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Carlos Serra the Bearded Sociologist from Mozambique

Carlos Serra (1941 -2020) was a Mozambican sociologist who stood out for developing a critical and autonomous thought of the Mozambican reality from the Center for African Studies in Maputo. The CEA created by Aquino de Bragança and Ruth Feist in the years after independence, is one of the most notable research centers in Africa.

Carlos Serra

One of his best-known books “Combats for the Sociological Mentality”, of which two volumes were published, constitutes a sociology manual.
As a committed intellectual, Serra develops a work of observation of the Mozambican reality using the tools of classical sociology, of phanophone tradition.

One of his most important books, The History of Mozambique, resulted from his work as a History teacher, in the city of Beira, where for the first time, in a Mozambican context, the evolution of African societies was approached and, in practical classes, he took his students to Monte Chinhamapere to observe the cave paintings in situ. ”.
In 1975, he organized the Eduardo Mondlane University’s history department, one of the only courses that FRELIMO maintained in operation and there he prepared the “History of Mozambique: first sedentary and the impact of merchants” manual, an edition then made in photocopy and more afternoon edited by the publisher Tempo in graphic copy. In 1982 it will be the first manual in the history of Pais, a work that also involves a generation of historians, such as Teresa Cruz e Silva, Borges Coelho, among others.
In the nineties, in Paris, at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris, he will complete his doctorate in sociology. His work will then continue to be influenced by Durkheim and Touraine. Back in Mozambique, his object of study will be social representations. Mozambique and Mozambicans will be devoured and become the object of research into everyday practices in the search for sociological intelligibility. We have as social identity, miscegenation, conflict or social roles are research topics.
In the 1980s, he addressed and faced the issues of racism and ethnicity, slavery and trafficking in children, the exercise of power. He will remember the research work on popular justice and the lynching in the great popular uprisings in Maputo at the end of the century. He will become known as an everyday ethnographer (Elísio Macamo), a job he conducted in his sociology workshop at CEA.

Carlos Serra the Bearded Sociologist from Mozambique
Carlos Serra (-2020) was a Mozambican sociologist who stood out for developing a critical and autonomous thought of the Mozambican reality from the Center for African Studies in Maputo. The CEA created by Aquino de Bragança and Ruth Feist in the years after independence, is one of the most notable research centers in Africa.
One of his best-known books “Combats for the Sociological Mentality”, of which two volumes were published, constitutes a sociology manual.
As a committed intellectual, Serra develops a work of observation of the Mozambican reality using the tools of classical sociology, of phanophone tradition.
One of his most important books, The History of Mozambique, resulted from his work as a History teacher, in the city of Beira, where for the first time, in a Mozambican context, the evolution of African societies was approached and, in practical classes, he took his students to Monte Chinhamapere to observe the cave paintings in situ. ”.
In 1975, he organized the Eduardo Mondlane University’s history department, one of the only courses that FRELIMO maintained in operation and there he prepared the “History of Mozambique: first sedentary and the impact of merchants” manual, an edition then made in photocopy and more afternoon edited by the publisher Tempo in graphic copy. In 1982 it will be the first manual in the history of Pais, a work that also involves a generation of historians, such as Teresa Cruz e Silva, Borges Coelho, among others.
In the nineties, in Paris, at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris, he will complete his doctorate in sociology. His work will then continue to be influenced by Durkheim and Touraine. Back in Mozambique, his object of study will be social representations. Mozambique and Mozambicans will be devoured and become the object of research into everyday practices in the search for sociological intelligibility. We have as social identity, miscegenation, conflict or social roles are research topics.
In the 1980s, he addressed and faced the issues of racism and ethnicity, slavery and trafficking in children, the exercise of power. He will remember the research work on popular justice and the lynching in the great popular uprisings in Maputo at the end of the century. He will become known as an everyday ethnographer (Elísio Macamo), a job he conducted in his sociology workshop at CEA.

From 2006 he became a blogger and wrote Diaraio dum Sociologo, which he will keep until his death (https://oficinadesociologia.blogspot.com/) alongside with a photographer’s diary, where he offered us a lens on life of Maputo.
He was a bearded sociologist!

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