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Mapping out the subject of Brazilian social psychology in the production of the national association of research and post-graduate studies in psychology

Mapeando o sujeito da psicologia social brasileira na produção da associação nacional de pesquisa e pós graduação em psicologia

Abstracts

This paper problematizes the Brazilian Social Psychology and its knowledge production on the registers of the Work Group (WG) of symposiums of the National Association of Research and Post-Graduation in Psychology (ANPEPP), during 1988 to 2010. Using Michel Foucault's archeo-genealogical perspective and the contributions by Ian Hacking about the historical ontology of subjects, we analyzed technologies of power and knowledge in the disciplines of Social Psychology. We selected the WG abstracts in which circulate the utterances that make up the discursive field of Brazilian Social Psychology. Using the narrative of WGs we outlined a discursive formation of identities/technologies of the subject. The knowledges of Social Psychology in the history of the ANPEPP's WGs contribute to the constitution of categories and psychological classifications which objectivize subjects. We think Social Psychology, in its criticisms related to psychological and social concepts comprises practices and regimes of truth about the subject of Social Psychology.

Social Psychology; ANPEPP; knowledge production; subject


Este trabalho problematiza a produção de conhecimento em Psicologia Social Brasileira nos registros dos Grupos de Trabalho (GT) dos Simpósios da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Psicologia (ANPEPP) de 1988 a 2010. Com a perspectiva arqueogenealógica de Michel Foucault e as contribuições de Ian Hacking sobre a ontologia histórica do sujeito, analisamos as tecnologias de poder e saber nas diferentes disciplinas da psicologia social. Selecionamos os resumos dos GTs pelos quais circulam os enunciados que compõem o campo discursivo da Psicologia Social no Brasil. Por meio da narrativa dos GTs delineamos uma formação discursiva da produção de identidades/tecnologias do sujeito. Os saberes da psicologia social na história dos GT's da ANPEPP contribuem na constituição de categorias e classificações psicológicas que objetivam sujeitos. Pensa-se que a psicologia social em suas críticas em relação às concepções psicológicas e sociais conformam práticas e regimes de verdade sobre o sujeito da psicologia social.

Psicologia Social; ANPEPP; produção de conhecimento; sujeito


Marcos Adegas de AzambujaI; Carolina dos ReisII; Neuza Maria de Fátima GuareschiII; Simone Maria HüningIII

ICentro Universitário Franciscano, Santa Maria, Brasil

IIUniversidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil

IIIUniversidade Federal de Alagoas, Maceió, Brasil

ABSTRACT

This paper problematizes the Brazilian Social Psychology and its knowledge production on the registers of the Work Group (WG) of symposiums of the National Association of Research and Post-Graduation in Psychology (ANPEPP), during 1988 to 2010. Using Michel Foucault's archeo-genealogical perspective and the contributions by Ian Hacking about the historical ontology of subjects, we analyzed technologies of power and knowledge in the disciplines of Social Psychology. We selected the WG abstracts in which circulate the utterances that make up the discursive field of Brazilian Social Psychology. Using the narrative of WGs we outlined a discursive formation of identities/technologies of the subject. The knowledges of Social Psychology in the history of the ANPEPP's WGs contribute to the constitution of categories and psychological classifications which objectivize subjects. We think Social Psychology, in its criticisms related to psychological and social concepts comprises practices and regimes of truth about the subject of Social Psychology.

Keywords: Social Psychology; ANPEPP; knowledge production; subject.

RESUMO

Este trabalho problematiza a produção de conhecimento em Psicologia Social Brasileira nos registros dos Grupos de Trabalho (GT) dos Simpósios da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Psicologia (ANPEPP) de 1988 a 2010. Com a perspectiva arqueogenealógica de Michel Foucault e as contribuições de Ian Hacking sobre a ontologia histórica do sujeito, analisamos as tecnologias de poder e saber nas diferentes disciplinas da psicologia social. Selecionamos os resumos dos GTs pelos quais circulam os enunciados que compõem o campo discursivo da Psicologia Social no Brasil. Por meio da narrativa dos GTs delineamos uma formação discursiva da produção de identidades/tecnologias do sujeito. Os saberes da psicologia social na história dos GT's da ANPEPP contribuem na constituição de categorias e classificações psicológicas que objetivam sujeitos. Pensa-se que a psicologia social em suas críticas em relação às concepções psicológicas e sociais conformam práticas e regimes de verdade sobre o sujeito da psicologia social.

