The Influence of Donald Pierson on Body Studies in Brazil and How He Is Received There

This article aims to present results obtained from a study on the influence the North American sociological school of thought has had on the constitution of the Sociology of the Body in Brazil. For this purpose, bibliographical and documentary research was developed using archives from the University of Chicago and the University of Florida, both located in the United States. With the goal of discovering points of contact between the beginning of the sociology of the body in Brazil and the presence of foreign authors there, it became evident that, besides the French authors, the North American school of Chicago greatly influenced our formation. Donald Pierson (1900-1995), a North American sociologist belonging to the Chicago School tradition, lived in Brazil between 1937 and 1957. He contributed to the formation of the first Brazilian sociologists, such as Oracy Nogueira; he was her academic advisor. It is based on Donald Pierson that the first sociology of the body matrix is formed, with works that focus on themes that are exremely similar to those investigated in Chicago, such as racial questions, immigrants, and field studies that use the city as a laboratory. In this trajectory, the matrix of sociology of the body is constituted by Donald Pierson, Oracy Nogueira, João Baptista Borges Pereira and Renato da Silva Queiroz.