Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

Statement of Purpose
Matheus Capovilla Romanetto

1. Background and academic goals

I began my training in the social sciences with a series of fieldwork experiences in Brazil. My
first research endeavors were anthropological and semiological in nature, dealing with subjects in
religion, games, and art (see my 2014-6 publications).
Once it became apparent that my language for grasping ethnographic material was facing
limitations, I felt the need to deepen my theoretical grounding. I went on to produce a series of
monographic investigations on the foundations of the social sciences, and specialized in sociology.
Being especially interested in aspects of social psychology, I took a year abroad studying psychology in
Canada. The experience of the contrasting epistemological conventions in both disciplines and
countries led me to an increasing concern with the social and political conditions of scientific activity
(see my 2016-19 publications).
I thus began deepening my understanding of certain intellectual movements, not only as
theoretical resources, but also as objects of a prospective sociology of knowledge. This was most
notably the case with early psychoanalysis and critical theory – two bodies of literature I have become
more intensely familiar with. These being currents of thought originated between the late 19 th century
and the first half of the 20 th century, it became clear that I would need to deepen my knowledge of
historical methods (see my 2019-22 publications).
The aspiration to earn experience with historical methods was fulfilled in my last research
period, which comprised both my MA thesis, in Brazil, and a subsequent independent research as
fellow of the Erich Fromm Institut Tübingen, in Germany. There I had an opportunity to do intensive
archival work around Erich Fromm’s connections in science and politics. This allowed me to venture
into the social history of the political movements he collaborated with – particularly the left humanisms
of the mid-20th century. With that, I could finally combine the previous question of the praxiological
conditions of knowledge with a more robust political sociology (see my forthcoming book).
The research project below is centered on political conflict, kinship, and family life. It seeks to
combine my earlier anthropological sensibility with my present sociological concerns. Being centered
on a global south society, it aims at contributing to the diversity of subjects being investigated by the
department. I see it also as an opportunity to further my methodological proficiency as a social
scientist. The nature of the research object suggests that qualitative material should be taken in
systematic comparison with the available quantitative data. This combined approach would allow me to
develop my repertoire of research techniques, without losing track of my previous specialization path.

2. Research proposal

Context and preliminary work. My last research was concomitant with the global rise of
contemporary right-wing movements. When I left Brazil for archival work, Bolsonaro was in the
middle of his mandate, and the pandemic lockdown was at the center of public discussion. The country
had by then been shaken by years of political crisis, so I had been intermittently collecting data on the
political situation, producing fieldnotes during political manifestations in São Paulo. After I left the
country, I could still hold interviews with Brazilian immigrants. This allowed me to sketch a few
preliminary hypotheses on the peculiarities of the Brazilian political process (see my 2019-23
conference presentations).
One aspect stands out from this preliminary work: politically relevant phenomena in Brazil far
exceeded the conventional forms of expression presumed by democratic rituals, such as elections and
public manifestations. Rather, political conflict increasingly developed within other institutions, such as
families, schools, churches, and enterprises. It is one of the historical peculiarities (with that, one of the
Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

methodological difficulties) of contemporary relations between the left and the right-wing political
camps that their most significant expressions are not exhausted in the public sphere.
This research wants to draw attention to one of such politically relevant phenomena. Politically
motivated family conflict seems to have been one of the major features of the recent past in Brazil.
Reactions ranging between avoidance of, dissolution of relations with, and violence against political
opponents is almost ubiquitous among the interview samples I could produce (there remaining the task
of discovering whether these forms were really typical, and if so, for which strata of the population). A
quick survey seems to reveal that similar phenomena are verifiable in other countries where the
contemporary right-wing is or was on the rise, such as France, Germany, and the US.
Family-based political conflicts are an ongoing process in Brazil. As of the time a fieldwork is
carried, it can both be that they are still a lively part of day-to-day life, or that they are regressing and
becoming weaker. Either way, consolidating a scientific memory of the recent political past in this
respect remains important. Many specialists agree that the end of the Bolsonaro government will not
represent the end of the right-wing in Brazil in its present form. The rise of other national right-wings
to power in countries such as Argentina, the Netherlands, and Italy shows that this is not an exhausted
global cycle, and allows us to expect similar phenomena will continue to occur elsewhere. Research on
the Brazilian case could help illuminate how cultural and infrastructural peculiarities help shape the
political process in different societies, with consequences both for the country’s political future, and for
a comparative sociological perspective.