Palavras-chave: Psicologia Social; ANPEPP; produção de conhecimento; sujeito.

This article is the result of a research which aimed at discussing the production of knowledge by the Brazilian Social Psychology, from the analysis of documents generated by the Work Group (WGs) in the Symposiums of the National Association of Research and Post-Graduation in Psychology (ANPEPP), in the period between 1988 and 2010. In these materials, we sought to identify the utterances and discourses connected to the field of the Brazilian Social Psychology. These were grouped into three greater vectors, namely the different discursive formations in risk-vulnerability1 1 . About the research of discursive fomations in risk-vulnerability, see Reis, C. Guareschi, N. Huning, S. Azambuja, M. (2012). , the processes of society urbanization and finally, identities and technologies. The present paper is outlined on the last of the aforementioned vectors, in which a range of technologies of power and knowledge about the psychological category of the individuals is laid out, thus constituting identities. More specifically, we sought to establish which different types of knowledge relative to Social Psychology in the history of the ANPEPP's WGs2 2 . The annals of these simposiums, where the abstracts by the work groups are registered, are public documents available on this site: http://www.anpepp.org.br/1-Acervo/pri-acervo.htm. contribute in the constitution of psychological categories and classifications which objectivize subjects.

In the face of these arguments, we would like to look at how the Brazilian Social Psychology (in its position as a critic of social and psychological practices), does not constitute a field external to the objects which it problematizes. It is also a knowledge which produces subjects - hence the title of this article, which intends to map out the subject emerging out of this field of knowledge. We would like to express the idea that the Brazilian Social Psychology is not a critical eye oblivious to the diverse realities which are produced in the social environment. At the moment it criticizes certain psychological categories and classifications - and, obviously, even before it does so - it is already within the game that produces such objects and that, consequently, produces subjects.

Basically, this research is articulated by means of the archeo-genealogical thought by Michel Foucault (1979/2006). This allows us to refuse that linear rescue of history - or even a continuous one - used to explain the conditions of the present. Archeogenealogy traces the heterogeneity of the paths which take us towards an apparent concreteness of the present. It historicizes aspects that seemed to have been left out from history, presenting the rational thought has in the invention of our society. It thus seeks to make the present open to reconfigurations. We analyze, on the one hand, the historical conditions of one sole knowledge, and on the other, knowledge in terms of strategies and tactics of power. Hence, knowledge is not understood as a discursive practice, but it includes the relation of non-discursive practices, that is, it does not dissociate knowledge from power (Foucault, 1969/1972). Therefore, we understand that accompanying the production of knowledge in Social Psychology is to pursue the games of production and destabilization of certain truths about the subject and the social field. These operate by constructing modes of being an individual and being in the world.

However, we would like to include in this part of the analysis the contribution of Ian Hacking, a Canadian philosopher, renowned in the sphere of the Philosophies of Science, an author who articulates strongly with the foucaultian work. Of all materials by Hacking, we used mainly the book entitled "Historical Ontology" (2002/2009), which explores exactly the concept which lends its name to this article - a notion which was articulated in a rather sparse manner in the work of Michel Foucault. This book is also a work where Ian Hacking explains his modus operandi. His interest about "the way we classify people and the effect produced in them by our classifications" attracts our attention. His work leads us into "reflections upon the human nature, as it is shaped by our classifications and by their impact upon us" His works "equally lead us to revisit traditional epistemological distinctions, related to classification criteria and their application, having an effect even in the current distinctions between the natural and the social sciences" (Regner, 2000, p. 09).

Hacking (2002/2009) positions himself philosophically in two ways: as being a "dynamic nominalist, interested in how our practices of naming interact with the things we name, or as a "dialectic realist, interested in the interactions between what there is (and what becomes something) and our conceptions about this fact" (p.13). He is not strictly a nominalist, nor is he strictly a realist. We realize that what interests him are the interactions (the matters of dynamics and dialectics) between names and things and the interactions between that which there is and the conceptions about it. This reminds us of the famous book by Michel Foucault (1981/2007), "The Words and Things". With Hacking, we may think, for instance, about the interactions between the 'expression' homeless and the 'object' homeless. How did one fit into the other? How is this story of creation and naming of a homeless created? More precisely, he is interested in the very becoming - of the very possibility - of the 'object' homeless. Such becoming of an object's possibility is historical. Thus, it would be necessary to tell this story, that is, to search for the narrative, to search for the discourses, the technologies of knowledge and power in the interactions that constituted the possibilities of existence and the naming of a determined object. It is interesting that Hacking, constantly inspired by Foucault, intends to direction such matters towards ourselves, human beings, towards the object human being, or even better, towards what we define as a subject.

