa Sé church had the Vatican Council II between 1962 and 1965. It aimed to modernize the Church by adapting it to the western world, but without losing its tradition. This process was known as aggiornamento. The world scenery was affected by hippie and feminist movements. In Brazil, a military dictatorship was beginning, as well as capitalism's impulse with international alliances. That generated the so-called Brazilian miracle, but also the increase of social differences, of rural exodus and of social fights.

When the military took power in 1964, the Church divided itself politically and ideologically. The Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil (National Conference of Bishops of Brazil - CNBB) published its support to the coup, while groups of religious people who opposed to the dictatorship were imprisoned and tortured (Löwy, 1991; Santos, Caldana, & Biasoli-Alves, 2001). By the same time, “I greja dos pobres” ("Church of the Poor") emerged from student and lay movements in peripheral neighborhoods, in syndicates and in the Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (Grassroots Ecclesial Communities - CEBs), which proliferated, attracting three million people (Löwy, 1991). This part of the Church took as reference the human rights and developed a greater sense of social justice (Azevedo, 2003).

Despite all this effervescence, FCM seems to avoid the discussions of more progressive groups. Just as CNBB recommended, it shut up before social issues. So far, the Church was an important ally to the State, and Christian ideology was a discourse with enormous power of influence in Brazilian middle class families. As an important "ideological apparatus", the Church turned the families aiming to exert and increase its influence as conduct guide. It supervises and repress deviants through practices such as confession and motivating social exclusion to the deviants (Althusser, 1985; Brown, 1989; Costa, 2004). This way, the Church's high hierarchy is like a control group that seeks the crystallization of norms and the exercise of the dominant force, as well as its influence is exerted towards conformity. FCM's strategy was to particularize deviations related to social problems, avoiding conflicts that could change the norms. Thus, the Church reduced the movements that gained strength in and outside of it, reaffirming its principles.

The period that is predominantly found in Class 2 is the decade from 1972 to 1981, even if not statistically meaningful. During the 1970s, progressive movements became stronger inside the Church and the dictatorship reinforced its repression through violent mechanisms. This forces the institution to react somehow. In 1970, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns takes over the São Paulo's archdiocese prelate, and CNBB gets officially against the dictatorship. Thereby, the Church becomes a symbol of resistance, entering a dynamic of conflict with the State. Contradicting Vatican, Brazilian catholicism starts criticizing the capitalist system, to denounce social inequality and cases of torture and murder commited by police forces. Liberation Theology emerges questioning the method of individual salvation and defending that redemption must take place in a person's construction by themself in the middle of political and historical fights (Löwy, 1991).

All this movement generated profound changes in FCM's pages, which started being printed by Editora Abril and amplified its writer team. The first "sisters" with journalism course took over the management, turning the articles more journalistic, bringing content of Brazilian reality and approaching the publication of a variety magazine. They sought the formation of a Christian political consciousness, so evangelizing started to be confused with denouncement and social participation (Puntel, 1984). This fact explains a drastic decay on the number of articles that addressed the family topic in this decade. 41 articles were produced instead of 77, as in the previous period. These changes seemed to positively reverberate, and FCM reached 205 thousand copies.

At that time, the discourse on how to please the husband and educate the children gives its place to social and economic problems faced by the country. Articles about family started to focus in personal stories, which show social problems such as misery, drugs and violence. The norm deviation stops being treated as an individual exception to become a group's denouncement. These magazine repercussions and the Brazilian Church's dome's attitude constitutes an example of social change from the process of innovation that is provoked by an active minority (Moscovici, 1979/2011). The entire Church sees itself as influenced by a group that was initially ignored or excluded as a deviant minority. As a movement of conscious critics against the Church and the State, Liberation Theology forms a nomic minority, because it assumes a conscious political fight agenda, inducing conflict and the possibility of change.

Through negotiation processes with persuasion and mutual concessions, the Church had to reformulate some norms, it welcomed the fight for social equality and turned against the violence committed in the dictatorship. However, progressive groups gave up topics related to the private universe, in a way that liberation theologists are criticized for having ignored issues such as divorce, abortion and contraception (Löwy, 1991). These issues also were absent in FCM, but there was an opening towards more egalitarian gender relations.

Class 3 has as typical variable the decade from 1982 to 1991. This is the moment when the Vatican reacts more emphatically and pressures Brazilian Church aiming to reduce the influence of progressive movements so that, in 1984, Liberation Theology was officially considered heresy. However, the movement's force obliged the Vatican to legitimize it. This was done under the strategy to maintain pressure on progressive bishops and to systematically name the most conservative ones, as well as to spiritualize topics and stripping them of social content. This way, the marginalization of more radical approaches and the control reestablishment were possible.

