A importância moral do reconhecimento: um estudo de caso

Abstract

The writing herein aims at comprehending the specific logic of a given “field”, which encourages and naturalizes and perpetuates the relations of submission and exploitation. It consists of a study on “adoption” cases, not legalised, in two towns, named Guiricema and Visconde do Rio Branco, located in the countryside of the State of Minas Gerais. In those towns, it was habitual that wealthier families were allowed to have what became known as “fostered-children”. The so-called fostered-children were housed by those families at early ages and held as legitimate children, but treated as servants. The education they were given differed from that of the family’s legitimate children, who could study and work, leave home and marry. In all cases put under analysis, the fosteredchildren were raised to devote their lives to taking care of the house and of their “parents”, an unwritten law of reward, but grown into the habitus and into its own "objective structure", where they were socially adapted. Thus, the relations of submission and exploitation happen naturally and the dependence is aroused, having the family as an entity, that is, as something with particular life and spiritual collection. Once it does not bear the subjective structures (habitus) necessary for the apprehension of such a plot, as well as of this plot’s targets, the Society praises those fostered-children and imparts respect to them ("assertion") because of their submission itself, seen as voluntary, which they concede to their fostering family. Thereby, the Society contributes to the preservation of that relation as along as it only recognises and respects the fostered-children under such condition. That is a quite complex, wittily woven plot, nurtured by the fostered-children, by the fostering family and by the Society. It all takes place just as natural as a choice can be. The things which are at stake cannot be perceived by any of the parts involved. The understanding of that empirical reality was achieved by means of Pierre Bourdieu & Charles Taylor’s theories.