The term subject, in this text, is not an equivalent to a human being, nor is it an equivalent to an individual. A subject is understood not as an essence or nature, but as a means of production, something that acts in the form of a fundamental figure of the relations and their complexities. This is connected to the conceptual field of subjectivations coined by Foucault (1979/2006), a perspective which affirms that subjectivity is engendered, produced by networks and field of social networks. This means the production of knowledge in Social Psychology in Brazil will be outlined by the way the individuals and collectivities constitute themselves as subjects of a certain regime and historical formation, as well as the ways of producing a resistance which escape from the different types of constituted knowledge and powers.

Following these considerations, the way Ian Hacking studies these matters becomes clearer when he explains the concept of historical ontology, which is so useful to his studies. Ontology, in a few words, would be the study of the being, or the study of the most generic types of what there is in the world. However, for Hacking, the study of the being would lead us to research not only the material objects, but also the classes, types of people and ideas. And, in fact, this study is realized through history. The term Historical Ontology, is extracted by him from the text "What is Illuminism?" by Michel Foucault (1983/1994) when he speaks of the "historical ontology of ourselves". In this material, Foucault proposes the bases of his research, which follows the axis of knowledge, power and ethics. Truth is something that constitutes us as objects of knowledge; power forms us a subject who acts over another, and ethics forms us as moral agents.

Taking the "notion of constituting ourselves" as an instance, the most important thing to mark here, says Hacking, is the interest "in the possible ways of being a person" (p.15). Or, as he says further ahead in the book, in the possible ways of making up people. To make up people is a notion that, from our point of view, would speak for itself, but we now intend to work out this notion along with the materials researched for the outlining of the vector identities/technologies. Lastly, at this point it is already possible to perceive this paper's line of study (for the discussion about the different types of knowledge) of the Brazilian Social Psychology produced in ANPEPP's symposiums documents.

As a warning, it is worth remembering that what we explain here are points for thinking about the field of knowledge of the Brazilian Social Psychology; we do not intend to be dogmatic. These are questions about the participation - or the interaction - of this specificity in psychological science, in the process of making up people. It means that to think of the subject's historical ontology would be to think that the knowledge which is produced in this field is constituted in the intrinsic relations between knowledge and power, and it is then inscribed over the bodies of the individuals. Thus, analyzing the materials of ANPEPP which take shape in the different disciplines of Social Psychology, we may perceive that the latter, with its supposed scientific legitimacy, criticizes institutions and theories, transforms history and society, emancipates subjects. In a nutshell, it makes up people.

Thinking up Brazilian Social Psychology in the production of subjects

ANPEPP is an entity which congregates post graduation programmes in Psychology at the level of Master's Degree and Doctorate. It is legally recognized by the Brazilian government. Its objectives are the following: to stimulate the graduation and training of research professionals and post grad professionals; to propose and defend measures of support and incentive to the Brazilian programmes of post graduation; to promote the interchange and cooperation between research centres and their researchers; to spread scientific work from this area of knowledge produced in the country; to collaborate with other representative entities of Psychology in the development and strengthening of science and the psychoanalyst profession. In contrast to other Psychology institutions in Brazil, the ANPEPP is an association made up of post-graduate programs in Psychology and related fields, and not by psychologists and/or researchers. Whilst other Psychology institutions in the country also aim to produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, the main characteristic of the ANPEPP is its Work Groups. These have the important role of discussing the development of the policies of production of scientific knowledge in Psychology that are linked to lines of research, researcher's post-graduate programs and the evaluation and dissemination of these policies. The WGs are comprised of researchers/professors of Psychology and connected areas that discuss, plan and define together the themes of common interest, the researches and scientific productions that circulate in the country. Currently, ANPEPP has 61 WGs, which discuss different themes concerning Psychology. This involves 64 postgraduate programmes, among doctorate programmes and master's degree programmes linked to the institution.

