For an anti-racist education — Review by Jandson Bernardo Soares (UFRN), on “Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence”, organized by Antonio Luis Parladin Santos and Whashington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior
Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos | Image: UFPA (2023)
Abstract: Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence is a collective work by 22 authors, organized by Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos and Washington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior with the aim of supporting teachers in actions to combat racism, mainly in virtual environments.
Keywords: Social representations. Ethnic-racial education, Anti-racist education.
Social representations and racial ethnic education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence is the result of research, experiences and reflections on everyday life. It is a production organized by Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos and Washington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior, which brings together 23 professionals, namely pedagogues, geographers, mathematicians, physicists, educational managers, educational psychologists, social students, doctors, teachers and nurses, thus integrating the areas of education, social sciences and health. The work aims to provide effective sources for combating ethnic-racial representations of a negative nature to society, based on an epistemological reconstitution.
Such a composition is somewhat unusual for the area of Human Sciences, since the plurality of authorship is only common in collections or articles, normally with a maximum of three authors per production, which is not the case of the work in question . This fact authorizes us to signal the need to reflect on the relationship between editorial changes and the logic of productivity applied to academic productions.
The first chapter of the work outlines the path that social representations and racial ethnic knowledge take in contemporary times, demonstrating that, although in Brazil these have raised legal milestones (laws 10639/2003, and 11645/2008), there is still a long way to go in the fight against racism. We know that the existence of specific legislation does not imply a modified change in social structures, being necessarily achieved and effectively modified as manifestations of this negative identity in the economic, social, cultural and political fields. Such a journey, for the authors, would only be possible through the use of education as a tool for change.
The second turns to the historicity of the concept of representation, which can be taken as central to the work. This one has an essayistic composition, insofar as it stuck to the establishment of relations between the authors who, somehow, tolerated it to incorporate a theory of representation that took into account the genesis, composition and operation of representations in society, constituting what would be the contemporaneity of this conceptual network.
This set of knowledge would be marked by the overcoming of a Durkheimian sociological conception based on two criticisms. The first of them is in the social structure that was superimposed, through a system of rules, on the individuals, who would follow it. The second is found in the constitution of an interpretative model that would hierarchize culture based on ways of thinking that would take off between primitive and complex forms, guided by an evolutionary perspective based on the idea of progress, usually Eurocentric.
For the authors, the contribution in this type of epistemology did not only limit the action of social agents in relation to structures, but would veto the possibility of their transformation. At the same time, it would corroborate for other ways of thinking not to be seen from their ways of organization and meaning, since the same, by composing a staged/evolutionary dynamic, replaceable by more elaborate models. In its place, another paradigm was presented in which representations were observed as a social fact, with their structures and logic, at the same time, in which individuals appeared as their articulators.
These would be linked to socio-historical changes and the ability to change the ways of relating to structures. These factors would imply the need to recognize these ways of doing things and the constitution of an ethical treatment, based on alterity, which recognizes this other from the distance of what is understood a priori.
What is seen is the constitution of a vitality in the field of culture and, in turn, of representations, which would be tools capable of operationalizing and knowing reality from the constitution of bridges between the micro and the macro social, that is, between individuals and structures, indicating the possibilities of sensations and changes. This movement would have at its base the interaction between social groups, the social place in which individuals occupy and the references that these offer.
Such an interpretative composition would have at its core the collaboration of authors such as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Sandra Jovchelovitch and Sigmund Freud, influences that, for the authors, would have been crucial for the elaboration of contemporary approaches to the theory of representations. These would culminate in the interest regarding the genesis, composition and meanings attributed to the ways of reappropriating and constructing reality.
Sandra Jovchelovich, co-author of Bottom-up Social Development in Rio de Janeiro Favelas a Toolkit, and professor at the London School of Economics it’s possible to provide missing psycho-socialcultural ingredients of personal development, in poor communities I Image: RioRealBog
It is before the vitality of the representations that the third chapter develops. Its objective is to reflect on social representations of a racial character, identifying their uses, whether for the reproduction of racism, in its material and symbolic levels, or to combat this form of violence, implying the constitution of other identities, mediated by the educational field.
