“Describe the banality of everyday life” and inscribe the researcher´s job

the legacy of Carlos Rodrigues Brandão in the Participatory Research of the Opará-Mutum group, North of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the legacy of Carlos Rodrigues Brandão in participatory research in/in the rural world of Northern Minas Gerais. Using his reflections on the profession of researcher, we narrate about the research carried out by “OPARÁ-MUTUM: Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Migrações e Comunidades Tradicionais do rio São Francisco” (CNPq/Unimontes), a group that Brandão founded in 2011 and was coordinator. The Opará-Mutum studies are characterized as predominantly qualitative, focusing on human geography, anthropology and sociology, with the aim of understanding the density and complexity of the different processes within the subjects. To exemplify, we describe the experience of the project “Sujeito Agente – Pessoa Sertão: cultura popular e patrimônio cultural no Alto Médio São Francisco” (2012-2014, FAPEMIG support), a project that occurred as a return to previously researched communities, where those who built the research project and carried out the methodological steps, were teams of residents/researchers, with the assistance of the academic team. We moved from a view of passivity of the researched subjects, to the involvement of participatory research, where they began to act and became authors, agents of the entire process.