“Só nos servem, em verdade, cidadãos úteis": modelação de corpos e mentes de crianças e jovens potiguares através dos núcleos de escoteiros do Rio Grande do Norte (1917-1923)

Abstract

This doctoral thesis aims to analyze the scouting discourses for the physical development, character and the so-called elevation of the intellect of children and young people from Rio Grande do Norte promoted by scout groups in the capital of the State of Rio Grande do Norte and its expansion to country towns, considering the ruptures and continuities of these institutions in the period between 1917, the year of the installation of the Brazilian Association of Scouts of Rio Grande do Norte, and 1923, when six groups of scouts from the countryside and the Associação de Escoteiros Andantes de Natal were made official. During this period, the scout movement was in a process of international and national expansion, then reverberating in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, initially through the process of installing institutions such as ABERGN, followed by the Alecrim Scout Association, in 1919 and the Association of the Walking Scouts, in 1923. Its founders used the local press and the Scouts themselves on parade to carry out propaganda for the movement with a view to strengthening the image of these institutions. As an establishing process, they constructed and disseminated legislation designed to regulate the bodies of members by imposing rules of selection, surveillance and punishment. They also established a connection between their speeches and the proposal of the movement created in 1908 by its founder, retired english general Robert Baden-Powel (1859-1941). I defend the thesis argument that the Scout Centers installed throughout the geography of north Rio Grande do Norte during the period in question constituted a hybrid network of disciplinary institutions, composed of voluntary associations, such as ABERGN, AEA and Escoteiros Andantes, and by groupings attached to pre-existing educational institutions. This occurred mainly due to the proximity of discourses on modeling bodies considered healthy and healthy between scouting and civil sporting institutions at the time and given the discursive relationship established by the common focus on the disciplinaryization of bodies and minds between scouting and the State. This network was consolidated as a strategic civil and State project that aimed to propose the realization of Scout speeches manifested in educational regulations and practices such as civic parades, masses, achievements of badges and outdoor journeys to learn camping techniques. A discourse that complements school education and aims to discipline bodies and minds so that they become useful in the service of the Fatherland. To create this text, I problematized sources such as scouting legislation, the newspaper A República, Revista de Ensino, photographs of the scouts and literature produced by Baden-Powell. These are documents that contributed to understanding the construction of scout statements and their discursive laws. Methodologically, I was guided by speech analysis based on the guidelines of Michel Foucault (2020). In the meantime, I appropriated the concepts of discourse, statement and discipline recommended by Michel Foucault (2020; 2014a), of scout culture based on the understandings of Jorge Nascimento (2008), of school legislation based on Luciano Faria Filho (1998). Finally, guided by the paths of Cultural History, it was possible to understand the construction of discourses that built scouting cultures at the time and their effects of rarity and repeatability. As a conclusion, Scouting culture created a model of education that, through the speeches produced, aimed to make children and young people so-called physically strengthened, with a character modeled by civics and intellectually developed to carry out practical exercises.