A seminar co-organized by CEM/Ridc and the NaMargem research center (UFSCar) will hold in São Carlos (UFSCar), with the proposal to explore methodological and theoretical issues of subjectivity. The event brings together six disciplinary researchers and diverse approaches, all of which deal in some way with the question of subjectivity. In addition, all of them are conducting their research in the region of Sapopemba, in the East Zone of São Paulo. With this territorial focus, it reveals the diversity of both the subjects who live in metropolitan peripheries today and in the ways of analyzing them.

“Subjectivity” and related notions (subject, subjectivation) are widely used in the social sciences, but often with little precision. These terms may be aligned with very different, sometimes even antagonistic, approaches and theoretical traditions, and thus with very significant implications for how we analyze and understand the social world. More than that, the methodological tools used by social researchers, and the decisions they make in the field, can have very important consequences for the types of subjects and forms of subjectivity/subjectivation that emerge from their research. Even so, these considerations are, for the most part, hidden in the resulting representations they make of their interlocutors.