The trajectories of writers and the literary saraus in the outskirts of São Paulo

Abstract

The research constituted as object of study the emergence of poetry soirees in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo, between 2014 and 2016, through the study of the trajectories of their writers.  Articulating the dimensions of culture and education, the research focused on studies about culture, from the sociological perspective of Pierre Bourdieu, questioning the historical processes of acquisition of cultural capital, relating social origin, school trajectory and the poetry soirees. The fieldwork was carried out in four poetry soirees, in different regions of São Paulo (south, north, east). Aiming to identify the position of the neighborhoods in which the soirees take place, and where we would conduct the field research next, we carried out a statistical study of the sociodemographic characteristics of the population residing in these neighborhoods. By consulting social networks (Facebook), we composed a first list of 22 events that regularly took place in São Paulo, with activities publicized on social networks. Then, we defined those in which we conducted the semi-structured interviews and direct observations, with leaders of four saraus. The interviews aimed to reconstruct their school trajectory, the other cultural movements in which they participated, and the dispositions acquired in this process, in order to shed light on the emergence of the poetry soirees that flourished in São Paulo during the period. To obtain information about the public present in the researched, we applied a questionnaire (on paper), with which we produced information about schooling, geographical origin, age, etc. We concluded that access to schooling, especially access to higher education, contributed decisively to the formation of dispositions towards acting in the literary field, both on the part of poets and writers, and on the part of the public. Resident in the outskirts of São Paulo, they are graduates of higher education and high school. Among the writers, many of them have a degree in Literature and seek to develop these literary practices professionally, thus circumventing the exclusion from the dominant circuits of literature in the city.