In our analysis, after the reading of all the summaries of each symposium, we selected the summaries of the WGs through which circulate utterances we consider to comprise specifically the discursive field of Social Psychology in Brazil. The inclusion and delimitation of utterances in the field of Social Psychology was supported by the very description of the WGs, given both by the theoretical and methodological perspectives, and the objects of knowledge specified as concerning Social Psychology. From the narrative about their historical processes, produced by the very WGs themselves, discursive formations or, as we shall name here, vectors were delineated; these orientated and catapulted new knowledge in Social Psychology in the country. For the purpose of this paper, directed towards the vector of identity/technologies, we selected the Work Groups connected to social movements, community psychology, gender and feminism, and some WGs that work with the notion of subjectivity, from 1988 to 2010. In the attached Table, the WGs are represented and analyzed according to the the year they began, finished and the group's alteration of name, when it is the case.

Regarding the discussion about the materials analyzed: we may say that in the summary of the first years of ANPEPP, the emergence of the approximation by the psychological over the historical and political notions was marked, as a new preoccupation of the field of Social Psychology, thus creating a connection between the psycho and the social, characterized in the psycho-social analyses of that time. This means that departing from the so called psycho social phenomena, the scientific rationality of Social Psychology seeks to establish relationships with the individual dichotomy and society. In this established frontier, the notions of politics and history would be far more connected with the social side, while on the side of the individual, we would find a private psychic field. This field could or be asked or not - based on their personal history and on the groups with which it relates - to participate in the political and historical struggles of society in which it might be inserted.

An initial aspect of this process is found in the works of 1989: taking social movements2 2 . The annals of these simposiums, where the abstracts by the work groups are registered, are public documents available on this site: http://www.anpepp.org.br/1-Acervo/pri-acervo.htm. as their object of analysis, these works begin to understand or identify themselves with what was better known as 'mass events', population groups that through history are politically committed, in search of their rights. This is a perspective that understands the individual as prior to the social. There is a direct correspondence between one and the other, an equivalence of the psychology of the individual with the psychology of groups and with the psychology of society.

The "comparative table related to the studies of collective phenomena and the history of mass events" (Camino, 1989, pp. 420-421) extracted from the work "The Social Movements, the Constitution of a Scientific Object: a Historical Perspective" allows us to perceive the way how psychological discourses about the social will, along the 20th Century, construct an identity narrative. Identification with the leader, analyses of the authoritarian personality, social identity and social consciousness are some of the terminologies or concepts coined as technologies of knowledge which articulate psychological theories with those theories belonging to the social. More than that, as the social - from the end of the 19th Century on - becomes a problem to be investigated, to be invested with an object of knowledge, it is evident that the different psychological types of knowledge would not be left out from this game of social analysis3 3 . A theme present since the 1st Symposium of the ANPEPP. Initially more oriented towards the social movements, it began, later, to incorporate the idea of a political psychology, keeping the focus on the question of the political behavior and returning later on to the notion of something that leads to the idea of a psychology politically committed. .

One of the effects of this thought are the studies that seek to relate and understand the individual aspects (psycho) for the political commitment (social). The text by Sandoval (1989), "The Sociological Crisis and the Contribution to the Social Psychology to the Study of Social Movements", attempts to present the theoretical difficulties of sociology in the analysis of social movements, when it lacks - in its explanations - the motives and the nature which populate the relationship between the individual and the collective decision by the group. It is at this time that, in Brazil, the political behavior polls emerge. It would not only be the macro social power that would persuade a group of people to commit politically; it would be necessary to have an investment in studies about the micro-social plan - the latter being understood as the space of the individual, as the forms the person makes use of reason in order to be politically committed, as the ways a group of individuals builds political cohesion so as to constitute a social movement. In the individual layer, "investments into research for those factors that facilitate or obstruct the politicization and participation processes" are sought (p. 434).

