09/05/2019

News report highlights scientific research in the field of Humanities.

Reproduction from O Dia+

By Mariana Lima – Honorable mention in the Scientific Dissemination category of the 2018 Impa-SBM Journalism Award

Quick question: when someone says "scientific research," what image comes to mind? Generally, it's that of a scientist in a laboratory, with a microscope, a beaker mixing chemical elements that produce "smoke," and things like that. Or perhaps someone working with machines, lasers, and robots. Few people would picture a man or woman pondering essential questions of human behavior, searching for answers in Education, History, Literature, or Studies.

Everyone is a scientist; everyone applies the scientific method to conduct an experiment in order to produce new knowledge or interact with pre-existing knowledge. This failure to observe on the part of the general public is also reflected within the academic world itself, where rivalry between different fields – a behavior that is not foreign to human beings living in society – ends up erecting walls and false steps, separating researchers in a ranking of "my science is worth more than yours." Doubt it? Check out the video below.

The video is from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, currently the most successful comedy series in the United States and broadcast to various countries around the world via cable television. On air for ten years, it portrays the trials and tribulations of a group of brilliant scientists, with real scientists and university professors serving as consultants to the production team – not to mention actress Mayim Bialik herself, a neuroscientist with a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who co-stars with Jim Parsons in the clip shown as his girlfriend, Amy Farrah Fowler. Despite the exaggerated humor, the scene reflects a separation between the Exact and Biological Sciences and the Humanities present in academic centers worldwide, as if the Liberal Arts, so despised by the character Sheldon Cooper, were not a solidified area of knowledge with important contributions to understanding human nature and its power relations.

In the TV series, Sheldon Cooper is a theoretical physicist. It was also in Physics, at the Federal University of Alagoas (Ufal), that this dissatisfaction with the Humanities was felt in a very real and abrupt way by Professor Lenilda Austrilino in the 1990s, when she decided to pursue her doctorate in Education after graduating and obtaining a master's degree in Physics. This was a long-held desire of the professor, dating back to her research for her Master's degree, and it took shape as a break with the academic view that research only exists in the field of Exact Sciences.

Arte: Thalita Chargel

“Requesting a leave of absence to pursue a doctorate in Education destabilized the Physics Department, and most of the faculty at the time were against my leave. I enrolled in an institutional doctoral program through an agreement between CEDU/Ufal [Center for Education at Ufal] and PUC/SP [Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo], since it did not require a leave of absence from teaching duties. Despite being met with hostility from some professors in the Physics Department because of my choice, I was welcomed and moved to CEDU, participating in the group that created the Master's program in Education, where I worked until my retirement,” recounted Lenilda Austrilino, who still works at the university today as a volunteer in the Professional Master's program in Health Education.

Professor Lenilda, who earned her PhD in Education in 1999, dedicated herself more intensely to the dissemination and popularization of Science in Alagoas starting in 2004, through a project with the Alagoas State Research Support Foundation (Fapeal) called 'Caravan of Science, Technology and Innovation', which brought together a multidisciplinary team of teachers and young university students in scientific initiation programs to travel through inland cities and make contact with children and adolescents in the public education system.

With young people, she had no trouble making them understand that all areas of human knowledge are fields open to study and scientific production. “On one occasion, we organized a research group with high school students to introduce them to the world of research, stimulating their interest in science. They had a research grant from the Junior Scientific Initiation Scholarship Program (PBICJR) aimed at high school students and supported by Fapeal. For a year they received guidance to conduct research, following the methodological steps established for the area of Human Sciences. They visited museums, interviewed professors from various fields of knowledge, researched documents, and systematized the information obtained,” she reflected.

The research conducted by these young people resulted in the exhibition "Science in Alagoas: Connections between Science, Literature, and Art." A victory on one hand, recognition that other battles are yet to come on the other. A 2015 study by the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE) on public perception of science identified a high level of interest among Brazilians in Science and Technology (S&T), justified by the fact that they are seen as instruments that generate results capable of solving problems in their lives.

Due to this utilitarian view, the population is more aware of the results of research in areas such as Technology and Health than in Education, argues Lenilda Austrilino. “The objects of study and the way of answering questions in Physics and Education are different. The Exact Sciences focus on solving problems that generally require the use of quantitative expressions to obtain their results. In Education, we seek to understand behaviors, attitudes, and the various relationships between human beings and the environment in which they live.” But the differences end there. “Researchers in both areas seek to understand phenomena and explain them by developing instruments appropriate to the problem being studied.”

