17
Democracy, Inequalities, Intersectionality: A tribute to Marielle Franco
Abstract Submissions Closed
Language: Spanish and English
Session Type: Oral
Invited Session
Marielle Franco was a 38-year old Brazilian sociologist, a single mother, a defender of human rights and a local councillor of the city of Rio de Janeiro. She was murdered on March 14th 2018. Ever since, she has become a global symbol of a struggle against racist, colonial, hetero-patriarchal domination and police violence and for social justice, human rights and democracy.
Her life as a black woman from the favelas shows that intersectionality is not only a theoretical concept. It is a daily life experience for millions of women living in slums all over the world, suffering from racism, patriarchal and economic discriminations. As a single-mother, black, homosexual and politically active woman that lived in a favela, she also shows how paths of personal and collective emancipation find their roots in daily life experience, communities, feminist conviction as well as in social policy and in the right to higher education. Her life also exemplifies the importance of opening careers of sociology beyond the middle and higher class. Sociology played indeed a major role in this path towards emancipation, as she attended classes in her favela and then graduated at the university. She kept acting as a sociologist, a social activist and a political actor until the end, as she was in charge of a report on military violence in Rio’s favelas, which is the most probable reason of her assassination.
Common Session endorsed by
RC 05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Etnicity, RC 25 Sociology of language, RC 29 Deviance and Social Control, RC34 Sociology of Youth, RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements, RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change, RC53 Sociology of Childhood, RC56 Historical Sociology, ALAS, CLACSO