Gioconda Mussolini: Uma travessia bibliográfica

Abstract

In this paper, I present a few more results from a research work aimed at reconstructing the intellectual trajectory of Professor Gioconda Mussolini, a pioneer in the teaching of anthropology at USP's School of Philosophy, from 1944 to 1969. Here, I review her most representative production: six articles and a co-authored book, texts on several aspects of the cultural and social life of fishing populations on the coast of São Paulo State, produced between 1944 and 1961, as a result of numerous, intensive field research studies. The object of this analysis is to show how the set of methodological attitudes revealed in the formulation of the texts leads to a critical overcoming of "community studies," in whose context Gioconda had graduated, both as a student at USP and the Free School on Sociology and Politics, and as a colleague and coworker of representatives of this school (Donald Pierson, Emilio Willems, and Egon Schaden, among others). In this aspect, she shares, to a certain extent, her colleagues' view, such as those of Antonio Candido and Florestan Fernandes. Lastly, I point out the first elements which enable connecting her production to the successive paths in the field of ethno-anthropology of fishing in Brazil.