Foto: Ascom Fapeal/ Arte: Thalita Chargel

Hidden ranking

Belmira Magalhães is a sociologist with a degree from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), a Master's and a Doctorate in Letters and Linguistics from Ufal, where she had an extensive career as a professor and researcher. She returned to UFF in 2008 for her Post-Doctorate (PhD), also in Letters and Linguistics, and, in 2015, after 35 years of work, defended her academic memoir and became a full professor at Ufal.

Her experience and keen observation of the academic landscape in different regions of the country lead her to state without hesitation: yes, there is a ranking among disciplines and research at the university.

“Although it’s veiled in the sense of the word ranking, it effectively happens. [It’s] in the funding agencies, so that we can get support to do the research, where the methodologies of Exact Sciences and Biological Sciences are the standard used in the elaboration of projects. In the material, which ours is known as obsolete and cheap or that nobody needs to provide. The only area of exception I know, in Literature, is Phonetics and Phonology which, because of sound, manages to get very expensive materials – we have some of them at Ufal. But [since] most Humanities research doesn’t need that, then there isn’t even a call for proposals,” stated Belmira Magalhães.

One of the main criticisms used by detractors of scientific research in the Humanities is that it is incapable of objectivity, either due to the impossibility of repeating experiments or theses and obtaining the same result, or due to the ideological contamination of the scientist-author, an argument that Belmira vehemently refutes.

“What we don’t have, nor do they, is an absence of ideology. All research is ideological, in the humanities and in other fields. I’ll give you an example: why, to this day, hasn’t science discovered a way to make a gynecological exam for women less traumatic? Because it’s not in their interest, because they are women. Isn’t it supposed to be suffering in paradise? We imagine people on Mars, so we have the technology [for a less invasive exam], what we lack is the ideology to consider the best well-being of human beings.”

“When you submit a research project and your ideology – political ideology or general thinking – is very clear, it creates a problem, wherever it may be. We have objectivity even when we have ideologies. For example, I work in several areas, and one of them is feminism; I do research on women's issues. When I do research, I want to know the truth; I don't want my position to be what I see in the world,” she concluded, simply, directly, and – yes – objectively.

Reflection of the power structure

“That concern of yours would never have been relevant in 1955 or 1960. It only becomes relevant when Chemistry and Physics appear, and when the specialization of Social Sciences also begins. Before, you were either a historian or a folklorist.” This is how Luiz Sávio de Almeida summarizes the intention of the O Dia Mais report, an answer in itself. A historian by training and a professor of Sociology for years dedicated to academia, he points to the ranking among specialties as a reflection of power structures and their consequent social and economic organization.

“When the dynamics of the production process change, the cultural dynamics change, generating all this new research,” he continues, presenting what he called the “change in the sacredness of power”: Alagoas was growing, society was urbanizing, new industrial processes were appearing, and then space opened up for a change in the pattern of intellectualism, where knowledge was transmitted by people who were actually trained in academia, and not “the priest who knew how to sing and was the music teacher.”

How these forerunners ended up placing themselves on new pedestals, separating "high and low clergy" in the university, is another turn in the circle of power. "For me, the devil is that all these sciences are different languages that speak about the same thing," the professor rages.

Sávio Almeida argues that one science does not have more presence than another, but that they occupy different spaces in terms of the public's ability to understand what those studies are about. However, the field of Exact Sciences receives preferential treatment from the government because, on the one hand, it is research that does not cause political discomfort, and on the other, it directly impacts production structures.

Having experienced the Federal University of Alagoas during the period of military dictatorship, and wanting to work on issues concerning traditional peoples (indigenous and black) and, later, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), the professor became accustomed to operating outside the mainstream, rallying colleagues and students to conduct research, as he did in the area of Health and his work with indigenous tribes. His objectives at the time were simple: to make the university work for the people who support it through taxes and to train future professionals and researchers more effectively, involving them with the groups that needed the knowledge they produced.

“With this project, we managed to publish 17 books, about three master's dissertations, and about 30 to 40 undergraduate theses just about indigenous people. I created the course 'Indigenous Peoples of Alagoas' at UFAL [Federal University of Alagoas] and we managed to establish partnerships with universities in the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, the United States, and in Brazil, we always published articles with USP [University of São Paulo]. Today, there are about three to five PhDs who started out as young people with me, people who lived with me for 10, 15, and even 20 years. Our work wasn't research, but the training of these people,” Professor Sávio argued.

And, to prove that good scientific research is not separate from interaction with human subjects, he recounts how he worked with the biologist Gilberto Fontes. “I called him Mineirinho, he was a real reactionary. Then I invited him to go to the Kariri-Xocó tribe, where the Indians were contracting schistosomiasis while working outside the village and contaminating those who stayed behind. Do you see there a biology research project with a social impact of the worst kind ?”