This social movement's softening clearly reflects on FCM. In spite of maintaining certain openness to political and social problems, the family topic gains a new impulse. The number of selected articles goes from 41 to 67. At that time, the Church already experienced a crisis that has been increasing due to the reduction of catholicism practices, the proliferation of religious indifference and Protestant movements. At the time, psychology and psychoanalysis stood out in Brazil. Then, the Church adopts the strategy of opening to a dialogue with science. Thereby, in the 1980s, FCM used psychological discourse as a way to maintain the readers and continue to diffuse its ideas. Thus, the focus on the individual subject and in emotional health, that was based on an individualistic and hedonist morality, is emphasized (Caldana & Biasoli-Alves, 1993). This appropriation of psychology by the magazine happened in a period of decay of the Church's power of influence and of science ascendancy, and illustrates the process of standardization (Moscovici, 2011).

The church realizes that to keep its influential knowledge it needed to become an ally to psychology and use it to confirm and justify its principles. Then, the scientific discourse is taken by FCM, which forms a syncretism between faith precepts and modern science. Family seeks to be saved and, at the same time, to become less pathological. It prays for forgiveness and salvation just as seeks professional guidance to save its members of their own harms. This "scientification" process, that implies the dynamic coexistence of different knowledge, references and ways of thinking that are contradictory many times, is called Cognitive Polyphasia (Moscovici, 1961/2012). FCM uses two different thinking matrices - religion and science - in the attempt to maintain its influence as a filter of understanding reality.

Then, the strategy was to invite psychologists to fill FCM's pages, creating what we may call a "catholic psychology" or a "psychological catholicism". Therefore, it is observed a reciprocal influence in which mutual concessions are made in order to asphyxiate some aspects of psychological theories that would generate conflict and could increase even more the Church's loss of influence. Thus, the Church turns its discourse more acceptable to the scientific society of that time. This way, we see the process of standardization, the mutual influence in which both get modified, avoiding conflict and amplifying its power of influence.

In order not to lose other discourses, the Church needed to restate its importance through the proclamation of its rules and rituals. Therefore, in the following decade, a discourse that affirms the importance of belonging and actively participating in the Church Institution is reinforced through the divulgation of its practical and legal devices. This discourse is found in Class 4, from 1992 to 2001, as a typical variable. At that time, FCM continued to use scientific discourse to restate Christian ideology and to reinforce the Church Institution and its practices. The magazine's main focus in that decade was not to propagate Christian ideology values, but to attract people to the institution, to make them participate in its practices and to know its laws, because ideology diffusion depends on the existence of a material apparatus that sustains it.

Therefore, there is a rapprochement of the FCM text to the Vatican Institution as well as an attempt to value Christian ideology with the incitement of a more effective and active participation of lay people in catholic rituals and practices. This movement, along with the loss of faithful people and influence, leads to a strong decline in FCM's consumption. From 217 thousand subscribers in 1980, it passed to approximately a 165 thousand edition in 1990.

Considering ideology as having a material existence that is objectified in the SIAs, what we observed in this Class is the material existence of Christian ideology (Althusser, 1985). Thereby, this Class reveals which are the "church apparatus" mechanisms to build, adapt and diffuse its ideology in order to maintain itself exerting influence on the population's thoughts and practices. Tensions between Church, State and Science, between "God's Laws" and "Men's Laws", are present in FCM's discourse. In this game of forces that is in continuous transformation, the Church introduces its strategies to maintain its influence and propagates documents that serve as legal codes and guide strategies and practices that the local sectors should develop. By denying the negotiated and flexible nature of its norms, affirming them as descendant from the divine as well as not to be questioned by men, the Church operates pressure to consensus through the norm of objectivity, offering a model that aims conformity (Moscovici, 1979/2011).

Beyond codes, ideology survives and stands as an interpretative code for judgement through practices such as sacraments and the formation courses and gatherings of specific groups. Although this movement does not come without tension. There are conflicts between Church sectors and between it and other SIAs, which lead to social changes to be managed by the Church, may they be resistance or adaptation. By analyzing the data described in Class 5, we came across FCM's expression of the Church's reaction to the social transformations and their relation to the State's "ideological apparatus": political, judiciary, school, informative and familiar transformations. Just like any other institution, the Church is always debating with other society sectors, being involved in a permanent process of negotiation, aiming to keep or expand its social influence. The period in this class is from 2002 and 2011. At that moment, the Church substitutes its main leader, considering that in 2005 Papa João Paulo II dies and Papa Bento XVI takes over. Papa Bento XVI was known for his positions that were even more conservative than the previous Papa.

In FCM, there is a period of greater focus on family issues (79 articles) and the intensification of the movement that values the Church instead of other institutions. FCM assumes a sociological vocabulary in its analysis on family transformations and defends that it was experiencing a crisis that would reflect on the disorganization of social values. This process came with the aggravation of catholicism's crisis over the last decades. In Brazil, IBGE data shows the process of pentecostalization: in 1950, 93.5% of the population declared to be roman apostolic catholic and 3.4% were evangelical. In 2000, 73% declared to be catholic and 15.4% were evangelical (Azevedo, 2003). These numbers help to understand the decline related to FCM's selling from the 1980s, achieving a total of 70 thousand copies in 2004.

