Mission and Objectives
Mission and Objectives
◉ Social Memory
When dealing with Social Memory, we are navigating a mobile terrain, in which various disciplinary fields are continually called upon for dialogue and exchange, while also recognizing the fluid boundaries that reveal a multiplicity of concepts and definitions. We emphasize that memory cannot be seen as a stable form of knowledge, since it is an ongoing process in constant transformation. It is simultaneously accumulation and loss, archives and remnants, remembrance and forgetting. In that sense, the only fixed aspect one could ascribe to memory is its permanent reconstruction, such that the notions within this field are inherently flexible and mobile.
◉ The Program
The Graduate Program in Social Memory (PPGMS) offers Master’s and PhD programs, both structured around four research lines: (a) Memory and Heritage, (b) Memory and Space, (c) Memory and Language, and (d) Memory, Subjectivity, and Creation. These provide the conceptual underpinnings that are essential for establishing the concentration area called Studies in Social Memory. The research lines aggregate studies that highlight how social memory is understood in relation to the dimensions that define each line—namely, heritage, space, language, and subjectivity. Institutional research projects (that is, foundational and integrating projects) are linked to these lines; they illuminate the interdisciplinary intersections between the object of social memory and the core topic of each line.
◉ The Research Lines
The Memory and Heritage research line encompasses studies in which heritage, as symbolic elements of both a tangible and intangible nature, is understood as a social practice that indexes and represents fragments in and/or of social memory. The Memory and Space research line brings together works that highlight the relationships between social identity, territory, and memory. The Memory and Language research line presents studies that reveal the relationships between language, social representations, and memory, while the Memory, Subjectivity, and Creation research line is devoted to studies in which memory is understood as the social production of subjectivity. These lines, which also encompass the Program's research groups, serve as fields where their respective competencies converge in institutional research projects. In this quadrennial period, we seek to better showcase them in the theoretical repertoire that PPGMS has adopted in its research practices, which are grounded in the concept of interdisciplinarity.
◉ Interdisciplinarity
We emphasize that we view interdisciplinarity as the result of an epistemological necessity and a requirement imposed by contemporary reality, representing a radical break from the dominant paradigm of modern science and challenging paradigms derived from Cartesian rationality. Accordingly, in the context of the PPGMS, interdisciplinarity is part of the process of organizing and coordinating knowledge, cutting across disciplinary frameworks while promoting ongoing discussion that brings this academic output closer to real-world impact.
Thus, we emphasize that it is not the subject of social memory in itself that defines the research developed in the PPGMS, but rather the approach we adopt—shaped by discussions on heritage, space, language, and subjectivity, the dimensions represented by the Program’s research lines. Within these relationships, the research groups coordinated by faculty members produce studies that are distinct yet interrelated. They shed light on significant processes of creating, appropriating, circulating, and using memory among the various groups that make up human society.
◉ The Multidisciplinary Major Field
The Graduate Program in Social Memory is under the Multidisciplinary Major Field, affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Area (Subarea: Social Sciences and Humanities). Its research and teaching activities specialize in Heritage, Space, Language, and Subjectivity. This affiliation within the National System of Graduate Studies (SNPG, in Portuguese) highlights PPGMS’s interdisciplinary vocation, a trait that has intensified over the course of its development. Accordingly, we understand social memory is a complex field of study collectively constructed through representations, rituals, commemorations, texts, remains, traces, objects, institutions, and other manifestations of culture and society. Our research object therefore demands the joint work of theory and methodology development by professionals from various areas of knowledge, focusing on discussions about memory and whether or not it is tied to institutionalized spaces.
◉ The Graduates
Over more than thirty years, the Graduate Program in Social Memory has trained professionals at the stricto sensu graduate level—either those already employed or those seeking to enter the job market with a specific and unique training in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In this process, the concept of social memory disseminated by the PPGMS relies on a long tradition of research and reflection on the topic. In general terms, it views social memory as employing complex, unfinished concepts, that is, it is a field of study and research in permanent construction.
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PPGMS | Graduate Program in Social Memory
2023 © PPGMS Developed with Plone by Renato Mauro
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