When we retrieve the notion of making up people, we may think of the participation of Social Psychology in this context. Or better yet, the participation of a type of Social Psychology that is the producer of psycho-social subjects, that is, those who possess an identity and that this identity is necessarily engaged with the social. Ian Hacking (2002/2009) might ask himself here: how does this category or classification of the social-psychological subject create or eliminate possibilities of action? Here we may remember Foucault (1969/1972), when he examines the investigation of how certain utterances came into existence while others did not, thus mapping out a set of utterances that define the condition of existence for a system of discursive formation. We could still refer ourselves to the foucaultian studies about truth regimes, that is, the relationships between a government of itself for itself and the manifestation of truth (Foucault, 1979-1980/2010). Thus the scientific reasoning of Social Psychology, when it defines the subject as psycho-social (identifying and creating practices over this category) regulates the actions of the human being, or better, it organizes existence. As Hacking says (2002/2009), "once this distinction is made, new realities come into their effective existence" (p. 119).

Hence, in 1990, still at the time of social movements, different identities were found. These were investigated from the point of view of the psycho-social subject classification. Women, youth, the elderly, musicians, the urban invaders, blacks, labourers, students, electors, workmen, businessmen, the needy, lynchers, all of them are part of this proliferation of research objects of the Social Psychology, found in the materials of the ANPEPP at this time. These are subjects understood, assessed and transformed by the aim of the political action or the participation, that is, whether they are active, motivated and aware in relation to their new condition of political-historical subjects.

Again, what seems important to us is to think alongside with Hacking: in this pursuit for the 'recognition' individuals cannot be taken apart from the social and politics; there are those who are clients interested in such matters and others who are oblivious of this process. This is not sheer 'recognition or discovery', but a creation. At the moment we begin to evaluate different identities, such as those cited above, and to include in this assessment the political, historical and social aspects, we may say that in the words of Hacking (2002/2009), "people spontaneously begin to fit themselves in their categories" (p. 117). That is to say, we may think about this as a process of subjectivation of a psycho-social subject.

This psycho-social, or political-historical, perspective develops new tones with Community Psychology, which comes about in the reports of ANPEPP in 1990, mainly when it includes an ecological dimension on the psychological subject. In the work of Elizabeth Mello Bomfim (1990), three lines of this discipline are found: (a) 'clinic in the communities' (p.411), (b) practice at the educational institutions (p. 412), (c) developed together with the social movements (p.412).

The work of Community Psychology has had, at times, in this last line, an ecological dimension in the sense that it is alert to the physical-environmental matters and their influence in the life of the population. The psychological listening goes through the appraisal by local particularities and there is an attempt at listening to the demands of both a social-economic and a physical-geographical order. (p. 412)

We emphasize the discipline of Community Psychology as a sophisticated technology of knowledge and power, which, with an academic legitimacy, enters, along with Psychology technicians, the community field (community, in this context, being the community of the needy community). Through "intervention strategies", it has the aim of working out the "human ecology". That is, the psycho-social, or historical-political subject necessarily needs to alter, somehow and in some aspect, its present condition. Its psychology, its history, its political action, its economical condition and its physical space go through the "evaluative appraisal" of the psychological listening. It is a subject who is thought of as needy and who must raise demands, seeking to solve them through cooperative, autonomous work. It would be important to mark that - in spite of the criticism and reflections arising from the use of the term needy tied to society - and, with that, all the practices which go beyond a treatment, such as prevention and health promotion - the idea that a subject who must change themselves and others in a conscious historical political process still remains.

The WG on Community Psychology only returns to the symposiums in 1998, and it has been in activity until today. We emphasize the titles of some summaries from 1998 that could illustrate this production of a psycho, social and now, also ecological subject: "Community Social Psychology and the possibilities of community participation: research and intervention" (Freitas, 1998); "The Urban Environment and the youth in a perspective of the environmental psychology" (Günther, H. & Günther, I., 1998); "The Applied Psychology of Development: contributions to a community" (Koller, 1998); "Group processes, affectivity and identity in community groups" (Silva, 1998); "The image children have of several professions and how these relate with the concept of remuneration" (Roazzi & Hecht, 1998). We can perceive the rummaging of intervention in the particularities of life. The space we inhabit, the different stages of development, the forms of grouping, affections, anxieties in relation to the future and the forms of insertion in contemporary society. With the merging of an ecological rationality and the psycho-social subject, the study of the distribution of individuals and objects in space - as well as the forms of interactions that determine this distribution - would be the newest mark of a Community Social Psychology.