Despite not presenting practices that can be replicated by teachers in their material and everyday dynamics (a fact justified by the authors through the exceptionality of each school reality and the autonomy of teaching practices), the authors offer an epistemological way out, situated in the field of discourses, with an emphasis on the reproduction of racism through the very awareness created to disciplinary knowledge.
In this way, they indicate two paths. The first would contribute to the study of the lexicons that would surround these practices, taking into account their historicity, the moments in which they would function as reproducers of violence (race, racial prejudice, black people) or as a tool in the anti-racist struggle (race, blackness, black identity, Afrocentricity). It is necessary to point out this last group as the one that marks the changes in the central structures that make up the historically constituted ethnic-racial representations, valuing black characteristics and cultures and denouncing the way in which knowledge about Africa still follows an epistemological approach of a Eurocentric nature.
It is in this sense that the authors indicate the second epistemological way out for pedagogical practices: appropriating narratives about the history of Africa elaborated by Africans themselves, which would even occur through other methodological paradigms, marked by the appreciation of oral culture. They thus signal the role that this perspective would have in bringing together the African and Brazilian experience. Such cultures would be based on colonization in their material and lived dynamics, in trajectories of struggle and combat against this form of exploitation (endorsing decolonization practices).
We understand that this work contributes to the introduction to the themes of representations, especially those of an ethnic-racial nature, since it encourages the reader to question their ways of relating to Western rational knowledge, exposing their matrices. It also provides a way of dealing with culture and the relationships it establishes between structures and social agents, culminating in the signature for the constitution of another epistemological way of producing knowledge and education in countries that were victims of colonization and its ills.
However, the lack of practical suggestions regarding work in the classroom made us question the title of the work, which, in a way, creates expectations that are not met by the production. The essayistic character of the work and the low presence of empirical aspects seem to limit its use, since the organizers only indicate possible directions to be observed, leaving visiting readers to search for greater depth.
Finally, we consider that the organization of the work can also make it difficult for inexperienced readers to understand, especially when they are required to relate the theoretical moments, present in chapter 2, and the more tangible elements, outlined in chapter 3. Despite this criticism, there is no way to disregard that the work is a starting point.
Abra fulfills its general objective of combating the invisibility of Afro-Brazilian peoples in national history, as it not only guides the protagonism of these peoples, based on the analysis and illustration of economic, cultural and political phenomena, but also by signaling the need to appropriate another epistemology that values the identities and place of action of these social agents. In this way, this book is salutary to those interested in the fight against racism, whether these are militants of the black movements or not, as well as to specialists in studies of African diasporas and post-abolitionism.
Summary of Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence”
Jandson Bernardo Soares – PhD in History from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. He published, among other works, A institucionalização do livro didático no Brasil (2021); História e Espaços do Ensino: historiografia; PNLD e a busca por um livro didático ideal ; A institucionalização do livro didático no Brasil; e, Produzindo livros didáticos de História : prescrições e práticas – notas de uma pesquisa em andamento. ID LATTES: 915196220680100 2; ID ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8195-5113. E-mail: jandson_ze@hotmail.com .
To cite this review
SANTOS, Antonio Luis Parlandin; SILVA JÚNIOR. Washington Luiz Pedrosa. (Orgs.) Representações sociais e educação étnico-racial: Práticas pedagógicas, valorização, respeito, reconhecimento e (re)existência plural. Curitiba: CRV. 2021. ISBN: 9786525107516. (Ebook) (99p.) Review by: SOARES, Jandson Bernardo. For an anti-racist education. Crítica Historiográfica . Natal, v.3, n.12, May/June, 2023. Available in <>
For an anti-racist education — Review by Jandson Bernardo Soares (UFRN), on “Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence”, organized by Antonio Luis Parladin Santos and Whashington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior
20 July 2023
Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos | Image: UFPA (2023)
Abstract: Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence is a collective work by 22 authors, organized by Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos and Washington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior with the aim of supporting teachers in actions to combat racism, mainly in virtual environments.
