Pós-graduação e produção acadêmica na Amazônia

Abstract

The Amazon region is well known for its great biodiversity, still not fully explored. It reaches nine countries in South America and nearly 61% of its territory reaches Brazilian states: Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Pará, Amapá, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, and parts of Maranhão. Those states are called “Brazil's Legal Amazon” by the law 1.806/1953, as the result of a political concept aimed at economical management, not at a geographical one. Given the national and international importance of the Amazon region, this research aims to analyze the academic knowledge already produced on Brazil's Legal Amazon subject in post-graduation theses of public universities based in the Amazon region. To reach this goal, we looked for theses of the 1987-2018 period in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, and interdisciplinary. The categorization of those works was made through the Descending Hierarchical Classification generated with Iramuteq, a software for textual analysis. Furthermore, we described the historical context of the post-graduation and the programs and strategic governmental policies aimed at this level of degree in Brazil and the Amazon region willing to understand the elements surrounding institutionalization and development of post-graduation. The results showed a major rate of theses with subjects connected to native people’s questions, sustainable development, and science and technology. Nevertheless, they show that the Federal University of Pará was the institution with the highest number of studies that aimed to show the reality of Brazil's Legal Amazon. Our conclusions underline that the building of academic knowledge in the region is still quantitatively smaller compared to studies developed outside the region.