THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES OF RELIGION: A study based on Brazilian doctoral theses (1996 to 2016)
Knowledge. Knowledge production. Religion. Innovation. Social utility. Commercialization.
This paper proposes a study on the production of knowledge about the religious phenomenon from the theses of doctoral courses in social sciences (Anthropology, Political Science, Social Science, Sociology, Sociology and Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science, and Political Sociology) in Brazil in the last 20 years, in order to provide a consistent analysis about its challenges and contributions, its themes and theoretical repertoires, its researched subjects and the methodologies, methods and data collection instruments, as well as its absences and tendencies in responding to the challenges of innovation, social utility and potential for commercialization. The research is justified because, although the social sciences in Brazil have always paid attention to the religious phenomenon, although not always with the same intensity of interest, there are few published works that somehow try to offer a survey on what has been researched about religion and based on the doctoral theses, but also for the importance of relating two relevant themes throughout the history of social sciences–knowledge and religion—and for the need to analyze the use of indicators in the evaluation of knowledge produced in doctoral theses on religion. Regard the theoretical repertoire used to problematize the object of study and to do the data analysis, it was built from authors of the Sociology of Knowledge and the social sciences of religion, but with emphasis on the theory of knowledge production (Mode 2) by Michael Gibbons and the theory of knowledge societies by Nico Stehr, besides other thinkers who contributed to thinking about the challenges of innovation, social utility and potential for commercializing knowledge production. The method chosen for this research was the Parallel Convergent Mixed Methods, since the data collected are both qualitative and quantitative, and the technique or instrument for data collection was the Qualitative Content Analysis.