The SIAs are always in conflict, in a dispute for power that variates over time. In the Middle Age, the Church used to accumulate cultural, school and informative functions. Throughout the centuries, this institution was losing power and the SIA took over a dominant position regarding capitalist formations such as the school, which is ruled by the State. Thus, the pair Church-Family is replaced by the pair School-Family, considering that it is up to the school to transmit dominant knowledge to children. The family continues to hold great importance in this system, being one of the dominant SIAs, because it interferes in the material reproduction of the workforce and takes over a socializing function. This way, the family promotes social order (Althusser, 1985). Despite being dominant, the family is a diffused apparatus, without a stable organizational structure as the others. This justifies why it has become a privileged target of the other SIAs' influence.

Different social institutions work in the project of (in)forming the family: the State produces public policies focused on this institution, laws that integrate and promote changes on this group; the university produces scientific knowledge to dissect and influence families; and the media share these laws, knowledge and policies in a convenient way. The church is not different and, through its practices and norms, including through FCM, also makes efforts to maintain the influence on families.

In FCM's discourse, some social transformations, such as women's economic emancipation, are easily and rapidly absorbed and adapted. Meanwhile, others such as abortion acceptance and homoaffective relationships continue facing a rough combat, because they contrast catholic ideology and are not consensual in society to the point of pressuring the institution to change. One way to maintain tradition is to diffuse the message that certain social changes are harmful, because they would induce a family crisis and its possible extinction. In FCM, the loss of values and references is emphasized as one of the main causes of the familiar crisis. This is a way to provide feedback to the Church's power, considering that apparently lost values and references would be those of this institution's "Ideology". Following this argument, the solution to this crisis would be the comeback of "Catholic Ideology" as a hegemonic matrix of social thinking and behavior. Only this would be able to save the family and, consequently, society.

Therefore, the crisis serves to show the importance of religious values in society in a combative way, as well as to announce that the influence of other institutions consists of social harm. The media, the politics, the laws and education are disqualified and their salvation would be to be influenced by the institution that once regulated them: the Church. The family is also disqualified under the argument that it cannot be self-managed and educate its children in a healthy way. Its current habits and configurations are fought and considered to be pathogenic or sinful. On the other hand, the same Church glorifies family, announcing it as the main nucleus that is responsible for the social well-being. Thus, it is evident that this institution that is so fundamental is in a crisis and needs care and tutelage. Thereby, the crisis is used by the Church so that this institution is placed as the family and society's savior, amplifying its power of influence.

FCM, then, takes advantage of the blaming that has been imposed on the family, through the notion of crisis, to affirm the nefast consequences of this secularization process of habits and of the religion replacement for science as the knowledge guide to conduct. In summary, the underlying logic is that the family and, consequently, society are in crisis because they have been torn apart from Church and only it can save the stability and well-being if it is dominated by Catholic Ideology. Therefore, it is concluded that the family crisis is a useful discourse so that the Church may reinforce its importance towards many sectors of society, aiming to conquer faithful people and amplify its power and social influence.

Conclusion

This study shows the relation between knowledge, context and communication, and demonstrates how a plurality of voices, that compose knowledge's texture in the middle of transformation and influence processes, coexist in a single discourse (Jovchelovitch, 2011). With this, we observed the polyphasic nature of the family social representation, which involves different knowings that are articulated in order to give meaning to family and to especially inform what a family should be. We brought the genesis of the SR at an intergroup or ideological level, that is proposed by Doise (2002). Thus, we demonstrated how the family SR is a symbolic system in constant movement and is generated in a broad context of dynamic intergroup relations that are involved in power disputes. We have contributed to enlighten the sociogenetic process as we recomposed the history of the family social representation in FCM. This was done by addressing FCM in a complex and unstable network of practices, values, ideologies, beliefs and norms, that are transformed over time.

In this dynamic, ideologies operate as social-structured general determinants, as a symbolic matrix that composes the social representation meta-system. This is made of social normative regulations that control, verify and manage the cognitive operations that are involved in the construction of representation, aiming to obtain social coherence (Doise, 2001). As the first socializing institution, family assumes a function of mediation between individual and collectivity or the State, and constitutes a privileged locus of social representations construction and propagation. Therefore, family is a target of social control and FCM seeks to propagate Christian ideology aiming to become influential in order to operate as a meta-system in the construction of social representations of/by family.

The SR study from mass media over time allows an analysis of the social dynamic that provides transformations and resistance, as well as the way how these changes get reframed and reappropriated. This study focused on a catholic guided magazine. Catholicism is one the most prevailing religions in the country. However, the analysis of other media with diverse religious and political guidance could bring more elements to think the family object and the sociogenesis of SR.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Aug 2020
• Date of issue
  2020

History

• Received
  19 Sept 2017
• Reviewed
  17 Dec 2018
• Accepted
  16 Mar 2020