Abstract - PhD Research

Title: Racism after Slavery in the Horizon of World Society: Brazil and the United States of America (1853-2022)

Observing Brazil and the U.S. (1853-2022) through four function systems (politics, law, education, and the economy), the present research inquires how the attribution of race could be a decisive factor for inclusion possibilities in contemporary world society. This idea comes from gaps in convergent yet disconnected fields (the sociology of race relations, dependency and slavery studies, and social systems theory). The intention is not to prove once more the existence of racial inequalities but to track their formation. As a result, the main hypothesis suggests that, as an ex-post resonance of slavery, racial scripts operate as premises for the creation and transformation of roles within function systems. More concretely, these scripts would help to program inclusion decisions in organizations, thus conforming racial inclusion (and exclusion) modes, which would prove to be resilient over time. The selected methodology consists of an evolutionary analysis of semantics and social structure, which is a variant of qualitative process tracing. Accordingly, a mix of textual sources, such as books, legal files, newspapers, periodicals, annuaries, and third-party empirical studies, will be utilized. These materials will be accessed via archives, repositories, and libraries.

Keywords: race, racial inequality, slavery, asymmetrical dependency, social systems theory.