Memórias de uma Superintendência Regional de Ensino de Minas Gerais: entre o habitus e o capital cultural

Abstract

This research dealt with the reconstruction of the institutional and organizational social memory of Varginha Regional Education Superintendency, a regional body linked to Minas Gerais State Department of Education. The institution has existed since 1965, and this investigation covered its first years of operation up to the present day. Thus, the study aimed to analyze, based on the narratives of civil servants and former civil servants, the institutional and organizational social memory they have of Minas Gerais state public management policies and how they contributed to building institutional cultural capital and structuring the habitus of civil servants at Regional Superintendency of Education (SRE). As for the relevance of the topic, individual memories have gained a social role through the collective construction of sociological frameworks, which have made past experiences known, extracting what is collective in them and what is common in this public institution. Reconstructing this institutional memory and connecting it to the political events of that time allowed us to understand how the policies implemented had an impact on the cultural capital of the institution and civil servants´ habitus. In terms of methodology, It was a qualitative, applied and descriptive one. The case study strategy was used to get closer to the object. Data collection was based on bibliography and documents, but mainly made use of interviews with focus groups. The material collected by the research was organized and categorized using the method of conversation and speech analysis, but the analysis itself took place from a Bourdieusian perspective, using the relational method and from the perspective that every interview is a social relationship. The conclusive inference was that the institutionalization of certain practices caused changes in the habitus of the agents due to the obligation to learn a new cultural capital emanating from the successive administrations and public policies of SEE/MG.