Still, some utterances - found along this particular WG's years of discursive history - that deserve a highlight are the pairs named citizenship-transformation and health-public policies. The first pair produces the idea of the subject's transformation, of a subject that must transform himself, because he is a citizen who has rights. The discursive force of change - of himself and of his very present - arising from a criticism of his way of life and society' s way of life increases when it connects itself to the utterance of citizenship. The rescue of citizenship for those who find themselves at the edge of the State's benefits becomes the focus and struggle in the field of Community Social Psychology. The unemployed youth (Sarriera, 1998), the retired worker and the elderly (Carlos, 1998), the child and the homeless adolescent (Martins, 1998) are some of the objects of research and intervention.

The second pair is constituted by the field of knowledge and intervention which gains relevance with psychology as a profession and a space of intervention. Here, we limit ourselves to observe a re-dimensioning of research in communities. If they occurred in a way we may call more straightforward in the community space - based on insertion and intervention by the researcher building the research along with the community - now, studies go, almost necessarily, through the areas of public politics and health. There is a complexity of state mechanisms and an organization network. With the success of the Unified System of Health (SUS) and the expansion of the work market for the Psychology professional, the area of health becomes one of the most disputed ones for proper study. The discursive field of transformation and citizenship and the ways the individual lives and experiences his health expresses the degrees to which he is a citizen and his transformation capacity.

It is important to comment the interventions and problematizations about the sexualities which gain power in the WGs regarding "Gender and Feminism" 4 4 . For a more profound view of the emergence of the social as a problem and object of knowledge, see Silva (2001). . It is a WG which emerged later than most, in 1992 - if we consider all the activist movement in the 70s and 80s. It is the category of gender that becomes coated of a scientific tenor, while studies about women carry the weight of activism. Nevertheless, as it is found in the first document, great disputes were necessary in order to attain legitimacy in the academic/scientific field. We do not wish to examine this point; we do, however, wish to think about the invention of people, highlighting the inclusion of criticism to the biological sciences about the human. From the biological arises the deconstruction of the ways to mate, to relate, to eroticize. When we establish and question "the social relations, made different and dual in men and women" (Neto, 1992, p. 154), the body or organism becomes the stage for the experiences of other forms of sexual relation, for the use of the contraceptive, for the physical modifications which produce a hybrid, or better, which fade and undo the dichotomy man-woman, generating other categories of existence.

It is also important to pay attention to studies related to the ethics of eroticism and love relationships (Afonso, 1992; Alonso, 1992; Brazil, 1992). When, based on these researches, it is possible to ask "How do these subjects speak?" Are there methods and/or techniques more adequate for the understanding of their realities?" (Neto, 1992, p. 155), the perspective of people make up becomes even more visible, since the categories of individuals whose realities we intend to identify and present - as well as their set of moral values, their behaviour modes and their way of communicating - are not given a priori. It is necessary to create a strategy of intervention that supports the conditions for a certain reality to be inscribed.

I do not mean that there was a type of person who became more and more acknowledged by the bureaucrats or the researchers of the human nature, but a type of person came into existence in the same instant this very type was being invented. (Hacking, 2002/2009, pp. 122-123)

Along with these different types of knowledge, different compositions for the term subjectivity5 5 . Present as a theme since 1992, it remains so until 2011, not showing up only in the year 2002. Between the years 1994 and 1998 the presence of a WG oriented only towards the matters of the feminine is marked. are in conflict, both in its conceptualization - individual, conscious, unconscious, interrelational, social, historical, discursive, constructed, produced - and in the modes and fields of intervention over the individuals. This is a movement of great importance for analysis, since we also perceive, initially, the creation of a constructed subjectivity under the principles of a private internal world. It has a neighboring relationship with the external world which is being questioned, little by little. Interiority in the production of knowledge, through time, receives another component much larger and more vast: the unconscious, that carries, firstly, only the personal history, but that, in a second moment, carries the history of culture, society, humanity as well. It gets to the point of questioning these categories as dichotomous and essentialist, going through the search for a tie between history and subjectivity and the mapping out of the subject production discursive plan. It is later on, almost at current times, that the discourse which invents subjectivity as a process, as a production, emerges; it works on the problematization and the denaturalization of universals. With this, the very production of knowledge was questioned, causing Social Psychology to begin to think of itself as another stratum of the complex network of the Western scientific rationality. Thus, the conditions of possibility would be laid so that this field of knowledge could think of itself as a production process. A Social Psychology which thinks of itself as implied in the logic of the invention of people in our society becomes possible6 6 . See the table of the emergence of Work Groups which approach specifically subjectivity. It is only in 1998 that two groups are initiated that focus on this theme. .