Foto e Arte: Thalita Chargel

Uneal and knowledge within

It is impossible not to think of the Federal University of Alagoas when considering higher education and scientific production in the state. A shift is beginning to emerge, radiating from Arapiraca, the main campus of the State University of Alagoas (Uneal), which has enjoyed considerable growth in its teaching, research, and outreach infrastructure in recent years.

Founded in 1970 as the Agreste Alagoano Educational Foundation, it was elevated to university status in 2006. It expanded from Arapiraca to create campuses in five other cities – Santana do Ipanema, Palmeira dos Índios, São Miguel dos Campos, União dos Palmares, and Maceió – offering 33 courses, almost all focused on teacher training, but also a highly sought-after law school and a zootechnics program in the interior, to "diversify" its offerings from the Humanities and Applied Social Sciences.

According to the 2016 Census of the Directory of Research Groups in Brazil (DGPN), an inventory of scientific and technological research groups active in the country, Uneal was responsible for 56 of the 517 research groups operating in the state of Alagoas that year. This may seem like a small number, but two years ago, that number was 29 groups, and in 2010, it was 22.

It becomes even more impressive when the other state university, the State University of Health Sciences of Alagoas (Uncisal), comes in 4th place, with 20 research groups, behind the Federal Institute of Alagoas (Ifal) and its great scientific tradition, with 44 research teams.

This evolution reflects the exploitation of a favorable national landscape (the Lula and Dilma governments and their encouragement of higher education and scientific production in the country) and a political group committed to an accessible public university in the interior of the state, explains Jairo Campos, rector of Uneal for six and a half years.

“Because we are proud to have been raised in the interior and to be at the service of the interior of Alagoas, which greatly needs our existence, we ended up being motivated to build this space, to create research centers. It is a challenge for all of us to think about the interior of the country, especially the interior of Alagoas, which is where the greatest problems of disparity in access to material goods, culture, and education are concentrated. Fostering the university spirit in the interior, so that people have access to this academic experience not only in the large centers, is one of the dimensions that I have faced as an immense challenge,” he reflected.

Here, we have an example of a researcher committed to a cause who has not lost their objectivity, as Professor Belmira Magalhães pointed out earlier. During Jairo Campos's administration and that of his group of pro-rectors, UNEAL fostered research centers, opened funding lines with its own and external resources, implemented a policy to support researchers (setting up rooms, libraries, and equipment), and facilitated academic mobility, making it easier for professors and students to publish their work within the Alagoas and national academic community. Travel expenses and grants for participation in scientific events were also included in this.

In 2016, Uneal finally created its first Master's course with the Postgraduate Program in Territorial Dynamics and Culture of the State University of Alagoas (ProDiC/Uneal). The first of many, according to Jairo.

“During these years, we released all professors who wanted to pursue this training and qualification in master's and doctoral programs on their own, and we approved two interinstitutional doctoral programs (DINTER), in Education and Letters. We are training 12 PhDs in Letters in partnership with the State University of Maringá (UEM) and 18 in Education with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). The return of these professors will allow us to structure new stricto sensu postgraduate programs at Uneal,” the rector is already planning.

In the realm of ideologies, the state university gave voice to groups that were outside the power structure and embraced the agendas of traditional peoples and segments of the Alagoas population that have historically been victims of exclusion, remaining outside of public policies. In other words, the agendas of Black people, Indigenous people, rural teachers, the LGBT movement, and social movements.

“We have a very clear understanding that with our actions and projects, with the resources raised for the training of indigenous and rural teachers, the Xangô Rezado Alto project, the research and outreach activities linked to the LGBT movement, all of this is an important dimension of recognizing the influence that these citizens of Alagoas have had on the construction of Alagoan historiography,” says Jairo.

Another area that has been fostered is the field of popular culture. On June 15th, Uneal will inaugurate the Museum of Popular Art on Ilha do Ferro, in the municipality of Pão de Açúcar, on the banks of the São Francisco River. Another space is being built next to the União dos Palmares campus to value the clay tradition of the Muquém quilombola community, with an investment of R$ 15 million from the State Government.

“All of this ends up transforming into research potential for the academic community. It is a unique characteristic that the people allow this to survive, to be passed down from generation to generation. The culture of Alagoas, in all its manifestations, which is something studied by the Humanities, has been the driving force, the starting and ending point that transversally crosses all sciences, all courses, all areas of the State University of Alagoas,” concluded Jairo Campos.

Foto: Agência Alagoas / Arte: Thalita Chargel