Keywords: Social representations. Ethnic-racial education, Anti-racist education.
Social representations and racial ethnic education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence is the result of research, experiences and reflections on everyday life. It is a production organized by Antonio Luis Parlandin Santos and Washington Luiz Pedrosa Silva Júnior, which brings together 23 professionals, namely pedagogues, geographers, mathematicians, physicists, educational managers, educational psychologists, social students, doctors, teachers and nurses, thus integrating the areas of education, social sciences and health. The work aims to provide effective sources for combating ethnic-racial representations of a negative nature to society, based on an epistemological reconstitution.
Such a composition is somewhat unusual for the area of Human Sciences, since the plurality of authorship is only common in collections or articles, normally with a maximum of three authors per production, which is not the case of the work in question . This fact authorizes us to signal the need to reflect on the relationship between editorial changes and the logic of productivity applied to academic productions.
The first chapter of the work outlines the path that social representations and racial ethnic knowledge take in contemporary times, demonstrating that, although in Brazil these have raised legal milestones (laws 10639/2003, and 11645/2008), there is still a long way to go in the fight against racism. We know that the existence of specific legislation does not imply a modified change in social structures, being necessarily achieved and effectively modified as manifestations of this negative identity in the economic, social, cultural and political fields. Such a journey, for the authors, would only be possible through the use of education as a tool for change.
The second turns to the historicity of the concept of representation, which can be taken as central to the work. This one has an essayistic composition, insofar as it stuck to the establishment of relations between the authors who, somehow, tolerated it to incorporate a theory of representation that took into account the genesis, composition and operation of representations in society, constituting what would be the contemporaneity of this conceptual network.
This set of knowledge would be marked by the overcoming of a Durkheimian sociological conception based on two criticisms. The first of them is in the social structure that was superimposed, through a system of rules, on the individuals, who would follow it. The second is found in the constitution of an interpretative model that would hierarchize culture based on ways of thinking that would take off between primitive and complex forms, guided by an evolutionary perspective based on the idea of progress, usually Eurocentric.
For the authors, the contribution in this type of epistemology did not only limit the action of social agents in relation to structures, but would veto the possibility of their transformation. At the same time, it would corroborate for other ways of thinking not to be seen from their ways of organization and meaning, since the same, by composing a staged/evolutionary dynamic, replaceable by more elaborate models. In its place, another paradigm was presented in which representations were observed as a social fact, with their structures and logic, at the same time, in which individuals appeared as their articulators.
These would be linked to socio-historical changes and the ability to change the ways of relating to structures. These factors would imply the need to recognize these ways of doing things and the constitution of an ethical treatment, based on alterity, which recognizes this other from the distance of what is understood a priori.
What is seen is the constitution of a vitality in the field of culture and, in turn, of representations, which would be tools capable of operationalizing and knowing reality from the constitution of bridges between the micro and the macro social, that is, between individuals and structures, indicating the possibilities of sensations and changes. This movement would have at its base the interaction between social groups, the social place in which individuals occupy and the references that these offer.
Such an interpretative composition would have at its core the collaboration of authors such as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Sandra Jovchelovitch and Sigmund Freud, influences that, for the authors, would have been crucial for the elaboration of contemporary approaches to the theory of representations. These would culminate in the interest regarding the genesis, composition and meanings attributed to the ways of reappropriating and constructing reality.
Sandra Jovchelovich, co-author of Bottom-up Social Development in Rio de Janeiro Favelas a Toolkit, and professor at the London School of Economics it’s possible to provide missing psycho-socialcultural ingredients of personal development, in poor communities I Image: RioRealBog
It is before the vitality of the representations that the third chapter develops. Its objective is to reflect on social representations of a racial character, identifying their uses, whether for the reproduction of racism, in its material and symbolic levels, or to combat this form of violence, implying the constitution of other identities, mediated by the educational field.
