A construção da mentalidade militar no Brasil: estudo de caso típico

Abstract

This work is based upon the theory of “the social construction of reality”, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. They show how social sciences have to deal with a reality which has a dialectic relation with the knowledge we have about it, so, to understand the social reality, we have to understand how knowledge itself is produced and acquired. This theory should fit a special case study of social construction of the military mind in Brazil. To this study, a military school is considered, and to have a basic conception of the military mind, the classical work of Samuel Huntington, with an ideal type of that mind, is taken into account. This description is compared with the military ethic prescribed in the Brazilian Army. After Berger & Luckmann‟s theory is reviewed, a description of how a school constructs the typical military mind is provided. This work is intended to be a test to constructivism theory in a real, particular case of a field research.