Question and hypothesis. The questions to be clarified by such an investigation are: for which
segments of the population does it happen that political conflicts are expressed within family relations?
How does that happen, and why? Which forms do these conflicts take, and to what effect for the
subjects involved in them? The data generated in such a study should be compared to and interpreted
alongside other available macrostructural and statistical data to test the following hypotheses:
(a) on the micro level: “the weakness of strong ties”: the form taken by political conflict within
the family is mediated by the conflicts endogenous to this institution, exploding more violently where
dependence on kinship care is lower, and where specific kinship functions are in themselves conflict-
engendering;
(b) on the macro level: “the political is the personal”: it is part of the strategy of contemporary
right-wing movements to saturate previously existing social conflict, bringing subjects into a dilemma:
fidelity to existing social relations, at the expense of effectiveness in political struggle, or fidelity to
political affiliation and values, at the cost of damaging existing social relations.
Much as contemporary feminism has illuminated the gendered presuppositions of economic life
within the household, this research would be tackling the presuppositions of political life in kinship.

Object and available literature. It has not escaped the recent scientific literature that families
are in a special position regarding contemporary political movements. They are then treated from the
point of view of their relationship to the state – either as an object of right-wing discourse or of right-
wing public policies. However, the data available to me suggests that points of acute political conflict
emerge all through kinship networks (between nephew and uncle, grand-daughter and grandmother, for
example), not only – and maybe not especially within the so-called nuclear family. A study of political
life within civil society relations would thus complement the points of view available in the existing
literature.
A survey of the literature available on the Brazilian case makes this insight all the more
relevant, since a large part of it works on some or all of the following premises: (a) it is based on mass-
scale phenomena; (b) it is based on public political behavior; (c) it considers representatives of different
political positions outside their interaction with opposing parties; (d) it conceptualizes local right-wings
in terms of their similarities to their global counterparts. While these continue to be indispensable
points of view for an understanding of the political dynamics in the country, they cannot easily provide
Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

us with insight into how political differences are dealt with outside the formal public arena. Yet, my
preliminary data suggests that this was an essential component of the political process in the country.
Of all institutions where political conflict would be verifiable, families are particularly strategic.
(a) They are organized as observable, micrological entities, which however extend into macrological
kinship connections; (b) they concentrate much of significant private behavior; (c) they offer the
chance of studying the interaction between supporters of different political positions, whenever these
are reunited within the same household or kinship affiliation; (d) they are institutions highly susceptible
to intersectional inequalities, structural position, and cultural history, which facilitates specifying local
modalities of global phenomena, as is the case with conflicts around the contemporary right-wing.
Families bring together demographic elements we know to be politically relevant from voting statistics,
like different age groups and gender. With that, they allow us to formulate the problem in terms of the
relation and interaction between different political subjects, and in a scope of behavior usually left out
of more traditional political accounts.

Method and selection. I propose carrying on systematically with fieldwork and interviews in
the same area I had been doing preliminary work before, that is, in the city of São Paulo. I suggest
comparing data available from other sources (electoral statistics, incidence of politically motivated
crime etc.) to select a set of populations where incidence of political conflict can be expected to be
higher. This can be done by comparing upper- and lower-class neighborhoods, since family structure
and dependence on kinship ties vary widely within different social classes in the great urban areas.
School communities, to the extent that they aggregate different families around a single
institution, may serve as reference points for establishing the geography of the field. Fieldwork could
then be reduced to a comparative study of a small number of social segments with significantly
different familial forms, departing from interviews with available subjects and extending into
observation of family interaction when possible.

[… university, department, scholars …]

3. Bibliography

ADORNO, Theodor. “Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus”. in: Vorträge 1949-1968. Frankfurt am
Main: Surkhamp.

ALONSO, Angela. 2023. “Zonas de conflito” e “O espólio de junho”. in: Treze: a política de rua de
Lula a Dilma. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

ALTMAN, Breno. 2023. “Ruas em transe: a insurgência das camadas médias contra o petismo”. in:
Breno Altman and Maria Carlotto (orgs.). Junho de 2013: a rebelião fantasma. São Paulo: Boitempo.

ANDRÉS, Roberto. 2023. “O fechamento da fresta”, “Nova direita ocupa o vácuo”, “Flores no
deserto”, “A vez da tarifa zero” e “Epílogo”. in: A razão dos centavos: crise urbana, vida democrática
e as revoltas de 2013. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.

AVITZER, Leonardo; SANTANA, Eliara; BRAGATTO, Rachel Callai (orgs.). 2023. Eleições 2022 e a
reconstrução democrática no Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.

AVITZER, Leonardo; KERCHE, Fábio; MARONA, Marjorie (orgs.). 2021. Governo Bolsonaro:
retrocesso democrático e degradação política. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.

BAUDOUR, Alex. What kind of economic relation impacts right-wing populist vote? PhD dissertation
defended at the Sociology Department of the Science Po Paris.
Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

BIGNOTTO, Newton. 2022. “Bolsonaro e o bolsonarismo entre o populismo e o fascismo”. in:

Linguagem da destruição: a democracia brasileira em crise. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

BÔAS, Luciana Villas. 2022. A república de chinelos: Bolsonaro e o desmonte da representação. São
Paulo: Editora 34.

BROWN, Wendy. 2018. “Neoliberalism’s Frankenstein: authoritarian freedom in 21st century

‘democracies’”. in: Authoritarianism: three inquiries in critical theory. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.

