(Re)reading Bourdieu through the works of Maria Helena Souza Patto

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the discussions of the concepts elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu in the work of Maria Helena Souza Patto, a retired professor and researcher from the Psychology Institute of USP, whose intellectual production was a watershed in the field of psychology in interface with education in Brazil. From this set of writings, three books and one chapter will be highlighted: Psychology and Ideology (1984), The production of school failure (1990), The misery of the world in the third world (2000) and Denied citizenship (2009). The references to Bourdieu throughout Patto’s work highlight the need for a critical dialogue by prioritising, in her analysis, the complexity of the Brazilian educational reality and considering the dangers in the use of concepts when they conceal the power relations present in their articulations with the problems studied.