The article shows the role occupied by the favela and its residents in political and social debate during the first half of the 20th Century. It highlights the production of knowledge generated by journalists, physicians, engineers and social workers in the period preceding the development of social sciences and the university in Brazil. It proposes that the process of construction of social representation of the favela, begun at that time, should be analyzed as a periodization beginning at a different moment than the periodization which is traditionally accepted based on the relation of the favela to the state and the type of political regime in power at different historical moments. The author suggests a periodization that has its initial moment marked by a myth of origin, Euclides da Cunha's vision of the settlement of Canudos in his book Os sertões. In this period the favela of Rio de Janeiro is discovered and described by transposing the duality of coastal versus bush country (sertões) to the urban scene, through the opposition of city to favela. Following the discovery period is a second period when the favela is transformed into a social and urban problem, followed by a third period, when the idea of administrating the problem takes the form of concrete policies and measures. A fourth period includes the production of official data and the transformation of a local phenomenon into a national reality. The article shows that the centenary favela corresponds to an almost centennial social representation, an important legacy that today's social science can not disregard.
Favela; Social thought; Social representation; Popular housing; Social Science