Espaços e atratores: estratégias de categorização na emergência de interferências sobre a conceitualização de violência

Abstract

In this research, I analyzed the characteristics and mechanisms that make categorization, as a cognitive process, a Complex Adaptive System and the strategies of categorization that work in the emergency of inferences for the conceptualization of the category VIOLENCE and subcategory URBAN VIOLENCE. The theoretical support for the investigation of the research aims are the assumptions of the paradigm of chaos, complexity and complex systems, as outlined by Bertalanffy (1977), Morin (2005), Holland (1995, 1998) and Larsen-Freeman and Cameron ( 2008; 2012), who propose the concepts of systems, complexity, attractors, phase space and characteristics and mechanisms of a Complex Adaptive System. In the case of inferential process, I sought theoretical support in Relevance Theory, as proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1995, 2001), Feltes (1999, 2007), Alves and Gonçalves (2006) and Yus (2008, 2013). To get to the characterization of categorization as a Complex Adaptive System, I considered the properties presented by Holland (1995) and Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008), seeking to expand the concept and explain the instability of the categorical system based on the complexity theory (Morin, 1977). For this investigation, based on the complexity theory, it was also necessary to include the concept of system, phase space and attractors so relevant to the methodological approach used in this research. Such a procedure resulted in a typology of categorization strategies for the analysis and explanation of how the various feasible spaces for the conceptualizing of VIOLENCE are triggered. The category "VIOLENCE" was chosen for analysis in view of its update status in the last twenty years and the various researches on the subject carried out by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, Macedo and Feltes, scholars whose studies served as basis for the methodological proposal of this thesis. In order to verify the research hypotheses, a methodological design which involved intensive direct observation of 33 categorizers was used. The participants answered questionnaires about the categorization of VIOLENCE and participated of verbal protocols to verify the inference mechanisms involved in the process. The analyses result allow for the following conclusions: VIOLENCE categorization has the properties and mechanisms of Complex Adaptive Systems because the systems present, in whole and in parts, variation within a stable range. The categorizers use the inferential process to trigger the attractors that lead to the phase space in which diverse knowledge about violence is available for its conceptualization in a strategic way.