Alberto Guerreiro Ramos
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Alberto Guerreiro Ramos | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 13, 1915 |
| Died | April 6, 1982 (aged 66) |
| Alma mater | Faculdade Nacional de Psicologia |
| Occupation | Sociologist, politician |
| Spouse(s) | Clélia Guerreiro Ramos  |
| Position held | Federal deputy (1963–1964), civil servant (1943–) |
Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (13 September 1915—6 April 1982) was a Brazilian sociologist and politician. An influent Afro-Brazilian thinker, he was instrumental on the development of a native sociological framework, criticizing the use of European paradigms for studying the Brazilian society, especially race relations and the condition of the Black people in Brazil. He advocated for appropriating those concepts to the national reality (what he called sociological reduction).[1] He was also a leading figure in organization theory[2][3]
In 1956, Pitirim Sorokin, analyzing the situation of sociology in the second half of the 20th century, included Guerreiro Ramos among the authors who most contributed to the progress of the discipline.[4]
Guerreiro Ramos was born in Santo Amaro da Purificação, in the state of Bahia, son of a conductor and a washerwoman. At age 16, after his father death, he moved to Salvador, the state capital. There, he worked at the newspaper O Imparcial, wrote poetry (collected in the book O Drama de ser Dois) and participated in the youth wing of the Brazilian Integralist Action.[5]
In 1942 he graduated in science from the former Faculdade Nacional de Psicologia, in Rio de Janeiro, in what was then the Federal District, graduating a year later from the Faculty of Law, in the same city. He was a visiting professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, professor at the Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP) at Fundação Getúlio Vargas and at courses in sociology and economic and social problems in Brazil promoted by the Public Service Administrative Department (DASP). In 1944 he was one of the founders of the Teatro Experimental do Negro, with Abdias do Nascimento.[6]
He gave lectures in Beijing, Belgrade, and at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. In 1955, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Paris. In 1972 and 1973 he was visiting fellow at Yale University and visiting professor at Wesleyan University.
When he was expelled from the country by the military dictatorship, he was invited to teach at the University of Southern California (USC) from 1966 onwards, settling in the United States. In 1980, back in Brazil without breaking his ties with the USC, he teaches at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), where he organizes a master's degree in Governmental Planning, based on his theory of the delimitation of social systems. Upon returning to the United States in April 1982, he received the Phi Kappa Phi award; he died of cancer a week after, on 6 April.[7]