Proliferation of objects, proliferation of people ...

That which Ian Hacking calls the making up of people (invention of people), Foucault calls the constitution of subjects. In the words of Michel Foucault: "We must try to discover how subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted though a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts and so on" (Foucault, 1972-1977/1980, p. 97).

For Hacking (2002/2009):

Making up people changes the space of possibilities for a personhood (p. 123). What is curious about human action is that by and large what I am deliberately doing depends on the possibilities of description. ... Hence, if new modes of description come into being, new possibilities of action come into being as a consequence. (p. 125)

There is no doubt that Social Psychology is implied in this process of making up people. In brief, in the reports of the Work Groups of ANPEPP selected for this analysis - in the nearly 30 years of this Association - it was possible to delineate: (a) the emergence of notions of history and politics and the movement of the psychological knowledge about such notions; (b) the connections between the psycho and the social through the political historical commitment of the individual; (c) the formation of psychological discourses about the social, building up a narrative of identity; (d) the production of a psycho-social subject, including, with Community Psychology, an ecological dimension; (e) the technology knowledge-power of Community Social Psychology in the rummage of the psycho-social subject, mainly by using utterances of transformation-citizenship and public policies-health; the proliferation of objects/identities/categories produced by the scientific rationality of Social Psychology.

Generally, since the first reports produced at ANPEPP, the part that would fit the Brazilian Social Psychology in the invention of people would be a slow, progressive movement of taking the categories of normality and of deviation already naturalized socially, exercising criticism or problematization, seeking to place historically the strategies of production in such categories. However, these categories or classifications are not undone: they are rearranged on the soil of identity policies, of the subject of rights, of health. The Brazilian Social Psychology in its critical exercise, puts at risk several modes of existence, but, at the same time, makes room for the proliferation of ways of being. This leads us to the thought of Hacking (2002/2009) that says the making up of people is imprinted in all of us, which deprives us of any possibility of neutrality in relation to the objects we concentrate on. Notwithstanding, more than a discussion about the scientific distancing subject-object, this philosopher incites us with the reflection that "whoever thinks about the individual, the person, must also reflect about this strange idea of making up people" (p. 127). Moreover, the capacity of our thoughts and of our selfs, would be circumscribed to the inventions of our acts of naming and to our own practices around these. Finally, it would be up to us, researchers, to accept that our own practices are inventions, and that somehow, we may well be, solely and minimally, following, or chasing after, the complex origins of knowledge production - certain that "we will never tell two identical stories about two different cases of making up of people" (p. 130).

Notes

7. About the exercise of thought criticism thinking about itself, see Foucault (2005).

Foucault, M. (2005). O que é a crítica? [Crítica e Aufklärung]. Relatório da sessão de 27 de maio de 1978. In F. L. Britto, Crítica e modernidade em Foucault: uma tradução de "Qu'est-ce que la critique? [Critique et Auflärung], de Michel Foucault (pp. 35-63). Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.

Reis, C., Guareschi, N., Huning, S., & Azambuja, M. (no prelo). A produção do conhecimento sobre Risco e vulnerabilidade Social como sustentação das práticas em políticas públicas. Estudos de Psicologia.

Recebido em: 30/09/2012

Revisão em: 07/05/2013

Aceite em: 05/06/2013

Marcos Adegas de Azambuja has a master's degree in Psychology (2006) and a doctoral degree in Psychology (2012) from the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, with post-doctoral studies at London School of Economics (LSE). Professor at Franciscano University Center, Santa Maria, Brazil. He has experience in Psychology, with emphasis in Social Psychology, researching mainly on the fields of production of subjectivity, psychology, neuroscience, education and body. Address: Centro Universitário Franciscano, Curso de Psicologia, Conjunto III, Rua Silva Jardim, 1175, Santa Maria, RS. Brazil. CEP 97010-491. Email: m_adegas@yahoo.com.br