______________. 2019. In the ruins of neoliberalism: the rise of antidemocratic politics in the West.
New York: Columbia University Press.

BUTLER, Judith. 2000. Antigone’s claim: kinship between life and death. New York: Columbia
University Press.

______________. 2002. “Is kinship always already heterosexual?”. Differences 13(1):14–44.

CAGÉ, Julia; PIKETTY, Thomas. 2023. Une histoire du conflit politique: élections et inegalités
sociales en France, 1789-2022. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

CARVALHO, Laura. 2018. Valsa brasileira: do boom ao caos econômico. São Paulo: Todavia.

CAVALLARO, Matteo. 2017. Towards a political economy of radical parties. PhD dissertation
defended at the Economy and Finance Department of the Université Sorbonne Paris Cité.

CHARIM, Isolde. 2022. Ich und die andere: wie die neue Pluralisierung uns alle verändert. Wien: Paul
Szolnay Verlag.

COOPER, Melinda. 2017. Family values: between neoliberalism and the new social conservatism.
Cambridge: Zone Books.

GERBAUDO, Paolo. 2021. The great recoil: politics after populism and pandemic. or

HEITMEYER, Wilhelm; FREIHEIT, Manuela; SITZER, Peter. 2020. Rechte Bedrohnungsallianzen:

Signaturen der Bedrohnung II. Frankfurt am Main: Surkhamp.

HOFSTADTER, Richard. 1964. The paranoid style in American politics and other essays. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.

HORKHEIMER, Max (ed.). [1936a]/1987. Studien über Autorität und Familie. Frankfurt: Dietrich zu
Klampen Verlag.

LAGO, Miguel. 2022. “Como explicar a resiliência de Bolsonaro?”. in: Linguagem da destruição: a
democracia brasileira em crise. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

MARTINS, José de Souza. 2021. “Radicalismo na democracia inacabada”. in: Sociologia do

desconhecimento: ensaios sobre a incerteza do instante. São Paulo: Editora Unesp.
Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

MIGUEL, Luís Felipe. 2022. “O triunfo da antipolítica”, “A esquerda e seus entraves”, “Conclusão”.
in: Democracia na periferia capitalista. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.

___________________; PUZONE, Vladimir (eds.). The Brazilian left in the 21st century: conflict and
conciliation in peripheral capitalism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

MANTOVANI, Denise; SANTOS, Rayane dos; NASCIMENTO, Thayane. 2022. “Estratégias

neoconservadoras, gênero e família na disputa eleitoral de 2022”. Revista Estudos Feministas
31(2):e92897.

NOBRE, Marcos. 2022. “Das ‘novas direitas’ à eleição de Bolsonaro”. in: Limites da democracia: de
junho de 2013 ao governo Bolsonaro. São Paulo: Todavia.

NUNES, Rodrigo. 2022. Do transe à vertigem: ensaios sobre bolsonarismo e um mundo em transição.
São Paulo: Ubu Editora.

ROCHA, Camila. 2021. Menos Marx, mais Mises: o liberalismo e a nova direita no Brasil. São Paulo:
Todavia.

______________. 2023. As direitas não precisaram de junho de 2013. in: Breno Altman and Maria
Carlotto (orgs.). Junho de 2013: a rebelião fantasma. São Paulo: Boitempo.

______________; SOLANO, Esther; MEDEIROS, Jonas. 2021. The Bolsonaro paradox: the public
sphere and right-wing counterpublicity in contemporary Brazil. Cham: Springer.

SAFATLE, Vladimir. 2017. Só mais um esforço. São Paulo: Três Estrelas.

_________________. 2023. O dia no qual o Brasil parou por dez anos. in: Breno Altman and Maria
Carlotto (orgs.). Junho de 2013: a rebelião fantasma. São Paulo: Boitempo.

SCHÄFER, Michael; ZÜRN, Armin. 2021. Die demokratische Regression: die politische Ursachen des
autoritären Populismus. Frankfurt am Main: Surkhamp.

SCHNEIDER, David. 1968. American kinship: a cultural account. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

_________________. 1984. A critique of the study of kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.

STRATHERN, Marilyn. [1974]/2016. “Family and housewives”, “Dependency”. in: Before and after
gender. Chicago: Hau Books.

___________________. 1992. After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press.

STROBL, Natascha. 2021. Radikalisierter Konservatismus: eine Analyse. Frankfurt am Main:

Surkhamp.

SOUZA, Jessé. 2022. A herança do golpe. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.

Statement of Purpose – Fall 2024 Application ____________ University, Department of Sociology

STARLING, Heloísa. 2022. “Brasil, país do passado”. in: Linguagem da destruição: a democracia
brasileira em crise. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

TILLY, Charles; CASTAÑEDA, Ernesto; WOOD, Lesley. 2018. Social movements: 1768-2018.
London: Routledge.

WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel et al. Antisystemic movements.