Despite not presenting practices that can be replicated by teachers in their material and everyday dynamics (a fact justified by the authors through the exceptionality of each school reality and the autonomy of teaching practices), the authors offer an epistemological way out, situated in the field of discourses, with an emphasis on the reproduction of racism through the very awareness created to disciplinary knowledge.
In this way, they indicate two paths. The first would contribute to the study of the lexicons that would surround these practices, taking into account their historicity, the moments in which they would function as reproducers of violence (race, racial prejudice, black people) or as a tool in the anti-racist struggle (race, blackness, black identity, Afrocentricity). It is necessary to point out this last group as the one that marks the changes in the central structures that make up the historically constituted ethnic-racial representations, valuing black characteristics and cultures and denouncing the way in which knowledge about Africa still follows an epistemological approach of a Eurocentric nature.
It is in this sense that the authors indicate the second epistemological way out for pedagogical practices: appropriating narratives about the history of Africa elaborated by Africans themselves, which would even occur through other methodological paradigms, marked by the appreciation of oral culture. They thus signal the role that this perspective would have in bringing together the African and Brazilian experience. Such cultures would be based on colonization in their material and lived dynamics, in trajectories of struggle and combat against this form of exploitation (endorsing decolonization practices).
We understand that this work contributes to the introduction to the themes of representations, especially those of an ethnic-racial nature, since it encourages the reader to question their ways of relating to Western rational knowledge, exposing their matrices. It also provides a way of dealing with culture and the relationships it establishes between structures and social agents, culminating in the signature for the constitution of another epistemological way of producing knowledge and education in countries that were victims of colonization and its ills.
However, the lack of practical suggestions regarding work in the classroom made us question the title of the work, which, in a way, creates expectations that are not met by the production. The essayistic character of the work and the low presence of empirical aspects seem to limit its use, since the organizers only indicate possible directions to be observed, leaving visiting readers to search for greater depth.
Finally, we consider that the organization of the work can also make it difficult for inexperienced readers to understand, especially when they are required to relate the theoretical moments, present in chapter 2, and the more tangible elements, outlined in chapter 3. Despite this criticism, there is no way to disregard that the work is a starting point.
Abra fulfills its general objective of combating the invisibility of Afro-Brazilian peoples in national history, as it not only guides the protagonism of these peoples, based on the analysis and illustration of economic, cultural and political phenomena, but also by signaling the need to appropriate another epistemology that values the identities and place of action of these social agents. In this way, this book is salutary to those interested in the fight against racism, whether these are militants of the black movements or not, as well as to specialists in studies of African diasporas and post-abolitionism.
Summary of Social representations and ethnic-racial education: Pedagogical practices, appreciation, respect, recognition and plural (re)existence”
Jandson Bernardo Soares – PhD in History from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. He published, among other works, A institucionalização do livro didático no Brasil (2021); História e Espaços do Ensino: historiografia; PNLD e a busca por um livro didático ideal ; A institucionalização do livro didático no Brasil; e, Produzindo livros didáticos de História : prescrições e práticas – notas de uma pesquisa em andamento. ID LATTES: 915196220680100 2; ID ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8195-5113. E-mail: jandson_ze@hotmail.com .
To cite this review
SANTOS, Antonio Luis Parlandin; SILVA JÚNIOR. Washington Luiz Pedrosa. (Orgs.) Representações sociais e educação étnico-racial: Práticas pedagógicas, valorização, respeito, reconhecimento e (re)existência plural. Curitiba: CRV. 2021. ISBN: 9786525107516. (Ebook) (99p.) Review by: SOARES, Jandson Bernardo. For an anti-racist education. Crítica Historiográfica . Natal, v.3, n.12, May/June, 2023. Available in <>
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