Ciência, tradição geográfica e educação: o papel da Geografia na missão dos jesuítas de fala-alemã no Rio Grande do Sul (1890-1960)

Abstract

After the restoration of the Society of Jesus, Christian education based on literature and science studies became the Jesuit mission. In 1842, the Jesuits returned to Brazil through the border between Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and Uruguay. Brazilian missions were organized into three regions: Southern, Central and Northern (Greve, 1942). The first corresponded to the Germanic Jesuit Province, based in Porto Alegre (RS). With RS as the spatial focus, the main goal of the present study is to understand the role of geography in the educational mission of the German-speaking Jesuits, between 1890 and 1960. Geography, as a way of thinking based on spatial references, aims to understand the spatial logic of phenomena in the world (Gomes, 2017), and it has been part of the Jesuit mission since the Order's earliest days (Freitas, 1992; Harris, 1999). The originality of the thesis lies in the focus given to the educational feature of the Jesuit mission, after the restoration of the SJ, and the role of geography in this religious enterprise. The research falls within the scope of the History of Geography and Geographical Thought, supported by History of Science and Knowledge. Therefore, we seek to understand these priests' conception of the world, particular ways of teaching geographical ideas, and how they were connected to the SJ's international missionary network. We recognize geographical knowledge as something that is elaborated collectively, through social interactions and political issues. Initially, we present the problematization and theoretical framework of the research, based on the concepts of “styles and collective of thinking” (Fleck, 2010). Afterwards, we outline the study's methodological delimitations, the space-time demarcation, and methods based on the geography of science and geography of the book. In the analysis and discussion sections, we first analyzed the circulation and geographical range of 225 textbooks used in Jesuit and non-Jesuit schools in the region. Then, we delved into the case of the German-speaking Jesuit, Fr. Balduíno Rambo SJ (1905-1961), in which, based on personal letters, we identified the institutional links established, recognizing the collectives of thought to which he belonged. Finally, we examined the author's geographical thinking based on descriptive procedures used in his main book “The physiognomy of Rio Grande do Sul: essay of a natural monography” (1956). The results indicated that German-speaking Jesuits sought to participate in the formation of intellectuals and politicians and thus spread and perpetuate Catholic ideals by accessing the state's political elite, pursuing geographical knowledge of the territory, and establishing international scientific connections.