Expansion of racial relations as a topic in Capes database of theses and dissertations

Abstract

Over the last decades, there is an expansion of the access to graduate studies in Brazil. Characterizing those who attend and complete this stage of schooling has been the object of a varied set of research projects and publications. Studies on racial relations in this field can be analyzed, among several possibilities, by looking at the authorship of papers by Black students or as the topic being addressed in the theses and dissertations that have be written. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of the studies on racial relations taking as our data source the M.A. and PhD works submitted to Brazilian institutions with a record in the Capes theses and dissertations database. By defining 191 descriptors, we have characterized information from the records of dissertations and theses in a span of 25 years (1987-2011). In whole, 4,204 works were found about this topic, submitted to 800 graduate programs from 161 universities or research institutes. There is clear evidence that the growth in the amount of dissertations and theses dealing with racial relations is higher if compared to the average of works submitted in the same period, which shows an increasing interest on this theme that may be associated with the expansion of access of Black people to higher education and, even more restrictedly, to the graduate studies programs. Another key aspect we explored in this paper is the fact that there are more women than men in the productions identified in the theme of racial relations in Brazil.