How the immigration and colonization processes influenced the formation of the Brazilian identity, especially of the city of São Paulo? How migrants, their descendants and the receiving society, made of “Brazilians” and other communities and ethnic groups, interacted and still interact during this process and how these groups identify themselves and each other? It is questions like these, which capture my curiosity towards Social Anthropology.
My interest in Social Anthropology arose as a result of my scientific initiation undergraduate research conducted after an invitation by Professor Dr. Jose Celio Losnak, with institutional support from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), which had the purpose to understand
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In this area of anthropology, I found theoretical support necessary to carry out the discussion about the social and cultural importance of food in the context of São Paulo. Later I had the opportunity to study Social and Cultural Anthropology in disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology; Brazilian culture; and Brazilian Social, Economic and Political Reality, which discussed various aspects studied by Anthropology, including the issue of concepts of identity, a topic that piqued my …show more content…
Concomitantly, the social values of the receiving country does not yet have been adopted by these individuals, so that in the immigration context, cultural and life values are disjointed, creating "a kind of emptiness in which society can no longer exercise control on its members, leaving them at the mercy of themselves "(MATSUE, 2012, p.1137); which can lead to a process of identification and allegiance between individuals that recognize themselves as part of a same group. According to Barth (1998) these identifications are the result of the relationship between the identities defined by others and self-identities.
Therefore, I believe that, identifying in which way the relationship between immigrants, their descendants and the receiving society happened and still happens, how this process influenced the formation of an identity of São Paulo, would allow us to understand a small facet of the identity formation processes in Brazil, in addition to provide greater clarity about the immigration process and the consequent adaptation of these individuals to a new society and how these immigrants influence and are influenced by the society in which they