Carolina dos Reis has a master's degree in Social and Institutional Psychology from the Graduate Program in Social and Institutional Psychology of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. She is a member of the Research Group on Contemporary Policies and Technologies of Subjectivation (Políticas e Tecnologias Contemporâneas de Subjetivação). She is a technical advisor of public policies at the Center of Technical Reference in Psychology and Public Policies (Centro de Referência Técnica em Psicologia e Políticas Públicas - CREPOP) of the Regional Council of Psychology of Rio Grande do Sul (Conselho Regional de Psicologia do Rio Grande do Sul - CRPRS). Email: carolinadosreis@gmail.com

Neuza Maria de Fátima Guareschi has a master's degree in Social and Personality Psychology from the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (1991) and a doctoral degree in Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998). She is Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and Coordinator of the Research Groups: Cultural Studies and Modes of Subjectivation (Estudos Culturais e Modos de Subjetivação) and E-politics - Contemporary Policies and Technologies of Subjectivation (Políticas e Tecnologias Contemporâneas de Subjetivação). She is a researcher on the fields of Public Policies and Processes of Subjectivation, and Formation and Production in Health. Treasurer of ANPEPP from 2006 to 2008 and President of the same association from 2008 to 2010. President of the Regional Council of Psychology of Rio Grande do Sul from 2004 to 2007, president of ABRAPSO from 2001 to 2003 and from 2011 to 2013. Coordinator of the Evaluation Committee of area 13 of Rio Grande do Sul Research Foundation (Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul - FAPERGS) from 2007 to 2009 and from 2011 to 2013. Editor of Psico Journal from 2006 to 2009; Associate Editor of Psicologia & Sociedade Journal from 2007 to 2011. She is currently editor of Polis e Psique Journal and member of the Editorial Board of Psicologia Ciência e Profissão Journal. Email: nmguares@gmail.com

Simone Maria Hüning is Professor and researcher of the Psychology course and masters course in Psychology at the Federal University of Alagoas. She has a master's degree and a doctoral degree in Psychology from the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, with post-doctoral studies at London School of Economics (LSE). She was member and advisor of the Ethics Committee of the Regional Council of Psychology of Rio Grande do Sul, from 2004 to 2007. She works in the field of Social Psychology, developing activities of teaching, research and extension in undergraduate and graduate courses. Her main themes of interest are Foucauldian studies, processes of subjetivation, culture, governmentality, production of knowledge, ethics and research on psychology. She is leader of the Research Group: Cultural Processes, Policies and Modes of Subjectivation (Processos Culturais, Políticas e Modos de Subjetivação). Email: simonehuning@yahoo.com.br

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  • Mapping out the subject of Brazilian social psychology in the production of the national association of research and post-graduate studies in psychology

    Mapeando o sujeito da psicologia social brasileira na produção da associação nacional de pesquisa e pós graduação em psicologia
  • 1
    . About the research of discursive fomations in risk-vulnerability, see Reis, C. Guareschi, N. Huning, S. Azambuja, M. (2012).
  • 2
    . The annals of these simposiums, where the abstracts by the work groups are registered, are public documents available on this site:
  • 3
    . A theme present since the 1st Symposium of the ANPEPP. Initially more oriented towards the social movements, it began, later, to incorporate the idea of a political psychology, keeping the focus on the question of the political behavior and returning later on to the notion of something that leads to the idea of a psychology politically committed.
  • 4
    . For a more profound view of the emergence of the social as a problem and object of knowledge, see Silva (2001).
  • 5
    . Present as a theme since 1992, it remains so until 2011, not showing up only in the year 2002. Between the years 1994 and 1998 the presence of a WG oriented only towards the matters of the feminine is marked.
  • 6
    . See the table of the emergence of Work Groups which approach specifically subjectivity. It is only in 1998 that two groups are initiated that focus on this theme.
  • Publication Dates

    • Publication in this collection
      16 Dec 2013
    • Date of issue
      2013

    History

    • Received
      30 Sept 2012
    • Accepted
      05 June 2013
    • Reviewed
      07 May 2013
    Associação Brasileira de Psicologia Social Programa de Pós-graduação em Psicologia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (CFCH), Av. da Arquitetura S/N - 7º Andar - Cidade Universitária, Recife - PE - CEP: 50740-550 - Belo Horizonte - MG - Brazil
    E-mail: revistapsisoc@gmail.com