Trajetórias de vida de mulheres negras : mobilidade social e significados do corpo negro e do cabelo crespo

Abstract

This research has as theme the life courses of eleven black women. The analysis of the multiple sides of these courses of life aims to relate the objective and institutionalized positions occupied by said women, and the meaning of their actions throughout life. Semi structured interviews were the basis for collecting data. The choice for life history as research method provided grounds for simultaneously carrying out several stages of the research, namely data collecting, data analysis and literature review. Claims to objectivity were dismissed in favor of transparency as to the limits and possibilities of knowledge production in Social Sciences. Data analysis indicates similarities in the life courses of participants in the research, all black women of impoverished background. They share a trajectory of rising social status due to their families’ concerns in developing cultural capital through education, the use of institutionalized public resources, and the adoption of a disciplined corporeal performance. The women also have in common difficult childhoods, with pronounced sufferings and vulnerabilities, upon which they build their social facade - that of the independent strong woman. As bodily experiences were mainly guided by the fact of having bodies socially read as black, they were of great importance in how the disciplines of the body were manifested - especially through the manipulation of hair. Collective representations associated with afro-textured hair have permeated the constitution of identity performance. The disciplines of the body have been the place where institutional action and social meaning intercross and where representation movements come to be.