This article discusses the question of social participation in the empirical researches of three sociologists, Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco and Florestan Fernandes, in order to detect its theoretical potential. In these researches, conducted in the 1950s and 1960s at the University of São Paulo, the authors, in different and sometimes indirect ways, studied the modalities of participation of “ordinary people” in political life, like electoral processes, relations with state bureaucracy, social movements and so forth. Also, they theorized social participation in the wider and specific context of rural-urban transition in Brazilian society, what conditioned its possibilities and limits. The historical perspective of these three authors, showing the long duration effects of agrarian roots in shaping the urban world, can bring a better understanding of participation dilemmas in contemporary Brazil.
Brazilian social thought; political sociology; Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz; Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco; Florestan Fernandes