A courageous woman with an unusual perspective on national issues and an ability to broaden horizons. This is the description of sociologist Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, professor emeritus at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), who died on December 29 at 100 years of age. She was considered, in her own words, a \u201cdisobedient girl\u201d for her decision to enroll at FFLCH-USP from where she graduated in humanities (1949) and did her master\u2019s in sociology (1951). In 1959, at \u00c9cole Pratique des Hautes Etudes VI Section in Paris, under the direction of French sociologist Roger Bastide (1898\u20131974) and before a jury comprised of Belgian anthropologist Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss (1908\u20132009) and French jurist and sociologist Gabriel Le Bras (1891\u20131970), she defended her doctoral thesis titled \u201cLa guerre sainte au Br\u00e9sil: Le movement messianique du Contestado.\u201d<\/p>\n
She studied hot topics, remembers sociologist Jos\u00e9 de Souza Martins, also professor emeritus at FFLCH-USP: the caipira<\/em> and the sertanejo<\/em>, popular religion, top-down politics, messianic movements. \u201cShe was the one who most understood the sociological creativity of Bastide, who taught young students at the School of Philosophy of USP to see and interpret Brazil with anthropologically Brazilian eyes, to see what we are, and not what we are not and think we are,\u201d he summarizes. She revealed new possibilities. \u201cOne of her principles was to emphasize the importance of qualitative studies. She brought together, as material for research and analysis, interviews, life stories, Brazilian literature\u2014including novels,\u201d recalls sociologist Eva Alterman Blay, her colleague at FFLCH-USP. Together the two women participated in the founding of the Center for Rural and Urban Studies (CERU). \u201cIn 1963, in my parents\u2019 home, we rewrote the statute of the center for rural studies, which later included \u2018urban studies,\u2019\u201d she says. As a visiting professor, Queiroz taught in Belgium, France, Canada, and Senegal. Recognized internationally, she had various studies published in Brazil, France, Italy, Colombia, and Mexico\u2014one of them was translated into English by British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917\u20132012). She supervised dozens of students both in Brazil and abroad. She was demanding and diligent about writing. \u201cMaria Isaura had style. When she took a text to read, she made notes in the margins: \u2018This is obscure,\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t understand what you want to say,\u2019\u201d remembers Blay. Throughout her life, she gave repeated demonstrations of political coherence, ethics, and integrity, highlights Martins. During the military dictatorship (1964\u20131985), she took action to free political prisoners and block police access to her building at USP, which was located on Maria Ant\u00f4nia street and at that time housed the school of philosophy.<\/p>\n She did not have any children. She dedicated her life to teaching and to research. \u201cThe time I spent and the experiences I enjoyed at USP were what captivated me most in my life,\u201d she admitted during the celebration of her 80th<\/sup> birthday. Selected as scientist of the year in 1997, Queiroz received the Almirante \u00c1lvaro Alberto Award for Science and Technology from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). \u201cIt was as if she had built a polyhedron and each person took an angle,\u201d observes Blay. \u201cAnthropologists, historians, sociologists, journalists, from various regions of the country and the world, each one represents an angle of the research of Queiroz that was important for her work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz is remembered for her capacity to reflect on little-known aspects of the country, such as messianic movements","protected":false},"author":522,"featured_media":292238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1319],"class_list":["post-292237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/522"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292242,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292237\/revisions\/292242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292237"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=292237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}